The term “slow marketing” catches the attention of many burned-out professionals… like it did for me! This concept is, in a nutshell, taking the time to figure out your core platform and find your voice.
We find value in prioritizing quality over speed in many different parts of our lives, such as food and relationships. This approach aligns perfectly with professional services… because bigger decisions usually require time. Your clients need to make sure that you understand their specific problems before they buy or hire.
In this micro-episode:
- Why ideas and relationships need time to marinate
- The connection between “slow marketing” and other slow movements, and business growth
- How slow marketing counters the pressure of social media speed
You might find better ROI by investing in search-ranking assets like articles or podcast episodes that build relationships with the right people over time (more slowly). More on that during this week’s episodes.
Resources mentioned: https://stereoforest.com/beyond-social-media-business-growth-strategies-that-work-for-professionals/
Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforst.com/minute.
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Transcript
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::So the term slow marketing got my attention the first time I heard that. So Tad Hargrave founded Marketing for Hippies. It's down the highway from me on Vancouver
Island. And Tad gives a pretty good definition for this. He says slow marketing means that that act of figuring out your core platform and finding your voice takes
time. I'll link to Tad's article in the show notes. I think that ideas do need to be a good way to find out.
::to marinate. Like sometimes you just need to give that idea a while to sort of figure out what that idea is all about. What you actually think about it. Like what your
audience needs. Needs that time to marinate about you and your services. Like you want to encourage people to sleep on the decision to make sure that you are a good fit
for them. That's a lot like slow marketing. So this philosophy
::draws from the broader slow movement that started with food, right? The slow food movement started in the 80s and this was a response to fast food culture. So this
general idea means that we find value in that time, in taking time and prioritizing quality. So slow marketing applies that thinking to actually growing a business.
And the core principles mean finding and
::s is going to be the play for:we're seeing out there that there is going to be more value in making fewer pieces uh that are really good and really for a lot of our professional services the slow
marketing idea is quite well aligned with how clients are
::They're going to make decisions for the kinds of things that we're offering, right? Because they're more expensive and you have to make these careful decisions. And
those decisions are developed. They're developed over time. That trust takes time. So your client is going to read your perspective on the problem that they're
facing to figure out, you know, is this a good match? They're going to perhaps hear from
::like word of mouth and that person they respect. So they're looking for evidence that you understand the situation and that there's a match there. And sometimes this
trust building, it can happen over a period of weeks or months or even longer than that. And so you really need that content, the stuff that you're making to demonstrate
that expertise and that match. So you need things that have substance.
::to them and have merit to them. So those of us following this sort of idea of slow
::marketing, the thing that we're really trying to do that I'm trying to do is get rid of this pressure
::that's put on a lot of us to do more things faster and do, you know, to keep up with all of these rapid changes. And that's something that social media really pressures us
to do all
::the time. And we can make a valid choice here to do things with intention and to build up things with a little bit more substance and intention and, and, you know, and
trust in ourselves to be making this decision that's right for us to build something that lasts a bit longer. And I believe that content like this fits into this
category, sort of, you know,
::that is focusing on trust building and credibility and expertise. I believe that these things will really be the difference between building up a relationship, a
real relationship between professionals rather than a quick transactional one. I guess we can kind of apply that idea to many parts of our lives. It's a little bit slow
is a little bit of a universal thing. Anyways, I'm Jen DeHaan. This is the credibility minute.