3 steps to market in a way that feels good

Changing how we feel about marketing our business

Oct 12, 2022

When I started my business, I definitely saw marketing as a necessary evil. I couldn’t imagine ever feeling good about marketing. The word “marketing” made me feel icky. It reminded me of websites so full of ads I could barely read what I’d come for, of being pressured to buy something.

Once or twice I’d signed up for another small business owner’s newsletter and immediately become bombarded with daily or twice-daily emails. Thinking of marketing my business made me feel that I had go massively outside of my comfort zone, follow someone else’s rules and be on all the channels all the time.

It’s safe to say that this didn’t work for me.

Changing how I feel about marketing

One of the biggest surprises of my business these past few years is that I’ve come to enjoy marketing (I know, it shocks me too). I enjoy talking and thinking about marketing, giving workshops about it, and supporting small business owners to market their business in a way that fits them.

That phrase “in a way that fits them” has been key. Somewhere along the way, I figured out that marketing the way I thought I should market didn’t work for me. It sucked all the joy and energy out of my business. It constantly made me feel like I wasn’t doing enough. It made me feel like I wasn’t cut out for this whole owning-a-business-thing.

When it comes to our small businesses, we are really good at what the core of our business is: creating a product or offering a service. But we need to tell the world that we’re here, too.

At times, this can feel really lonely. You’re putting out products, creating offers, but it’s like you’re alone in a void with no one to hear you. If you feel that right now, please know that you’re not alone in feeling this. That place, of feeling alone in a void, is a really lonely place to be, and unfortunately a place that pretty much every small business owner I know goes through.

How to keep going when business is slow

What frustrated me so about marketing early on in my business is that I felt that it required me to have this whole other skillset that I didn’t have. I’m really good at mentoring people, at creating materials, doing workshops and designing courses. And now I was supposed to be good at marketing too?!?

What changed for me was that I reached a tipping point where marketing “the way I should” just wasn’t sustainable for me. I was miserable trying to do all the things on social media. I knew deep down that I didn’t want to do reels, or video, or spend my days crafting perfectly curated pictures. I constantly felt like I was playing a game I didn’t know the rules too.

I was done.

Marketing is no longer a necessary evil, but an area of my basis that I can experiment with and that I can enjoy.

That’s when I learned how empowering marketing my way is.

I did not have a large, not even a medium-sized, following on Instagram when I started to scale back, and when I eventually left. My newsletter list isn’t huge. But the way in which I share about my business now feels actually aligned with the way I want to run my business—rather than this whole other, icky, side-job I’m not qualified for.

This post is my encouragement to you to explore marketing your way. If the term “marketing” feels icky, perhaps call it “sharing” instead.

You are sharing about your business, and in putting that beautiful, slow, gentle, heartfelt business out there, you are making a positive impact on people. You’re not forcing them to buy a subscription they’ll instantly regret. I am convinced that if we share about our business from within ourselves, if we show up as ourselves, this shows in our marketing.

And if you need a little more encouragement, I’ve made a list of next steps to take, and some affirmations to remember too.