Intimate Marketing

Here’s a thought - how much time do you spend marketing to your existing audience?

The conversation around marketing has reached a fever pitch and is almost always designed around capturing a new audience. Growing an audience. Growing page views. Growing. Scaling. More. Faster. Wider. Better.

But here’s a little thing - ideas and people take time to get to know each other. We’ve forgotten that to move someone to action they need to see a message repeatedly. You have to earn trust. You have to earn respect. Loyalty is a product of repeatedly experiencing delight and care.

I’ve spoken with several people who just seem, well, tired of the thought of starting up a content marketing machine or trying to “build an audience”. Well - f-that. How about just nurturing, delighting, educating, informing, making connections with and, yes, having a conversation with your existing audience, clients, or friends?

And you know what - it’s not all or nothing. By creating things that delight, inform and connects that trusted network you’ll end up building a following anyway. Genuine ideas and discussions have a habit of breaking out and finding the right audiences.

So forget the hypergrowth and the “10 ways to do…”. Just create a little something that the people around you want to read. Make it intimate. Make it interesting. Make it weird! Start a tiny fire and invite a few friends to talk about it. Small ideas are beautiful.

And yes, this post was written for my friend Kyle and I’m off to have a little discussion about it with him.