Grow With Soul Ep. 38: Over-saturation, Vulnerability, and the Marketing That's Stopped Working With Kayte Ferris
Over the last few months I think we have all felt a bit of shift in the online landscape and the conversations I have been having with clients have reflected this too. It all started with questions about saturated markets, struggling to stand out, authenticity and vulnerability, Instagram growth and email signs up are grinding to a halt, in spite of people doing all the right things. Today I wanted to unpick on what is going on with this, look at emerging trends and look at ultimately getting some ideas on where the marketing space has headed and how we can keep ahead of the curve now that all the tried and tested things are not working anymore.
Here's what we talk about in this episode:
Over-saturation of product and marketing style
Vulnerability to trigger growth
Authenticity and connections
How to be unique and different
Playing to your strengths
5 practical steps you can take to start reassessing your marketing
My Online Workshop - Forget 5 Step Formulas: Embrace your own style of marketing
Links and resources we discuss:
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Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 38 of Grow with Soul. Over the last few months I think we’ve all felt a bit of a shift in the online landscape, and the conversations that I’ve been having with clients have reflected this too. It all started with questions about whether anyone even buys e-courses anymore, and that the market’s saturated, and about struggling to stand out. Then there were conversations about authenticity and vulnerability, and did we have to be the latter in order to be the former? And lastly came reports that Instagram growth or email signups or just general reach was kind of grinding to a halt in spite of people doing all the ‘right’ things.
Over the last couple of weeks, the frequency of these conversations has escalated dramatically, so, actually, a good 9/10 of my client conversations at the moment are about ‘why is this thing not working for me anymore?’ This is reflected in what I’m seeing online, and also in my own business. I’m noticing that the fail safe photo compositions that I could always rely on for Instagram engagement aren’t getting as much traction anymore, and my how-to style blog posts, which were always, always my big hitters, are no longer the most popular thing that I’ve put out.
Then on the other side of the coin, I’m noticing a change in my own consumption habits too; I’m not looking that much at how-to content either, and my favourite, well, my old favourite podcasts, are kind of sat in the app with that little message that says ‘are you not interested anymore?’ and yeah, I’m not committed either way yet. But I am being drawn much more to stories, to interesting stories, to things that I’ve not heard about before, and what I’m starting to feel more and more inspired by is following that pattern too.
So today, I wanted to unpick what I think is going on with all of this, and look at some kind of emerging trends, and ultimately get some idea of where I think marketing this space is headed, and how we can all be ahead of the curve now that the old tried and tested things are starting not to work as much anymore.
Let’s start with over-saturation. There are, to my mind, two types of over-saturation going on at the moment. Over-saturation of product, and over-saturation of marketing style. The first is the one that everybody thinks is the problem, when really it’s not. It’s much easier to think ‘my business isn’t getting reach because these 3 other people over there are doing exactly the same thing’. And, you know, it’s easy to think ‘there’s nothing I can do about that; competition sucks.’ But that’s not really the truth. The more people who are doing what you do, the better for your business. It’s a sign of demand, it’s a sign that consumers get the concept of what it is that you do, and what you’re about, and it allows you to talk about what makes you different on a more sophisticated level, rather than explaining the basics just to confuse faces, and trying to get them to even understand what it is – let alone whether they want to buy it or not.
It’s kind of a lack mindset to think that the pie is finite when, really, markets are ever expanding, ever shifting; they’re not a field with a fence around it, they are little mini-universes that are just changing and shifting and expanding.
Look at mobile phone technology as a really, really obvious example; no one stopped at buying their first iPhone, or even nobody stopped at buying their first Nokia 3310. The more that people bought into that market, the more people who bought into mobile technology, the better the market can grow. It’s just up to you as a business to keep diversifying, keep disrupting within that market, keep disrupting and diversifying what you do in order to stay relevant within it.
So again, looking at the tech companies, it’s companies which are starting to out-diversify Apple that are starting to take off, so things like inter-phone charging and that kind of thing, they’re the ones who are staying ahead of the curve; they’re innovating to earn their place in the market rather than just doing the same thing and moaning that other people are doing that too.
