From overwhelm to ease: How a marketing ecosystem helps you market your way – with Astrid Bracke
Astrid Bracke is a mentor supporting small business owners, freelancers and creatives to run a slower, gentler and more profitable business. Her gentle marketing programme Grow helps you to market in a gentle, easeful and effective way—in a way that is all you. Find out more about Astrid and the course on her website and sign up for her own small business newsletter.
I spent the first years of my business trying to crack the secret of marketing. Yet no matter how many podcasts I listened to, courses I took or templates I downloaded, I never felt like I really knew what I was doing. I felt unable to keep up with my own plans, got overwhelmed by social media and saw little results from my efforts. Until I got so frustrated and fed up that I threw all the rules overboard and reshaped my marketing.
One of the most anti-overwhelm things I’ve ever done in my business is to start thinking of my marketing in terms of an ecosystem. And similarly, many of the participants of my gentle marketing programme Grow, who I help to create their own marketing ecosystem, describe doing so as a sigh of relief.
In this post, I share my approach to setting up a marketing ecosystem, and help you design your own.
What a marketing ecosystem looks like
When I first designed my marketing ecosystem, I did so to tackle my three biggest frustrations about marketing:
Feeling scattered, unfocused, like throwing spaghetti at a wall;
Feeling like I had to be on all the channels;
Feeling like I never marketed enough, or in the right way.
The ideal marketing ecosystem consists of only a handful of carefully chosen channels, with those channels feeding into each other, so you’re truly repurposing your content. And every ecosystem needs a hub: the one place you most want your audience to go.
The hub is a way of taking back some control from the platforms where we market our small businesses. Too often they make it difficult for the audience to leave, for instance to click through to a website. When I set up my marketing ecosystem I craved more autonomy, and a place where I get to set the rules. That’s why in some form or other, my marketing always leads back to my hub, which in my case is my website.
What to include in your marketing ecosystem
I set a few loose rules for myself—though of course your rules might be different, depending on what is important to you.
For a channel to be included in my ecosystem it has to be something that feels easeful (which in my case means a focus on writing), and to have a lifecycle longer than your average social media post (which led to choosing evergreen channels).
For the past couple of years, my marketing ecosystem has consisted of:
My website (also marketed through SEO);
My twice-monthly newsletter;
My blog, where old newsletters are uploaded (and which is also marketed through SEO);
Pinterest, to which the blog posts are pinned.
Depending on my capacity and whether I’m launching something or not, I’ll also do outreach, like writing this guest post.
For a marketing ecosystem to work, it needs to be personal to you, your life, your needs and desires, and your business.
Designing your own ecosystem
Your marketing ecosystem might well be different, and that’s good! For a marketing ecosystem to work, it needs to be personal to you, your life, your needs and desires, and your business.
Instead, your marketing ecosystem might look like:
Podcast;
Blog post version of the podcast;
Newsletter, in which both the podcast and the blog post are shared;
Website, as the place where the podcast and blog post live, where people can sign up to your newsletter, and where you offer your services and products.
Instead, or in addition to, blog post or newsletter, you can of course also add a social media channel. Or maybe you swap the podcast for your YouTube channel.
In my experience working with people, we usually have to pick one
less channel than we think is doable, in order to account for weeks and months when life gets in the way.
While you’re putting together your marketing ecosystem, keep checking in with yourself about your choices:
Do these channels feel easeful (or as easeful as possible)? Can you use your strengths here?
Do the number of channels you’ve picked feel doable? In my experience working with people, we usually have to pick one less channel than we think is doable, in order to account for weeks and months when life gets in the way.
Do these channels truly feed into each other, requiring you to do the minimum amount of content creation for each channel?
Do the channels serve your needs, for instance your need to use more evergreen marketing, or satisfy your love for the pace and vibrancy of social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok?
A marketing ecosystem is really more than just a way of visualising your channels. It is also a powerful tool to make choices, and to give yourself permission to truly market in a way that suits you. Because you can market your way, I promise.
In my gentle marketing programme Grow, I offer a lot of practical tools and strategies to help participants create their marketing ecosystems. But we also spend a lot of time on growing confidence, on giving ourselves the permission to make choices around marketing that might run counter to the advice of the marketing gurus and business bros. It’s your business, and you get to set the rules.
Setting up your marketing ecosystem
If you’d like to set up your own marketing ecosystem, the following questions are a start:
What currently feels off, overwhelming or not aligned about your marketing? Which channels?
How do your channels work together, how can you make them work better together?
Where do you want your audience to go? Ideally your channels flow into each other but also make it easy for people to go to your hub.
If you’re ready for your marketing to finally feel like you, and to be gentle, easeful and effective, Grow is for you. It is a 4-month hybrid marketing programme, combining self-paced modules with recorded office hours, bi-weekly email check-ins and optional monthly planning calls. Grow will run again from November 2025 to April 2026, with a break for December. Join the waitlist to get early access, a discount and bonuses to support your gentle marketing.
