General Marketing

The little things that make a huge difference

In business, it’s often the little things that have the biggest impact. I was thinking about this yesterday, when a shop assistant greeted me, using my name.

Good morning Jim

As we made eye contact, she welcomed me by saying, “Good morning Jim”. I don’t use the shop that often and was impressed that she remembered me. It started a whole conversation, which would not have happened had she not used my name. The conversation had little to do with shopping but had everything to do with building a relationship with me.

It humanised my shopping experience. Business is always about people.
It provided me with something I can’t get online. (This is really important for high street retailers).
It opened a channel of comfortable dialogue. In other words, the shop assistant was able to learn a little about me and my needs, but in an effortless, non-pushy way.

All this started, with something as simple as remembering a customer’s name. Just 3 small words, which transformed my customer experience.

Yes, some of the things needed for business success require us to make significant changes or improvements. However, it’s the simple things, repeated frequently, that have the biggest impact.

Published on: December 13, 2013

How to get your marketing shared on social networks

Posted by Jim Connolly

The most successful marketing today, is not marketing that’s pushed at people.

The most successful marketing today, is marketing that people share with their friends.

Pestering people is cheap

The reason we receive so many spam emails and see all those unwanted sales messages on social networking sites, is that it has never been cheaper (in every sense of the word) to pester huge numbers of people. There’s no barrier to entry today. Now, if we go back just 10 or 15 years, if you wanted to get a message in front of 100,000 people, it was expensive. Today, it can be done for peanuts.

Pestering people is cheap, has little risk attached and requires little creativity. As a result, it’s everywhere – even though people are getting better and better at ignoring it.

The inspiration deficit

Where we see a shortage, is in business owners who have crafted a compelling story, which people want to share. I call this the inspiration deficit.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other platforms are PACKED FULL of hundreds of millions of people, who are looking for something interesting to share with their friends. We even have a name for people, who spend their social networking time sharing other people’s information. We call them curators.

There’s no lack of people willing and ready to share our message.

The deficit is caused by the lack of business owners, who are willing to invest the time, effort, energy and creativity to build a story about their business that’s worth sharing.

The BIG inspiration pay off

As business owners, we must learn to stop pushing an uninspiring story. No, people are not interested in yet another provider, who is just a little less expensive or who delivers just a little faster than average. Instead, we need to learn to feed the marketplace with a compelling story and allow the marketplace to spread our message for us.

Is it worth the extra effort, to create a compelling service or customer experience, which people will feel motivated to talk about? Well, think of it like this. Right now, there are hundreds of millions of people waiting for you to give them a story worth sharing.

In the worst economic climate in living memory, that’s a pretty compelling reason to invest the extra effort.

PS: Need some free help on how to create inspirational ideas, products and services? Here are dozens of free articles, just for you!

Published on: December 12, 2013

Marketing 101: The race to the bottom

Posted by Jim Connolly

Without knowing it, many small business owners are engaged in a dangerous race to the bottom. In today’s post, I explain what’s meant by marketing professionals when we say race to the bottom, and why it’s almost always a terrible strategy for small businesses.

The Financial Times defines the race to the bottom as:

The situation in which companies and countries try to compete with each other by cutting wages and living standards for workers, and the production of goods is moved to the place where the wages are lowest and the workers have the fewest rights.

In small business marketing, we tend to use the term to refer to making sales or winning new clients, based on being the cheapest option. This is most common among commodity businesses. The ‘winner’ of the race to the bottom is the business that’s the cheapest at that time.

Some large companies use their financial muscle to work successfully with small profit margins. They have strategies in place, as the FT quote suggests, that allows them to compete on very low prices.

However, small business owners tend to just lower their fees (or prices), as a way to make more sales or attract more clients. They then find competitors do the same (see below) and the race to the bottom (the lowest price) begins. This small business scenario, is what today’s post is all about.

What does the winner get as their prize?

They get, wait for it, the privilege of building a client list of fee sensitive people, who will leave them the moment a cheaper provider comes along. It’s a high risk, low return strategy. It requires you to constantly look for ways to lower your overhead, cut corners and speed things up. All this, in an effort to attract the least loyal profile of clients in the world… those who switch from provider to provider, looking for the lowest fees or prices.

Why is such a high risk, low return strategy so popular with small business owners?

Simple: They see it as a fast way to attract more clients or make more sales. However, a look at the medium term picture shows how this can go horribly wrong.

