Gentle Marketing

Download the slidedeck here: Gentle Marketing: a framework on how to out-care your competition. Scroll to the bottom to see the video!

I presented this to an audience on Zoom from the Sask Chamber of Commerce in December 2024. We shared a laugh and a cry (if you watch the John Lewis video below) and learned a lot about the future of marketing.

Have a purpose.

Companies with a strong purpose—like Patagonia, Cotopaxi, TOMS Shoes, Warby Parker, and tentree—rarely need to pay for advertising. Their marketing strategy is built into their mission, naturally incentivizing people to talk about them and share their stories.

Having a purpose makes you stand out amongst your competitors. Purpose-driven people and companies are fun to follow. We want to know what they’re doing next. Just the fact that they care makes them worth knowing, following, and interacting with.

In the presentation, I gave examples of Prairie BBQ donating money to REACH in our community, Pete Fourlas championing the Movember Campaign, 9Mile Brewing championing men’s health, and lastly, our very own Carter for building the Play With Your Food website that helped raise thousands of dollars for Carmichael Outreach.

We have too many choices in our day to day.

We are inundated with marketing messages, sales moments, and people clamouring for our attention all day, every day. Do you have more time this year than you did last year? I didn’t think so. And I hate to say it, but next year could be worse. How are you simplifying your decision-making? I bet you’re not looking for more marketing messages! But trust the opinions of people you look up to.

As the joke goes, sorry, I didn’t have much time to make this graph, so I did it on MS Paint!

Back in the day, “Branding” worked because you didn’t have 60+ choices for of sugared beverages to choose from in the supermarket. (I know because I counted one day!). You can’t make a beverage stand out anymore because of the sheer amount of other drinks in the market. The only way to stand out is to be different altogether by putting a lid on your can, as San Pellegrino does! Or a custom photo that could be of you, like Jones Soda does.

Yes, there are 60+ options in the sugared beverage market, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stand out.

This is why we believe having a purpose is of the utmost importance to the future of your marketing strategy.

There are only two business models.

The cost leader or the differentiator. There’s nothing else. Think about it.

If you’re not the cost leader in your field, how are you standing out? How are you zigging while your competitors are zagging? More importantly, how will you sustain that difference over time? A one-time stunt might grab attention, but true impact comes from consistently being different. When your audience begins to expect—and rely on—your unique approach, that’s when you create lasting value.

Tell your story.

We don’t just buy products or services; we buy stories, moments, and a touch of magic. What moment can you highlight, or where can you sprinkle a little magic into your sales process? Think it’s impossible? Have you truly tried? Often, it’s not the limitations of the market but our own perception of what’s possible that holds us back. You may think you don’t have a story to tell but I bet you do!

If you want to learn more about storytelling, Kindra Hall wrote a great book called Stories That Stick. I’ve written about it before here: The Four Stories Your Company Should be Telling.

What’s your purple cow?

The future of marketing is purple cows, moments that stand out and you have to talk about after the fact. If you like the idea of centring your marketing around moments, then the book The Power of Moments is for you! It is packed full of great stories and ideas on how to craft moments for your audience.

Three P’s of social media

When it comes to your social media, you just need to focus on your three P’s: people, passions, and projects. We’ve written about it before here… The Ultimate Social Media Strategy for Your Company.

I like the idea of focusing on being “consistently surprising.” Think about that, not easy, but you’ll keep your audience on the edge of their seat! If we don’t know what’s coming next, we HAVE to keep following along!

Go back to the social media accounts you love to follow. Why do you love to follow those accounts? Is it because the share the same photos over and over again? Is it because they post consistently on brand? No, it’s probably because of the people, something they’re passionate about or something they care about mixed in with some stuff of what they do and how they do it.

How will you measure?

Too many people in the marketing world are afraid to measure! I don’t know why either. What are they afraid of? When you measure, you learn what works and what doesn’t work. Then you can make better decisions the next time you have the choice. It’s very simple: over time, as long as you’re measuring, you’re going to get better. So stop worrying about looking at the data! Get used to the data, love the data and the data will love you back eventually!

Where did you hear about us?

Ask every customer: “Where did you hear about us?”. Create a trend line of where your customers are coming from. Doing this will help your marketing strategy immensely. On your Contact Us page, you can add a drop-down where people can choose where they came across your company. You can look at Google Analytics data to see exactly how people got to your website. You can see this on social media when you acquire followers. Was it a post? Was it your consistent messaging? Nope, it’s probably that contest you ran last summer!

When you measure your strategy, it gets better. When you have a better strategy, results come faster. As a result, the boss starts trusting the marketing department more. With more trust, you can create a better strategy. It comes full circle, but it starts with measuring what you’re doing.