Dear introverts, this is the only marketing guide you need.
Esther Loke
I write about pivoting in your 30s, small business and marketing as an introvert.
Can I not be in front of the camera?
Can I market my services or my business without showing my face on camera?
Can I grow my business and make money without showing up on camera? :/
These are some of the thoughts I’ve always had. As an introvert, I’m constantly trying to figure out how to do this successfully.
Because I don’t want to be an extrovert in my marketing. It feels way too fake and forced, to the point, it becomes exhausting.
I’m that person who can’t do anything that isn’t aligned to me or my values. My body physically rejects it. I literally can’t bring myself to it.
And even when I did, it felt awful. All my feelings show on my face. I can’t hide it.
Fake it till you make it? That’s unsustainable. I tried that for a while until I got tired and gave up.
Often, it may feel overwhelming and confusing around what we “should” be doing in our marketing.
But I’ve found that the “best” strategy for yourself is often found in first understanding what’s currently working for you, how you love to express yourself and what your strengths are (especially as introverts).?
Instead of trying to do the “right” strategies in your marketing, the more sustainable path may look like leveraging your strengths and adapting marketing strategies according to your energy levels and personal capacity as an introvert.
In this article, we’ll explore what this looks like for you - My fellow introvert :)
First… What happens when you try to do the “right” strategies in your marketing (especially as an introvert)?
It may become exhausting.
You may eventually get frustrated as it feels hard.
You’re constantly looking for the “right” strategy when you feel the current strategy doesn’t seem like it'll work out. You may also be jumping from one strategy to another without understanding what works for you and your business.
You know what? I’m writing all these from my own personal experience. I have been through all these stages myself and I get it. You’re not alone if you’re feeling any or all of this.
I’ll admit that I still fall into this sometimes when I feel stuck or frustrated in my business. Understand that this is normal and you can get unstuck and do things differently.
So… What happens when you reject the “right” strategies in your marketing (and start leveraging your strengths and adapting marketing strategies according to your energy levels and personal capacity as an introvert)
You get creative and curious
You seriously think about what would be sustainable for you and your business in the long-term.
You have fun with the process, see it as an experiment?
Even though I’ve been in many cycles of stuck → frustration → strategy “shopping” and repeat, I managed to figure out how to do things differently in my business by leveraging my strengths and adapting marketing strategies according to my energy and capacity as an introvert.
We’ll cover:
How to do things differently in your business by leveraging your strengths and adapting marketing strategies according to your energy and capacity as an introvert.
Focus on building relationships one-on-one
I prefer to chat with people one-on-one. I usually chat with people on social media and keep in touch with my ex-clients.
Here’s my (very) flexible system for keeping in touch and reaching out. I normally do this once a month. I set aside a time block to go through my DMs and emails. I think about who I want to reach out to - usually these are people I’ve been recently thinking about. Then I reach out to them!
And if I’m really busy and don’t feel like I have the energy to hold a conversation, I will engage on their social media by liking their post and leaving a short comment.
As much as I can, and where my energy permits, I always try to help and provide value.
And providing value can look like simply shouting out your friends/peers/colleagues to your audience and sharing about their business! I have another post right here that’ll walk you through exactly how to do that.
Share my process
I share my process candidly with my clients, a lot. And they love that I do that. I realised that it’s something that really helps them with their journey, to know that someone has been in their shoes and done that. It gives you hope and understanding that you can do it too.
Similarly, I look at other people who are steps ahead of me. When they shared their process, I too could see that they used to be in my shoes. This gives me hope and allows me to dream bigger, knowing what’s potentially possible for me.
One thing I would like to do more of is to share my process openly, and not just behind doors with my private clients. Therefore, I’m learning to share my process openly, more often, right now. Just like how I’m doing right now in this post :)
Adopt the mindset of experimentation
Since late last year, I’ve been adopting the mindset of experimentation. I wanted to do things differently in my business and do business differently, because I felt like I lost my purpose in my business for a while.
I also made some decisions that allowed me to feel more free in my business and allowed me more time to experiment and figure things out - one of them was getting a part-time job. But more on this in another post!
So I started writing regularly on LinkedIn, simply with the intention of improving on the skill of writing consistently. It was an experiment. How can I start writing consistently? How will this consistent practice improve my writing? How will this help me write better content?