Here’s what I have seen small businesses do over and over again:

They lower their fees (or prices) by 10% and see that they get a slightly better sales conversion rate.
So, they lower their fees by another 10% and see it improves sales even more.
Some of their competitors decide to do the same. Now, the race to the bottom is on!
That first business now needs to lower their fees by another 10%, because their competitors are charging the same kind of fees as them. Their fees are now rock bottom or very close to rock bottom.
After a while, they are working with clients or making sales, with very little profit.
If a better funded competitor then decides to undercut them, they have to try and survive on fewer and fewer clients, who are hardly profitable.
Alternatively, if their overheads increase and they have to start increasing their fees, all those fee sensitive clients they raced to win, start looking for the new, cheapest provider.

In the absence of an effective marketing strategy, it’s just too easy to lower your fees in order to get some fast money into your business. If this is something you are considering, please think about the medium term and longer term consequences.

PS: Here’s the best way I know, for you to grow a great business in a competitive industry, WITHOUT EVER lowering your fees.

Published on: December 5, 2013

15 Reasons to start blogging in 2014!

Posted by Jim Connolly

So, why bother blogging?

Here are just 15 reasons, why I recommend you add a business blog to your 2014 marketing mix:

Blogging is the most powerful marketing tool I have ever seen, used or studied. Period.
Considering all the benefits of blogging, the financial cost is tiny. A self-hosted WordPress site can cost less per week, than a latte at your local coffee shop.
If you turn up and blog regularly, you will also show prospective clients that you are reliable. If you show up regularly for years, it shows you’re durable too. Think about that… before these people even speak with you, they will already know you’re reliable and durable. That’s a huge commercial advantage.
Blogging makes you a better communicator. It causes you to think, really think, about your message. Through repeat practice, you learn how to get your message across with greater clarity too.
New prospective clients will be able to discover you and your work, as your blog posts are all findable, via social networks and search engines. Think about it… hundreds, maybe thousands of prospective clients can find your work each day, at the exact point where they are looking for answers.
If you like the idea of helping others, blogging is ideal. It allows you to reach and help people worldwide.
Blogging gives you a wonderful creative outlet.
There is no ceiling on what you can achieve from your blog. Blogs have changed hands for millions of dollars.
… and many bloggers have gained a high profile within their profession, thanks to the success of their blogs.
As a direct result of blogging you can meet amazing people and make a lot of great friends.
To blog regularly with fresh ideas, you need to feed your mind with rich, mental protein. An active blogger is an active learner too.
If you work hard enough, for long enough, you can become one of the most influential voices in your profession.
If you are passionate about what you do, and you should be, your blog gives you a platform to share your passion.
With thousands of people sharing content, for every one person creating content, useful blog posts can spread like crazy via social networks. There are millions of people on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, etc., eagerly looking for useful, interesting content to share with their friends.
Blogging is also a lot of fun!

Published on: December 4, 2013

What everyone needs to know about marketing automation

Posted by Jim Connolly

Everyone with a business, is in the people business.

It’s people who buy from you, recommend you and support you. It’s people who frustrate you, hinder you and waste your time.

At every point and on every level, it’s all about people.

Automate what needs to be automated

When it comes to business, we know that the smartest people automate all the stuff that should be automated, but they keep all the human elements of their business, human.

For example, thousands of people will receive this blog post today, via an automated email service. However, 100% of the people who hit the reply button on that email to contact me, will get a personal reply.

The danger of over automating your marketing

Sadly, an increasing number of business owners get this horribly wrong. They try and automate everything that can be automated. The challenge with this approach is that you can’t automate your way to success… despite what some marketing automation providers claim.

Successful marketing is about; people, relationships, trust, confidence and belief… none of which can be earned via software alone. Software should be used to enhance, not replace, the human element of your marketing.

In short: Use automation software for processes that benefit from it, but keep the human stuff, human.

Published on: December 2, 2013

The secret to marketing that spreads AND sells!

Posted by Jim Connolly

I have a very effective marketing idea to share with you today. You’re going to love this!

I’m going to show you how to create marketing, which people will value and that’s powerful enough to inspire them to hire you or buy from you. It’s based on the work I do with my clients and includes a brief case study, which you can learn from.

So, let’s get started.

Receiving or paying attention?

It starts with understanding that there’s a huge difference between someone receiving your message and someone paying attention to it.

