Today, I’m offering three gentle questions to help you create a marketing strategy that is not overwhelming or icky—but instead gentle, effective and all you.
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Q1: Which channels and activities fit your skills and values?
I always start here: what fits you? What fits your skills and your values?
For example, if you love writing, a newsletter is a great channel. If you’re more visual and really good at creating beautiful images, a channel like Instagram or Pinterest makes sense.
If your values are slow and gentle, a fast-paced channel like Instagram or TikTok is probably not for you. You might instead focus on channels with more longevity, like your blog, podcast or YouTube channel.So many of the marketing struggles that clients tell me about are caused by forcing themselves to go against their values. To chase the quick, the always-on, the fast and ephemeral even though they value the slow, gentle and deeply connected instead.
Or they struggle because they’re trying to do things that they’re really not good at, just because marketing advice has told them to.
The big transformation happens not only when you get clear on your skills and values, but when you give yourself permission to go with them. To allow yourself to do what fits you, in spite of what the marketing gurus may have told you.
“I’ve always felt so pressured by all those marketing gurus online who say you have to do this, you have to do that—posting every single day, doing a hundred thousand different things. It made me so anxious that I just… didn’t do it. I thought I hated marketing. But when I heard you talking, I literally felt my shoulders drop. Oh okay—so it can be done differently.”—Kirsten, artist and webshop owner about my gentle marketing programme Grow
Q2: What is feasible time and energy-wise?
If you’re reading this, you probably run a one-person business. Or maybe it’s two or three of you. You most probably don’t have a marketing team. But many of us expect ourselves to market as if we do.
Choosing to market more intentionally, more focused and on fewer channels is one of the most empowering and radical things you can do.
It also goes against a lot of marketing advice—and a lot of what we see other/bigger companies do around us.
Feeling burnt-out from marketing is so common among small business owners, freelancers and creatives. The women I speak to feel like they can’t keep up. And they see this as their failure. But it’s not your failure—it’s the system’s.
—> Read my blog post “How to build gentle, flexible marketing for your small business” from November 2025
So when you’re thinking about your marketing, be really honest with yourself. How much time can you, and do you want to, spend on it? This will most likely vary during different seasons of your business: if you have fewer clients and customers, you might spend more time on your marketing. During low-energy periods, you might scale your marketing down. And during a launch, you might scale your marketing up (this, by the way, is something that is very dear to me—and which is a key part of my gentle marketing programme Grow).
Q3: Where do your people hang out?
This is often the very first question marketeers will ask. But I don’t want it to be the guiding question for you: firstly because you can only guess where your people hang out; and secondly, because this puts you at risk of ignoring questions 1 and 2.
Your preference is always, always more important than where your people might hang out.
But, in some cases it can be worthwhile to experiment with a channel because that’s where people go to find information and inspiration.
Facebook and local groups can be excellent places to share about the work you do and the services you offer. I’ve had several clients who book all of their new work through channels like this.
LinkedIn is a good place to share more business-related, or professional, content—if you’re an artist, it’s probably not a great fit.
Pinterest is a place that many people deliberately go to for all kinds of inspiration, from crafting to interior design to small business inspiration.
And a former client of mine gets all of her work through a WhatsApp broadcast list that she maintains (with permission from those on it, of course) and by keeping her WhatsApp status updated with her new offers.
The good news is that most people hang out on more than one channel. And more good news is that you don’t need to reach everyone. Even of those people that are “perfect” for you, you don’t need to reach all of them. Depending on the size and aim of your business, you really don’t want 1000 new clients or customers this month.
You just need enough.
I’d love to know what resonates with you from this post.
Please feel free to share this post it with business friends, in your newsletter or elsewhere. 💛
I’d love to support you in all phases of your business. Providing clarity, focus and next steps is something that my clients tell me I’m really good at. If you’re curious about how we can work together through 1:1 mentoring, check out what I offer or send me an email–no strings attached. I have payment plans available, and flexible options for mentoring calls.
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