By adopting the mindset of experimentation, I allowed myself to have no expectations. The only expectation I had was that I had to write consistently according to the schedule I set for myself. That was all. And it was pretty interesting to go at something with no specifics other than to write one post a day.
And the results were very interesting! I started to grow my following and connections on LinkedIn. I got to know and connected with cool people. Even my LinkedIn Newsletter, which I haven’t updated in a long time, started getting new subscribers.
The mindset of experimentation taught me that when you have many expectations on how something “should” happen, we often try to control as much as we can to create the “expected outcome”.
The process will eventually feel exhausting and you may end up frustrated more often than not because every result will need to hit a certain “expectation”.
However, when you think of it as an experiment, you have no expectations and just see where it takes you. You free up a lot of mental energy to focus on what you want to do at that moment instead. And this often brings a lot of pleasant surprises and unexpected cool results!
Lead with creativity
Creativity can open up a lot of possibilities you never would have ever imagined. It simply requires a regular practice of looking at things differently, being willing to experiment and doing things differently.?
One way you can start with honing your creativity is to ask about what you thought would be “impossible”.?
For example, imagine if there was no more social media anymore and you have to only rely on ONE strategy? What would it be and how would you do it?
Or, how can I create text-only content on a video-only platform??
Personally, I created a lot of text-based content for Instagram stories, even though it was geared towards video content.
This was one Instagram story which my 1:1 coaching client saw and decided to sign up for coaching with me, because it was so relatable. It was a simple text-based post that I screenshot from my Notion.
Some other text-based content I’ve created on Instagram stories include: Polling my audience and then creating content from the poll results and sharing client wins.
How to create a marketing strategy that’s sustainable (and fun!) for you
You can do it too.
Here are some journal prompts to help you get started:?
Here’s what I wrote for these prompts (basis on my current situation as of 25 April 2024)
What’s working/what’s not working
LinkedIn has been a great experience for me so far and I really like it there. What was scary in the beginning was that I had a lot of personal connections, such as close friends and family, there. So it was quite nerve-wracking to even share anything in the beginning.
But over time, I discovered that your real life friends and family also want to support you too! So that’s pretty cool. And I’m also pretty sure my dad reads a lot of my posts because he has been mentioning them here and there.
At this point in my life, LinkedIn really works as a great platform for me to hone my voice and writing. Especially because I want to write, I find LinkedIn to be a great platform to express myself.
On the other hand, Instagram felt very exhausting to me. I felt like I had to always “keep up” with it. Now I prefer to use it to keep in touch with online friends and people I know in real life.
Therefore, the focus right now is LinkedIn.
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What I actually, REALLY want to do
Build up my thought leadership on marketing without video, building small businesses and doing things differently.
And also, growing an Etsy store and overall experimenting with selling on Etsy.
These are the two main things I’m focusing on for 2024 - LinkedIn and Etsy.
I’ll be writing about my Etsy journey as well, very soon!
I also really, really want to:
But I know at this point, I don’t have the bandwidth to do all these so they are on the KIV (keep in view) list!
What do I want to stop doing completely / What I dislike doing that drains my energy
With your answers, you can create a new strategy that’s sustainable for you (and that you actually can have fun with!):
1) Leverage your strengths as an introvert
What’s one way you love to express yourself?
For example, I love to write.
2) Meeting your audience where they’re at
What is the ONE platform your audience and customers are at?
For example, I work with small businesses and freelancers. A lot of my clients are on LinkedIn, so that’s exactly where I’m focusing on.
3) Creating content according to your energy levels and personal capacity as an introvert
With your chosen platform, combine the one way you love to express yourself AND your chosen platform’s medium.
This is a great way that honours your energy levels and personal capacity as an introvert. It allows you to both create content in the medium you enjoy and are confident in, AND reach your audience at the same time.
All it takes is some thinking outside the box and getting creative with your solution.
For example, if your chosen platform is TikTok and the way you love to express yourself is through your writing, then… at first glance, it may not seem like it would even fit.
However, I challenge you to get creative with it. Think about how you can combine the two.?
Do some research on TikTok and notice, especially, the accounts that use a lot of text in their videos. How are they presenting their content? How are they using text in their videos?
Here’s an example of a YouTube channel with slides and text. Lisa’s Adulting in Singapore channel literally uses slides with mostly text in her videos and she simply does a voiceover like how you would do a powerpoint presentation.
She currently has 28.7k subscribers - proof that there are people out there who find her content valuable even if she isn’t showing her face or even shooting any videos. Most of her videos are literal powerpoint slides. And it works for her!