So, no, competition is a good thing. My theory is that the problem is really with the oversaturation of a type of marketing. As more and more people have been setting up their own businesses, so too have more and more people, like me, been setting up businesses to support those businesses, to show and teach them how to grow, how to sell, how to market, how to do all the things. The trouble with this is that it’s hard to talk about sales and marketing in a general way. So much relies on the specific conditions of a business – how much time you as the owner have, what resources are available, all the different individual restrictions and opportunities within that business. So much also relies on the actual product, and who the customer for that product is; there are so many moving parts in the marketing machine and all of them are completely unique to the individual business. Yes, some of them will be really really similar, but there’ll always be a little individual bobble, that’s unique to that business.
When people who talk about marketing talk about marketing, we have to generalise it. We can use examples, but you just can’t cover every possibility within somebody’s business in a generic podcast, or a generic blog post; even a generic e-course. So, they could talk about general processes, general formulas, general strategies that will work, but that won’t necessarily take into account the wonderful uniqueness and eccentricities in your business. We’re in a position now where a generation of small business owners have all been following the same advice about marketing, but enacting the same strategies, using the same processes, and using the same methods to stand out. And the result is that no-one’s standing out anymore. And more importantly, consumers are recognising all the techniques as being the same, and they’re just not paying attention to them anymore; they’re blocking them out, which is why growth is slowing. Because if everybody looks the same, nobody’s different.
Let’s take coaching for example, as obviously it’s a space I know well and I’m sure you’re either a coach or you’ve come up against that industry. So, for a long time the advice for all service based businesses is to demonstrate expertise, show yourself to build connection, and give out free content to build signups; those were the tried and tested methods, that’s been what works. Now, as I said, the how-to expertise demonstrating content is just being skimmed by people, and that kind of coach photo shoot is a trope in itself and can be spotted a mile off, I’m sure you know what I mean. People still like the free content, but they’ve now been burnt a few times and they’re now more protective of their email address than they ever were. It’s all still kind of working, but it’s limping along.
Which brings me to vulnerability. I think this has been the first attempt by businesses to inject something to trigger some growth. I don’t know this for sure, but I’m assuming someone somewhere noticed a post in which they were vulnerable did really well, and news spread like wildfire that vulnerability was the key to growth, and I’m not surprised that it did because now that all the old failsafes aren’t working anymore, of course we all want to leap onto this new thing, this new failsafe that will make everything okay again. The trouble is, as I discussed in my episode with Greta last week, I think it can be damaging for us to monetise our problems and to feel like our trauma, our secrets, are the only thing that we can share to keep our business going. We seem to have whipped up a bit of an authenticity Olympics, where everyone is competing to find the most shocking, relatable dark secret.
And I’ve done it; I’ve overemphasised things to make them more shocking, I’ve shared in places and in stories that weren’t kind of safe or pleasant for me to do so, I’ve worried about being troubled enough, that I have no stories deep enough to be worth sharing so why am I even bothering?
And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t share things that are personal and vulnerable, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have important conversations, I’m saying that we shouldn’t share them because we think it’s the only way to get traction for our business; that cannot be the only reason that you’re sharing some vulnerable. If you’re sharing against your will because it’s what you feel you have to do now, then that’s not right. The point of vulnerability is to access authenticity; the real person behind the account, and to access connection as well, to connect people to you.
It’s perhaps a sign of the times and the darkness in the world that as a culture we went straight to troubles to illustrate that, but it’s not the sum of who we are; we hold variety and we have light as well as dark. The first person that pops into my head is Mrs Hinch, and also Dominique at All That is She; their Instagram accounts do well because they have joy, and they bring joy. There are shadows in there, so whether it’s the sustainability element with Dominique’s account, or Mrs Hinch talking about mental health, but the lightness of the content enables the issues to shine even brighter. These women are taken seriously, they are connected. In Mrs Hinch’s case, like, overly connected; she’s got such a huge bond with such a huge audience, and more importantly they grow, they are growing in spite of, or maybe because of, the lightness that they share. They are accessing authenticity and still showing a side of themselves but a side that feels good and right for them to share.
