Some Thoughts on Vulnerability and Saturation
This post first appeared as the podcast episode Over-saturation, Vulnerability, and the Marketing That’s Stopped Working – if you prefer listening to reading, you may like to check there first 🙂
Over the last few months, I think we’ve all felt a shift in the online landscape, and the conversations I’ve had with clients have reflected this. It started with questions about whether anyone even buys e-courses anymore, or the market being saturated and people 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? Lastly came reports that Instagram growth or email sign ups or general reach was grinding to a halt – despite people doing all the ‘right’ things.
Lately, the frequency of these conversations has escalated dramatically so that a good 9 out of 10 of my client conversations are now 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 failsafe photo compositions I could always rely on for Instagram aren’t gaining as much traction, and that my ‘how to’ style blog posts, formerly my big hitters, are no longer the most popular of my output.
On the other side of the coin, I’m noticing a change in my consumption habits. I’m not looking at much ‘how to’ content either, my old favourite podcasts are languishing in the app, asking me if I’m not interested anymore. I’m drawn much more to interesting stories, thing I’ve not heard about before. And what I’m inspired to create follows that pattern to.
So I wanted to unpick what I think is going on within all of this, look at some emerging trends and ultimately posit some ideas of where I think marketing in this space is headed and how we can all keep ahead of the curve.
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 styles.
The first is the one everyone thinks is the problem, when really it’s not. It’s easier to think ‘my business isn’t getting reach because three other people are doing the same thing’ – because there’s nothing you can do about that. But that’s not really the truth – the more people who are doing what you do, the better for your business. It signals that there is demand, that consumers get what you do and what you’re about, it allows you talk about what makes you different on a more sophisticated level than just explaining the basics to confused faces.
It is a lack mindset to think that the pie is finite when really markets are ever expanding, ever shifting. Look at mobile technology – no one stopped at buying their first iPhone. The more people that buy into the market, the better that market can grow. It’s just up to you to keep diversifying and disrupting what you do in order to stay relevant within it (like the tech companies do in response to real life phone usage).
No, competition is a good thing in a market. My theory is that the problem is really with the over-saturation 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.
The trouble is, 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 the owner has, what resources are available, individual restrictions and opportunities. So much also relies on the product itself, and who the customer for that product is. There are so many moving parts in the marketing machine and all of them are unique to the individual businesses – some will be similar yes, but there will also be a little bobble that makes it unique.
When people who talk about marketing talk about marketing, they have to genericise it – they can use examples but you just can’t cover over possibility within someone’s business. They talk about general processes, general formulas, general strategies that will work, but won’t necessarily take into account the wonderful uniqueness and eccentricities in your business.
And so, we’re in a position where a generation of small business owners have all been following the same advice about marketing, enacting the same strategies, using the same methods to stand out. The result is that no one is standing out anymore. And, more importantly, consumers are recognising the same techniques and aren’t paying attention to them anymore. Which is why growth has slowed.
Let’s take coaching for example, as it’s a space I know well. For a long time, the advice for service-based businesses has been to demonstrate expertise, show yourself to build connection, give out free content to build sign ups. That’s been what’s worked. But now I’m finding that ‘how to’ expertise-demonstrating content is being skimmed. The ‘coach photo shoot’ is a trope in itself and can be spotted a mile off. People still like free content but have been burnt a few times and are more protective with their email address. It’s all still kinda working, but it’s limping.
Which brings me to vulnerability.
I think this has been the first attempt by businesses to inject something to trigger growth. Someone somewhere noticed that a post in which they were vulnerable did well and the news spread like wildfire that vulnerability was key to growth. And I’m not surprised it did because with all the old failsafes no longer working, of course we all leapt onto this new holy grail.
The trouble is, as I discussed in this podcast episode with Greta Solomon, I think it can be damaging for us to monetise our problems and to feel like our trauma is the only thing 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 secret. I’ve done it – I’ve overemphasised some things, and I’ve shared where it wasn’t safe to do so. I’ve worried about not being troubled enough, that I have no stories deep enough to be worth sharing.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t share things that are personal or vulnerable. I’m saying 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. If you’re sharing against your will because it’s ‘what you have to do now’, then that’s not right.
The point of vulnerability was to access authenticity – the real person behind the account. It is 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 that is not the sum of who we are. We hold variety, and we have light as well as dark.
Instagram accounts like All That Is She and Mrs Hinch do well because they have joy. There are shadows (sustainability or mental health), but the lightness of the content shines the issue even brighter. They are taken seriously, they are connected, they GROW – arguably because of the lightness.
With all the clever marketing formulas and authenticity ‘tricks’, all we really want as consumers is someone to tell us truth. The truth of a bad day or something that didn’t go to plan, but also the truth of the best days and the accomplishments 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 on to your uniqueness. In a world where everyone has 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 coaching offerings 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’ 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 failsafes 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 your 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 you can do to start re-accessing?
Firstly, 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 it’s going to be interesting for people to hear. The rest will all come, but connection takes trust and trust takes time, so start building it by talking about stuff that’s interesting to you and to others, rather than cramming marketing messages in to every post.
Second, think about what’s unique about your business. You may need to ask around about this as it’s hard for us to see what’s interesting and different about ourselves because often they’re the most mundane things we think about ourselves. It might be that your dry humour is so different to anyone else in your space, it might be that the way you put things together creates aha moments for people, it might be that your visual style makes people happy.
Third, start putting those strengths into practise. Lean into that humour, that thinking, that styling. Maybe instead of the written newsletter you kill yourself to put out every month you do a beautiful illustration instead. Find your strengths, and then use them to tell your stories.
Fourth, create your own metrics. I have conversations with clients who ask ‘what are the metrics i should measure on Instagram?’ and I say ‘what do you want Instagram to do for your business?’. If you want it to drive traffic, measure that. If you want it to be a hub of connection, measure that. The rules of where you should be and what is ‘good’ on each channel have been wiped – what do you want each of your marketing channels to achieve? That’s all that matters.
Fifth, define your boundaries and priorities. What is your role going to be for people as this business – a mother figure, a friend, a teacher? What are the things that you are comfortable to share within this role, and what are the things you’re not?
Markets shift and change. What consumers respond to shifts and change. We’ve all seen ads from the 50s and 60s and either laughed at their innocence or recoiled in horror at their sexism. They used to work, and now they don’t, just like some things you’ve been doing used to work and now they don’t. It’s not the end of the world, just a shift that you can choose to ride along with and be a part of defining. And to me, at least, that feels pretty exciting.
On Monday 27th May, I ran an online workshop called Forget Five Step Formulas: Embrace Your Own Style Of Marketing. In the workshop we moved away from generic tips and more towards thinking about our businesses as unique entities. We compared the things that aren’t working anymore and why, back to basic marketing principles and re-built a plan that is based on uniqueness and strengths. There was also a chunky Q&A section to get into the intricacies. You can click here to buy the replay
