Slow Marketing versus Fast Marketing for Solopreneurs

In today’s world, there is a lot of pressure to move quickly. We are constantly bombarded with messages telling us how to make money faster, make more money, get clients faster, be more productive, and get results, like, yesterday.

In many cases, this can lead to solopreneurs adopting a fast marketing approach in an attempt to keep up with everyone. There is nothing inherently wrong with fast marketing. Both are good for your marketing strategy.

However, always focusing on fast marketing can lead to burnout city. There has to be a healthy balance of slow marketing versus fast marketing. Both can work great in your business plan.

Slow Marketing versus Fast Marketing

Slow marketing is all about incorporating longer-term strategies into your marketing plan. It’s meant to build the foundations of your marketing plan.

Fast marketing, on the other hand, gets results quickly. It’s meant to get people to take action and increase your subscribers or sales.

I would venture to say that you are already doing some sort of mix of both. This is a great plan for your business because it allows you to build those foundations while still actively increasing sales.

The Basics of Slow Marketing

So while my core values of slow marketing encompass more than just foundational marketing, for the sake of comparing slow and fast marketing, I’m going to cover the foundational marketing aspect in this post.

Slow marketing are things that help build the foundation of your business. These are techniques that you do that may not pay off right away but they set you up for the long haul.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
It can take months to see results from SEO but it truly is a key foundational piece of marketing. Blogging will help intensify your SEO efforts. It can take a bit of legwork to get optimized but much like Clark Griswold’s jelly of the month membership, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Search-Friendly Platforms
LinkedIn and Pinterest are both search-friendly. Optimizing both platforms with keywords that are relevant to your business and your audience can ramp up your marketing efforts.

Content Marketing
This includes your blog posts, email marketing, social media, podcast, YouTube. It’s all part of content marketing. As it stands, content marketing is considered slow marketing with nurturing content but it can definitely show up in fast marketing depending on if you have a well-nurtured audience and if you’re launching anything.

Nurturing Education
Building and nurturing a Facebook group takes time but once you get it to a point where your audience wants more, it can make it easier to put an offer out.

Masterclasses that are value-focused and don’t include an offer pitch are also a great way to provide education that builds rapport with your audience. Masterclasses do NOT have to be free. You can absolutely charge what it’s worth.

Referrals + Collaborations
A lot of solopreneurs build incredible businesses through referrals which is always amazing. The only effort on your part is giving your audience and your clients a top-notch experience that makes you easily referrable.

Collaborations can be super fun when you find someone in a complementary niche. Collabs can be anything from IG Stories Takeover to doing IG Lives together, to being a podcast guest, or being invited to be a summit speaker.

The Basics of Fast Marketing

Fast marketing is what you can do today to generate more subscribers, leads, or sales. Fast marketing is how you get that cash injection that your business needs while you’re building out those long-term foundations.

These techniques are meant to get results quicker. *snap snap*

Ad Campaigns
Whether you’re promoting a freebie or a paid offer, targeted ads are primarily meant to help you supercharge your subscribers and sales.

Launching/Selling
Whenever you’re actively launching or selling, through various methods, it’s a fast marketing strategy. A webinar that promotes your offer is just one way. Any way that you pitch your offer falls into this category too.

Boosters
This is what I call giveaways, challenges, sprints, bootcamps, etc. They’re a great way to boost your subscribers or sales AND they’re designed to give your clients some sort of boost too so it’s a win-win.

Cold Emails
There ARE ways to send cold emails that aren’t super gross and it CAN work pretty well for a quick injection.

Both Slow and Fast Marketing are Essential

A lot of the time, your slow marketing strategies help make fast marketing more successful because you’ve built yourself up. You’ve built those relationships and foundational pieces.

They tie in together. If you’re building a Facebook group (yes it’s still a thing), it takes time to build it and get to a point where the audience is nurtured. This is slow marketing. When it comes time to launch an offer to your group, they will eat it up because of all the hard work you’ve done to get to that point. This is fast marketing.

How to Incorporate Both Into Your Biz

Narrow down your marketing by thinking about the strategies that you enjoy and that get you results too.

Once you have a small list (really, you don’t need a big long list of marketing to-dos – 1-2 from each category is a great start), you can figure out how to divide your time between them.

Where are you in your business? Do you have the space to take things slow? If so, your strategy might look like focusing 90% of your available time + energy on slow marketing with 10% on fast marketing.

If you are in dire need of work, then you might flip-flop the percentages. You might also take a 50/50 approach if things are cruising along nicely in your business.

Finding a healthy balance between the two is key. If you focus on slow marketing alone, you might find yourself getting discouraged by the slow results. If you focus on fast marketing alone, you will likely find yourself burned out.