In praise of a Slow Marketing Movement

We have all had to learn to slow down over the last year or so. A global pandemic put life on hold for so many of us, and I for one, am a fan. Not of pandemics they can do one obviously, but of slowing down. Taking time to appreciate the things that life is really about. Time with your family, really listening, enjoying a book, cooking, appreciating small things around you. Not only is it just less stressful, slowing down is also extremely good for your mental health. And it doesn’t actually make you slower! Often it means you are more productive.

So, I am all for it. And despite the fact that I work in one of the most fast moving industries, a business where we are all trying to capture someone’s attention in 3 seconds before they scroll on, I think there is a real place for slowing down in my world too.

Anything that is truly worth building is worth spending time on. As attractive as the idea of growing a huge audience in a nano second might be, is it genuinely helpful to your business? If you are a creative or artist making beautiful bespoke objects, and you can make four a week, then there is no use to you in having an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who all want what you sell. You simply couldn’t keep up with the demand. It may mean having to outsource the part of your business which brings you real joy.

If you are a coach and you work with clients on a one to one basis, then an audience of millions doesn’t really serve you. In fact it may just mean more of your time being taken up on customer service responding to thousands of comments a day.

If we are to believe that only 10% of our audience on social buy from us and you only have capacity to work with 100 people a year, then what use is an audience of 2 million to you? Far better to have a community of 1000 engaged and interested humans who really want to hear what you have to say, and that takes time to build and it’s worth doing it right.

People really do buy from people and taking the time to grow some human connections will mean you end up with the right audience for you. People who genuinely need and want what you have to offer. And that feels pretty good.

The marketing world moves fast and there is a new form of communication arriving all the time, from Clubhouse to Dispo, Reels to Fleets, it can become overwhelming. And we so often feel like we have to keep up and rush to be everywhere. But we don’t, not really. If we take the time to slow down and figure out who our audience is, we will understand that they don’t have the capacity to be everywhere all at the same time either. Concentrate on doing a couple of things well rather than stretching yourself so thinly that you can’t think straight. Really take time to figure out where your audience is and then spend some time there, get to know them and let them get to know you.

Slow is simply more sustainable, and we all want to live a more sustainable life, right?

Taking the time to do things properly means you’ll create better content that really helps and inspires the people you are trying to reach. It doesn’t mean there isn’t also time for the scrappy thinking and the trying something just to see if it works, if fact, it means there’s more time for it. There is space for new ideas and creativity to thrive because we aren’t slaves to the rush or the hustle. And trust me, the customers who do come, they’ll stick around.