Last week, I had a conversation with my dear friend, Michael. Since we hadn’t spoken in a while, we had some catching up to do. One of the first questions he asked me was “What do you love most about your work right now?”
Without skipping a beat, I answered “managing The Council and writing the newsletter. Everything else is decidedly meh”.
And that’s when I realized what a hypocrite I was.
You see, one of the things I keep telling my clients is that, if you want recurring revenue, you also have to want recurring marketing.
Yet, much like my clients, I would give up most parts of my own marketing if I didn’t know that meant giving up parts of my revenue too.
Truth be told, recurring marketing, especially on multiple channels and in multiple formats, is hard AF, which is why I’m so happy to introduce you to today’s partner.
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Of course, what you sell matters a lot — some products have more mileage and longer client engagements.
This business of mine looks very different from my first one, a marketing agency, where a bit of marketing went a long way. Most of my clients were recurring ones, who either needed a fixed number of pieces of content every month or worked with us in batches.
- 20 pieces this month, silence for the next quarter.
- Complete website + blog overhaul over 2 months, silence for 2-3 months until they identified some gaps.
- Monthly social media management
You get the point: customer LTV was much, much higher than it is right now, where most of my client interactions are for a set duration or for a one-off product. There are exceptions (The Council is one of them, but it’s still in its first year, so ARR/MRR is hard to gauge).
One year into this business, I got angry: why the f*ck am I working more than I did before only to see my revenue plateau?
The answer was simple: recurring marketing, something I need to do now.
For my agency, all the marketing I did was:
- Batch schedule social media posts — usually links to my blog posts that had a CTA at the end.
- ±2 guest posts per month on a couple of websites.
- 3-4 blog posts for my own website/month.
Total time spent: less than 10 hours per week. Now, I can spend 10 hours on marketing before Tuesday lunch and still feel like I’ve barely warmed up.
There’s the newsletter, LinkedIn, Threads, X, YouTube, launches, sales emails, landing pages, lead magnets, collaborations, guest appearances, follow-ups, repurposing, and whatever fresh hell the platforms have introduced this week to keep us “engaged.”
And because most of my offers have a much shorter customer lifespan, the machine needs to keep moving.
When someone bought 20 blog posts from my agency, I could stop thinking about replacing that revenue for a while. When someone buys a strategy session, a template, or an app subscription they cancel three months later, I need another buyer. Then another. Then another.
This is the part people conveniently leave out when they tell you to productize your expertise, build passive income, or add a low-ticket offer.
The revenue may arrive while you sleep. The customers rarely do.
A business with a low average order value and a short customer lifespan needs a huge audience, exceptional conversion rate, frequent repeat purchases, or a steady supply of new buyers. Most small businesses have none of those when they start, so the founder becomes the supply chain.
You write the posts. You send the emails. You appear on the podcasts. You plan the launches. You stare at a landing page for four hours wondering whether “Get started” is murdering your conversion rate.
Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.
This is recurring marketing: the continuous work required to remain visible, relevant, trusted, and easy to buy from.
And yes, it’s hard. So how do you do it and keep your sanity?
I’m on 6-8 channels constantly + some occasional ones (speaking, swaps, and others).
My solution is to stop treating every week like a blank page
Recurring marketing becomes unbearable when every piece of it requires a fresh idea, a fresh angle, a fresh format, and a fresh burst of motivation. That’s artisanal content production, like deciding you need to hand-carve every LinkedIn post from ethically sourced oak.
So I figured out I needed constraints long ago. And yes, you need constraints too.
How to do recurring marketing without recurring dread
Start with one core argument per week, or every two weeks if weekly makes you want to fake your own death. Develop that argument properly in your strongest owned channel, then adapt it everywhere else.
For me, that usually means the newsletter comes first. It gives me enough room to think through an idea, explain the mechanism behind it, and connect it to something I sell. From there, I can pull out:
- One LinkedIn teaser post to drive subscribers.
- A shorter Threads or X post.
- A second social post using a(n) example, story, summary, or practical takeaway.
- A video topic if the argument deserves a deeper treatment.
- A sales angle I can reuse during the next relevant launch.
- Medium syndication.
- Plus talking points for my podcast guest appearances based on the ideas that resonated the most.
One idea → several exit points = far less rummaging around inside my brain asking whether I have ever had a thought before.
