Quiet Marketing

I first learned of quiet marketing when I saw the book Quiet Marketing by Danielle Gardner. This short read covered several techniques about how she’s able to run her business without the use of social media. What stuns me the most is how she uses her email list to get high conversions. Some of the techniques mentioned in the book I’ve practiced since 2019, and it’s been exciting to see so many others are now adapting to this version of marketing too.

”I hate social media but need it for business!”

Oh, how I feel your pain! Before delving into the app business, I owned a cosmetics company, Koyvoca. Being the creator of beauty products was an amazing feeling. I enjoyed creating new items but dreaded posting about them. Looks are everything in the beauty business, and it was sometimes debilitating to post because I was afraid of how my followers would respond. The reaction to a post could be very supportive to the point my post would go viral, and other times the comments on my post were downright nasty. I’m talking deleting the entire post and forgetting it ever happened nasty. It became a chore to use social media as the main driver for my business, so I tried to seek other ways to reach an audience.

What I’ve Tried

After realizing creating content on social media was not for me, I reached out to influencers and used ads to keep my company in the public’s psyche. Influencers are effective, but they can be unreliable. Not every influencer keeps to the contract of posting on time and sometimes they even forgo posting at all. Without steady content to post, I delved into the wonderful world of ads.

Pouring my hard-earned money into a machine where I had to figure out how its algorithm worked in order to get my ads to the users I wanted, is still the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done. After seeing the success others have had with ads, I knew I could use this as a great way to get ahead. One problem was that the return was not as great as posting or using influencers. Later I read that Proctor and Gamble slashed their digital ad spend and didn’t notice any drop in business. Now, I’m not a huge business, but I’ve too noticed that some of the traffic from the digital ads I ran was not quality traffic…

So what is quiet marketing?

This style of marketing focuses on long-form content creation. Blog posts, instructional videos, books, podcasts, etc. This is content that people will search for to hopefully answer any pressing questions.

What made you consider moving towards quiet marketing?

While in a rut about how I would promote the business, I studied the analytics on how each platform contributed to my bottom line. I noticed that with Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, my posts had a life of approximately 72 hours. I would get sales, but if I continuously posted, the initial large number of sales would dissipate as people would get tired of seeing my posts. Leaving for a few days didn’t lead to any sales, which rendered a lot of my work ineffective three days after a post. Pinterest was a different beast, providing me with a steady stream of clicks but rarely any sales. Regina Anaejionu mentions this phenomenon in her blog about “social media sharecropping”. We business owners end up in a perpetual loop of creating free content for social media companies in the hopes of beating the machine, aka the algorithm, so we can be heard by other humans and hoping that those humans will go on to purchase our products. It’s exhausting.

What did give me a steady stream of sales were blog posts and articles from publications that mentioned my brand. People would actively search for a brand like mine. It was handcrafted, vegan-friendly, and the products were made from natural ingredients. Simply delving more into those topics led more people into the direction of my brand, and I was able to build a following outside of social media.

Has quiet marketing worked for you?

Yes! My focus currently is on blogging and creating books. These two mediums are my favorite because people are actively searching for answers, think about how you got here ;), and I can provide them with the information they need. There’s unlimited space to talk about my products and future users feel more comfortable using my apps when they know it’s a genuine human behind them!

This technique may not be for everyone, but for me, taking this angle to content marketing has been the best way to prevent burnout and get back to the things I love!