Here’s an example of a TikTok account with slides and text. @likenovh (full time working mum) does a mix of carousel posts and faceless videos. It looks like there’s approximately 70% carousel posts and 30% faceless videos.?
What’s really interesting is that her top three performing posts (yes including the one with 643.4k plays) which she pinned, are carousel posts with just text. The only image in her carousel posts is the background picture. All of these posts are text-based.
Even the post that had an image, was a screenshot image of a spreadsheet with… all text!
Solid proof that text-based, non-video content can work on a video platform like TikTok.
At this point, I dare say, there’s no excuse, even for me, to say that we can’t use TikTok because we’re not good at video or we are not “video people”. Text-based content works on TikTok.
If we’re still texting and emailing each other, text-based content is not going anywhere.
4) Create a sustainable schedule and stick to it
Now take action and create one post/video to publish.
Be aware of how long it takes you to create one post/video and what it requires for you to do so. With this in mind, you’ll figure out what’s a sustainable timeline to ideate and produce one post/video.
“But what if it takes me hours right now to create or write one post?!”
Then I’d say, then take those hours to create one post. That’s exactly what I did.
As you keep creating and writing consistently, you’ll find that you’ll get ideas quicker and start to write quicker too. Because through this process, you start to become more confident in creating content and writing.
More often than not, I find that we spend hours creating one post in the beginning because we’re not confident in our content. So we second-guess and overthink - this takes up time and mental energy. As a result, we try to “force” ideas and content from our brains, when our brains are already exhausted from overthinking.
Instead, I encourage you to set aside specific time blocks to create content and think. For example, I usually like to do this late at night, when it’s quiet, because I’m totally not a morning person.?
Then grab a pen and paper and just write. Even if you can’t think of anything, you can write down “I can’t think of anything. Why can’t I think of anything?”. The act of writing will help jog your brain. Write random questions and answer those questions. Most times, you’ll find that you can get some good content out of it!
Now your next question might be, “But what if I’m missing out on opportunities if I don’t post more? Because I’m taking hours just to create one post, I can only publish one post a month?”
Then I’d say, just publish one post a month!
Because you’ll still miss out on opportunities if you don’t post at all.
So one post a month is still better than not posting at all.
That’s exactly what I’ve personally experienced and my client experienced too. We started with one post per month because that’s what was doable and reasonable for my client at that point of time.
Besides, there are other types of “quicker” posts you can publish as well:
All of these make for great content too and allows your audience to get to know you as a real human being.
You CAN create your own marketing strategy that’s unique to you.
There’s more than one way to do marketing in your business. In fact, your marketing strategy is unique to you and your business. Get creative with it and see what comes up!?
Even if you may not want to show your face on camera, you can find creative ways to do video without showing your face or without doing videos at all. You can find ways to combine text and video as an effective marketing vehicle, and there are many other types of combinations too!
Besides, you don’t have to be an introvert to apply these strategies. You can be an extrovert or an ambivert, but prefer to use text-based content over video content. There is no right or wrong here. YOU get to decide what you want to do.
Introvert-Friendly Marketing Strategies
With Video
A couple of successful examples:
Without Video
But how will I know that my strategy is working?
However, please know that it takes time to see results. This is a long-term game.
I wrote on LinkedIn sporadically for a year or so, then wrote consistently daily for three months before I got ONE person who reached out to me to ask about working with me.
This takes time. So adopt the mindset of it being an experiment. Because if you’re going to be doing this consistently, why not make it fun? It shouldn’t feel like a daily chore.?
By doing so, over time, you’ll find that:
NOW is the time to stop trying to be an extrovert or somebody else and start doing it YOUR way.
By starting today, you can start compounding the effects of your efforts, instead of building in the wrong direction. Because this will take time, so start now.
Imagine, in one year, where would you be? Everything can look so different if you start now.
If you feel that you’d like the support of a coach to guide you through creating a marketing strategy and more importantly, holding you through the ups and downs of exploring and experimenting with marketing as an introvert, let’s discuss how this can look like for you.
We’ll discuss how we can help you feel grounded in this process, the vision of the life + business you want to build (e.g. what a successful business even looks like for you) and how to create a sustainable and fun marketing strategy that works for you.
Book a discovery call for us to unpack this together (and how 1:1 coaching can support you with all the above).