As someone who has spent the past 20 years working as a digital marketing professional, believe me when I say I don’t say this lightly:
Digital marketing is killing our humanness.
Yes, we have tools that make it easier to reach the masses, but therein lies the problem: by reaching thousands or millions of people, we’ve lost connection with the individual.
To my surprise, I learned this lesson living as an expat in Italy.
Your Audience Craves Genuine Content
In the course of my career, I have run several successful businesses: a marketing and PR firm, a creative events company, and an expat coaching business.
For each business, I invested time and money in curating my social feeds. I scheduled posts, created beautiful graphics, and found just the right lighting for my photos. I created a regular cadence of blog content.
But all of those tasks exhausted me. I felt like a slave to content creation. If I didn’t post on Instagram three times a week, it felt like the world might collapse.
And so, a few years ago, I made the conscious decision to stop creating social media content for an audience. This happened to coincide with my move to Italy, which gave me an excuse to loosen up. I began sharing slices of my life on my social feeds. Picking oranges straight from the tree. The delivery guys hauling our new fridge by a cord to the second floor of our 200-year-old house. Me, elbow-deep in raw meat as I stuffed sausages with my in-laws.
I took the pressure off myself to perform, and to my surprise, my content did better than it had in the past. The fridge video has gotten 66,000 views, an achievement I’ve never come close to replicating through careful social strategy.
My blog content, while it occasionally offers tips for people who want to move to Italy, again, just talks about my life. People reach out to me about my posts because they resonate. They’re real. They foster connection.
It’s this genuineness that marketing is missing.
New Business, New Marketing Approach
This year, I started my umpteenth new business: a line of herbal skincare products. The business itself is like nothing I’ve ever launched: instead of creating digital ephemera for a living, I roll up my sleeves and physically create products that my clients use on their skin.
But that’s not the only difference. I have virtually no digital presence. No website. No blog. No social media channel, though I do occasionally post my products or herbs I gather.
My clientele are mostly local, in my small Calabrian village. It’s word-of-mouth at its best: one little old lady tells her friend about my amazing muscle cream, and then that friend calls to buy some. People I’ve never spoken to stop me on the cobblestone street to ask if I still have that calendula salve they’ve heard about. Occasionally, I sell my products at local festivals and markets.
I’m not going to get rich selling lip balms, but I am discovering a whole new joy I never had in my 20 years of being an entrepreneur: interacting with my customers and feeling satisfied that I’ve helped them in some small way. The little old ladies ask about the properties of the ingredients I use. They share stories of how their nonne used to pick stinging nettle to make a hair rinse. We talk about the weather and maybe drink an espresso together. We build a bond through that interaction, and that’s something digital marketing can in no way replicate.
How to Make a Connection With Your Marketing Content
So, short of moving to your own sunny Italian hilltop village, how can you bring back that real human connection to your marketing?
My first suggestion is to let go of the pressure to perform–to post daily or hit some sort of goal with your content. I know that’s sacrilege in the marketing world. But when you plan, you force yourself into a box that only you care about. Your social followers aren’t watching the clock, waiting for your next reel at exactly 9 a.m.
Let it be organic. Step away from content calendars and KPIs. Let go of AI-generated content (PLEASE). Take unprofessional photos of your products. Ask customers if you can take a picture of them using the products (people love being tagged!). Get back to sharing what’s in your heart.
After all, if you’re like me, you started your business because you were passionate about it. It brought you joy every day. You had a wealth of ideas at the start. Maybe those ideas have drained away as you’ve listened to what the “experts” tell you to do with your marketing. Maybe you’ve gotten into the habit of caring more about online engagement than actual engagement.
Remember why you started your business. Remember who you started it for. Spend time chatting with customers. If possible, face-to-face. Ask for their feedback and ideas. Listen to their stories. Invest in them.
With all the technological advancements we have access to, the irony is that the old ways are still best. Truly running our businesses FOR our customers requires personability, and that’s not something AI or content scheduling tools will ever offer.