Why Businesses Should Embrace Slow Marketing

Many people feel overwhelmed by the pace of modern life. In a recent survey, 80% of respondents said they feel left behind and unable to keep up with the rapid changes in the world. Roughly 75% of customers also feel bombarded by advertising and struggle to make purchasing decisions as a result. Social media trends like quiet quitting and the soft life movement, which involves rejecting hustle culture, underscore Americans’ growing desire to slow down. 

To build trust with increasingly frazzled consumers, businesses should consider embracing slow marketing, a strategy that emphasizes quality over quantity. Adopting a “less is more” mindset will help prevent audience burnout and keep your followers engaged. Instead of posting quick-hit social media content several times a day, brands can stand out from competitors by sharing deeper, more meaningful insights less often. Below we’ll explore how slow marketing can produce better results for your business. 

Reasons to Embrace Slow Marketing 

The slow marketing movement draws inspiration from the slow food trend, which aims to preserve traditional cuisines and farming practices. Similarly, forward-thinking brands are going back to basics with their marketing plans. Instead of experimenting with overhyped strategies like viral advertising or AI-generated content, they’re using tried-and-true methods to build strong relationships with clients. Slow marketing emphasizes fostering trust with customers through genuine interactions and authentic messaging and storytelling. By ditching high-pressure, high-volume sales and marketing tactics, you can build greater trust and loyalty with your audience. 

Consumers Are Overwhelmed by the Pace of Information 

Research has shown that 60% of Americans find it difficult to be well-informed due to the dizzying pace of news coverage. They say that the amount of content available online is overwhelming and challenging to sift through. To address this problem, many people are carefully curating their newsfeeds, choosing a handful of trusted sources they can rely on to tell them what’s important. 

Brands can cut through this information onslaught and become industry authorities by embracing slow marketing. Instead of rushing to hop on trends and publish quickly, you can boost your reputation by producing deep content that tackles complex topics, such as white papers, pillar articles, and nonfiction books. Creating long-form content takes time, but makes a powerful impression on customers. About 75% of decision-makers say that reading high-quality thought leadership caused them to research products and services they’d never considered before. Publishing helpful, in-depth articles can also improve customer retention and prevent poaching. 

Studies have shown that decision-makers respond best to thought leadership content that references research, provides actionable solutions, and highlights relevant case studies. Rushing the writing process and producing something half-baked can have the opposite effect, causing potential clients to lose trust and take their business elsewhere. So it’s important to invest in creating high-quality marketing materials that reflect positively on your brand. As a leading book coach, Nancy can help you turn your knowledge and expertise into an impactful nonfiction book that makes a lasting mark on your industry. 

Understand Your Customers Better 

According to Search Engine Journal, only 40% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy. Creating marketing collateral without performing any customer research usually yields suboptimal results. Guessing which messages and advertising tactics will land with your target audience could cause you to invest in campaigns that fail to move the needle. In contrast, the slow marketing trend emphasizes intentionality and planning. Instead of basing strategy decisions on assumptions, brands should ask customers about their preferences. 

Sending out questionnaires and interacting with your followers on social media can help you understand their mindset and pain points. Conducting focus groups and using social listening tools to monitor your brand mentions can also reveal important insights. The thoughts and opinions you gather will guide you in shaping a brand voice and advertising strategy that truly resonates with your customers. Slowing down and deeply considering how you want to represent your brand will also help ensure your messaging aligns with your values and mission. 

Increase Customer Satisfaction and Trust 

In today’s fast-paced marketing environment, scarcity is often used as a tool to drive conversions. However, high-pressure tactics like limited-time discounts may decrease customer satisfaction and erode trust over time. Pushing consumers to make a purchasing decision before they’re ready can cause buyer’s remorse and increase the number of negative reviews and returns you receive.

Additionally, recent studies have shown that roughly 70% of people are turned off by high-pressure sales. They’d rather patronize businesses that utilize more positive strategies like customer experience marketing, which prioritizes relationship building. Instead of applying pressure to condense the sales cycle, brands can gradually nurture leads by answering questions, providing helpful content, and establishing loyalty programs. Supporting customers throughout the buyer’s journey often yields better results than trying to rush the process. Emphasizing customer education ensures that the leads you convert fully understand your solution and believe it’s the best fit. 

When buyers are well-informed, they’re more likely to feel satisfied with their experience and become powerful advocates for your brand. Studies have shown that businesses receive an average of nine referrals from each happy customer they serve. Introducing a referral program that rewards loyal clients for spreading the word also pays dividends. Leads generated from referrals convert at a 30% higher rate than prospects from other channels. Although building positive word of mouth can take time, it’s one of the most effective marketing strategies. 