Sanity-saving move #2: separate maintenance marketing from campaign marketing
Maintenance marketing keeps the lights on. It reminds people what you know, who you help, how you think, and what they can buy. It should run at a pace you can sustain during a bad week, a client-heavy week, or a week when your brain has turned into warm yoghurt.
Campaign marketing creates concentrated demand around a specific offer. It has a beginning, an end, a commercial target, and a reason for people to act now.
Conflating the two creates chaos: you either launch something new every month or you spend six months nurturing leads that will never convert.
Pick a minimum maintenance cadence first. Mine could be one newsletter and two or three social posts per week. Yours might be one substantial article and one email every two weeks.
The correct cadence is the one you can maintain while serving clients, improving your offers, and occasionally participating in human society.
Then layer campaigns on top when you have something specific to sell.
A campaign can last one week or six. During that time, your marketing becomes narrower and more repetitive. You explore the same problem from different angles, show what it costs, demonstrate your approach, handle objections, share proof, and ask people to buy.
[Here’s a launche strategy example.]
Yes, you will feel repetitive.
But remember that it’s only you who are exposed to every piece of your content. Your audience sees a fraction of it, remembers an even smaller fraction, and is usually thinking about their own problems rather than conducting a forensic analysis of your editorial originality.
Repetition is part of the job because meaningful repetition builds associations. When people repeatedly encounter your name beside a specific problem, your expertise becomes easier to remember and easier to refer.
Move #3 is to build marketing assets that keep earning their keep
A social post has the life expectancy of a fruit fly. A useful article, a strong email sequence, a searchable video, a diagnostic, a case study, or a well-designed lead magnet can keep attracting and converting people for months or years.
For me, two of these assets are The State of Solopreneurship report, my best lead magnet to date, and The Resonance Principle, the manifesto that keeps attracting very aligned clients.
Remember that you still need distribution, so don’t waste all your time and energy on creation alone.
Think about what a doable load for YOU, not what some internet guru recommends. Typically, this means doing something every month (NOT every week), creating or improving one thing that makes future marketing easier:
- A landing page that explains an offer properly.
- A case study that demonstrates how you think.
- A welcome sequence that introduces new subscribers to your best ideas.
- A sales sequence you can adapt for future launches.
- A cornerstone article answering a question buyers ask before hiring you.
- A clear page showing people what to buy next.
- A system for collecting and organizing customer language, objections, and proof.
This is how recurring marketing gradually stops feeling like carrying water in a sieve: some of the work begins to compound.
Strapped for time?
Yep, we’ve all been there — life is lifeing whether you have time for it or not.
When that happens, you need to reuse far more than feels comfortable: bring back strong ideas; update old articles; resend useful emails to people who joined after you originally published.
You get the point.
For me, the first thing that disappears in busy seasons is social media. I’m ok with republishing older posts as they are — it’s a 30-second job, and yes, most people have either forgotten them or like to revisit them.
Of course, systems and repurposing only take you so far. Recurring marketing still requires energy, judgment, and time because you cannot automate your way out of having something worth saying. You can, however, remove a shocking amount of unnecessary decision-making.
Get these right, and everything will fall into place
- Choose your primary channel.
- Set your minimum cadence.
- Build around recurring themes tied to your offers.
- Keep a bank of customer questions and observed problems.
- Create campaigns in batches.
- Measure what generates subscribers, conversations, and sales.
Lastly, give yourself seasons
You do not need the same marketing intensity all year. Some months are for launches and aggressive growth; others are for serving clients, improving products, researching, or recovering from the last time you decided to be “everywhere.”
The goal is continuity, rather than constant maximum output.
Because recurring marketing becomes dangerous when the business can only survive if you perform at full capacity every week. One illness, family emergency, creative slump, or algorithmic tantrum can knock a gaping hole in your pipeline.
Candidly, I still miss how easy marketing felt in my agency days; ten hours a week sounds luxurious now.
But recurring marketing has also forced me to understand demand far more deeply. I can see which ideas pull people closer, which offers deserve more attention, which promises resonate, and where interest dies before it becomes revenue.
The work keeps happening. The trick is making sure each round teaches you something and leaves behind assets, evidence, or audience trust that make the next round easier.
What about you? What part of recurring marketing feels most challenging right now? Reply and let me know.