With all the clever marketing formulas and authenticity tricks and hacks that have been shared over the last few years, all we really want as consumers is someone to tell us the truth; the truth of a bad day, something that didn’t go to plan, yes, but also the truth of the best days of your life, the accomplishments that you’re most proud of. The truth is relatable, the truth connects. So rather than ask yourself ‘what can I share that’s vulnerable? Shift the question to ‘what can I share that’s true?’
In all of this, the key is to hold onto your uniqueness, in a world where everyone’s been using the same tricks and doing the same things, doing what’s different is the way to stand out. Different, yet truthfully, uniquely you. Just because everyone in your space is launching a coaching offering doesn’t mean you have to do that too. How can you best deliver a solution to your people? Just because podcasting is the new blogging, as they say, doesn’t mean you have to start a podcast. Making your blog content human, readable, high quality and truthful will do the same job. As the fail safes and the must-dos start to lose their edge, the edge has to be recouped in ourselves. What are you amazing at? Why do your friends love you? What kind of communicator are you naturally? Playing to these strengths rather than shoehorning yourself into a formula is the only way to truly connect and to keep ahead of the growth of your market.
So, what are some practical things that you and we can do to start reassessing all of this and reassessing our marketing? Here are 5 that I’ve come up with so far:
GET BACK TO THINKING ABOUT MARKETING AS A BASIC HUMAN TRANSACTION OF VALUE
Stop thinking so much about what you want to say, and more about what is going to be interesting for people to hear. The rest will all come, but connection takes trust, and trust takes time, so you have to start building it by talking about the stuff that’s interesting to you and to others rather than cramming those marketing messages into every post. Ultimately marketing is just one human connecting with another human over a shared interest, so hold onto that.
THINK ABOUT WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS
You may need to ask around about this, as it’s quite hard for us to see what’s interesting and different about ourselves, as often they’re the most mundane things we can think about ourselves, if we even think about them at all. It might be that your dry humour is completely different from anyone else in your space, or it might be the way you put two and two together that creates ‘aha’ moments for people. It might be that your visual styles makes people really happy. If you’re struggling with this or you feel awkward about asking people about this, you can use personality tests like High 5 Strength Finder to find your own innate strengths too.
START PUTTING THOSE STRENGTHS INTO PRACTICE
Lean into that humour, that thinking, that styling. Maybe instead of the written newsletter you’ve been killing yourself to put out every month because you have to, send out a beautiful illustration that might take you like, half an hour instead. Find your strengths and then use them to tell your stories
CREATE YOUR OWN METRICS
I have conversations with clients who ask ‘what are the metrics that I should be really measuring on Instagram?’ and my answer is always ‘Well, what do you want Instagram to do for your business?’ If you want it to drive traffic, then measure that. The likes don’t matter if the traffic’s still coming across. Or if you want it to be a hub of connection, measure that, measure the comments, the repeat comments from the same accounts, the amount of messages you get in reply to stories. The rules of where you should be and what is ‘good’ on each channel are being wiped with all these formulas not working anymore. So what do YOU want each of your marketing channels to achieve, and that’s all that matters.
DEFINE YOUR BOUNDARIES AND PRIORITIES
What is your role going to be for people in this business, or as this business? Are you a mother figure, a friend, a teacher? What are the things that you’re comfortable to share within this role, and what are the things that you’re not? Markets shift and change what consumers respond to also shifts and changes. We’ve all seen those ads from the ‘50s and ‘60s and even laughed at how innocently and blatantly they are selling, or completely recoiled in horror at how horribly sexist they are. So they used to work, and now they don’t, just like some of the things you’ve been doing used to work and now they don’t. It’s not the end of the world, it’s a shift, it’s a maturing of the market and the space, and you can choose to ride along and be a part of defining that, and to me at least, that feels pretty exciting.