Stand Out From AI Content 

In order to speed up the writing process and publish ever more content, marketers are turning to artificial intelligence for help. Roughly 88% of marketing professionals use tools like ChatGPT to boost their productivity. Although AI can generate an article or social media post in seconds, the output is usually subpar at best. According to IBM, artificial intelligence tools can hallucinate, causing them to produce inaccurate or even nonsensical results. 

Sometimes these inaccuracies can be difficult to spot because large language models may mix fact and fiction or omit important information and context. Because ChatGPT has a tendency to leave out data and research, the content it produces can be shallow. You’ll likely need to edit and fact-check its output thoroughly, so you may not save much time by using it. 

The disadvantages of artificial intelligence are likely to get worse as time goes on. ChatGPT and other large language models are trained using online content, which is increasingly being written by AI itself. This means that developers will likely start training new models using writing created by previous versions of the technology. According to the New York Times, AI that’s trained on its own data significantly degrades in quality over time. Eventually, AI models collapse and become completely ineffective when they’re trained using too much recycled content. 

Although AI technology may seem enticing, it’s better to break away from the crowd and continue providing authentic, human insights. Your expert writing will outclass ChatGPT’s surface-level content, enabling your business to stand out from competitors who are taking marketing shortcuts. Additionally, sharing your own knowledge and expertise will increase customer confidence. Considering the fact that many people don’t trust AI-generated content, publishing your real opinions instead of outsourcing the task to technology can help you build trust with your audience. 

Slow and Steady Growth Versus Fleeting Virality 

Many businesses engage in viral marketing, attempting to get as many eyeballs on their content as possible. However, trying to chase popular trends and court a broad audience may not be the best strategy. According to marketing expert and author Jonah Berger, viral advertising often has weak brand association and gets mistaken for entertainment. It’s usually difficult to relate hot topics or popular challenges to your company in a meaningful way that customers will remember. So even if one of your posts or videos gets tens of thousands of views, it may not improve your brand recognition much. 

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that the wide pool of viewers viral videos reach will be interested in your products. Getting lots of hits feels exciting, but may not yield many new followers or loyal customers. Evian learned this lesson when their viral ad featuring babies on roller skates failed to boost brand recognition and sales. There’s also a possibility that you’ll enter the spotlight for the wrong reasons and garner negative attention. For example, trolls hijacked a viral selfie campaign run by Walkers Crisps. Whenever a fan submitted a photo, the company automatically reposted it. Jokesters saw this as an opportunity to send in images of notorious criminals, causing damage to Walkers’ brand image. 

It’s tempting to pursue flash in the pan success, especially when many of your competitors are chasing viral highs. However, remember that this type of attention tends to be short-lived and may only last for a few days or weeks. Instead of participating in the viral boom and bust cycle, embracing slower, more sustainable growth strategies will help you build momentum over time. Focusing on serving and building relationships with your ideal customers is often a better way to fuel long-term business development. Educational blog posts related to your field may not have the same widespread appeal as TikTok trends. However, publishing thought leadership content that gets shared in industry circles will help reach decision-makers and boost your authority where it counts the most. 

Establish a Productivity-Boosting Workflow 

As mentioned above, ChatGPT may not save you time because its output often requires extensive editing. If you want to streamline your workflow and make it easier to produce impactful marketing messages, consider writing a nonfiction book. Becoming an author will give you a base of content to draw from and repurpose into a variety of formats. For example, quotes and statistics from your writing can be turned into infographics for Pinterest or Instagram. A chapter could form the basis of a keynote speech, podcast episode, blog post, or white paper. You could even create a video course to accompany your book and generate additional revenue. Although writing a manuscript requires significant effort upfront, repurposing your writing will save you time on content creation for years to come.

Hiring Nancy to assist you will flatten your learning curve and help you become an author faster—typically in just one year. Nancy’s proven book writing process will enable you to write high-quality prose quickly by eliminating creative ruts. You’ll start by drafting a purpose statement together, which distills your book’s main message into a single sentence. To further cement your vision, you’ll create BookMAPs, which are detailed outlines that contain the insights and solutions you want to present in your book. 

With this solid foundation in place, you’ll never get distracted from your book’s mission or wonder what to write next. These planning steps will also ensure that your book aligns with your brand voice and serves your long-term marketing goals. Once your manuscript is complete, Nancy will guide you through the publishing process and teach you how to repurpose and promote your work effectively. If you’re ready to begin building a winning slow marketing strategy, reach out to learn more about our book coaching services.