For example, TV viewers are sent targeted marketing messages (commercials) during TV shows. What do most of us do? We fast forward through them or if watching the show in real-time, we go and make a coffee. Just because they send their messages, doesn’t mean we are paying attention.

For your marketing to work, you need to get a great message in front of the right people. In order to get this correct, here’s the key question we need to ask ourselves:

If I stopped my email marketing campaign or I stopped publishing my blog posts, newsletter etc, would people really MISS them?

As a quick look at the marketing you receive every day confirms, for most people the honest answer to that question is NO! We get bombarded with dull, uninspiring sales messages all day and see them as an intrusion, rather than something of value.

Of course, for that tiny minority of small businesses who DO produce marketing, which people genuinely value and would miss if it were to stop, the sky is the limit.

I’m going to share the process required to make this work for your business later in this post.

First, we need to understand why there’s so much dull and ineffective marketing out there.

Dull is cheap. Dull is fast. Dull is simple!

It’s cheap, fast and simple to create dull marketing and get it in front of a lot of people. As a result, there’s no barrier to entry today.

Things were very different a decade ago. Back then, if a small business owner wanted to send a mail shot to 50,000 people, she’d have to spend some serious money.

She’d have to cover the cost of the mailing list.
Then she would need to pay for all that paper and the printing.
Next she would need to pay a company to get the letters folded and inserted into the 50,000 envelopes.
Then there’s the huge postage costs for those 50,000 pieces of mail.

All in all, it would cost many thousands. She would need to think long and hard about the value of what she put into those envelopes. Get it wrong and she would pay a hefty price!

Today, everything has changed

That same business owner in 2013 can hit 50,000 people using cheap email software and her laptop. It costs pennies. If it fails, maybe tomorrows will work. It’s never been cheaper or easier to push dull, uninspired, poorly thought out, uncreative marketing out the door. So, that’s exactly what a lot of people are doing. This is why there’s so much junk in your email inbox and on your social networking accounts.

Here’s what you need to do to get it right!

There is an alternative approach I want to share with you, so people welcome your marketing, share it and hire you or buy from you. It requires that you take the exact opposite approach, to 99% of the marketing you see out there.

It’s about shifting the focus of your marketing, so that it’s primarily of benefit to the people who receive it and secondarily of benefit to you. It’s about producing content (audio, video, blog posts, newsletters, mail shots, flyers, social networking updates etc), which provide independent value to those who receive it. This means they get genuinely valuable or useful information from it, independent of them needing to spend a penny with you.

An example of how this works, based on one of my clients

Imagine you are a dog owner and after a trip to the vet, you subscribe to their dog owner’s newsletter. It gives you tips and ideas, to help you keep your dog healthy, fit and happy. At the bottom of each email are their contact details, so you can call them when you need a vet. You find this free information so useful, that you send it to 10 of your dog-owning friends.

They subscribe and then do the same… then these new subscribers share it too, and on and on it goes. The amazingly valuable, highly-targeted readership grows and grows.

Soon, that vet (a former client of mine) was talking to thousands of local dog owners and positioned themselves in their marketplace, as THE place to take your dog for all its veterinary needs. Their newsletter was eagerly anticipated by it’s readers… yes, people wanted to hear from them and valued what they had to share.

Compare that vet’s approach to the typical marketing messages we see.

That vet doesn’t need to run expensive radio ads.
They have no need to buy mailing lists.
They don’t need to waste valuable hours at networking events.
They certainly don’t need to pester people on social networks or ask strangers for recommendations on Linkedin.
They don’t need to invest in anything, other than the creativity required to produce a genuinely valuable newsletter, with useful content.

That example shows how a business can grow a massively valuable marketing asset, by sharing real value — rather than pushing unwanted messages. If you can see the potential of generating this kind of value driven marketing, it can improve your business beyond recognition.

I strongly suggest you make this a priority for your business. If you’d like expert assistance on exactly what to do, I’m happy to help.

Published on: November 27, 2013

How to get your passion and motivation back

Posted by Jim Connolly

I have a great question for you today: If your business was perfect in every way, what would it look like?

For example:

If you could hand pick your client list, who would you be working with?
If you could work from anywhere in the world, where would it be?
If you were earning enough from your business, to provide a lifestyle that would really excite you, how much would that be?
If you could partner in a business venture with anyone, who would it be?
If your typical working week was perfect, what would it look like?

The power of clarity

One of the key reasons people fail to achieve the business results they want, is that they have only a foggy idea of what (specifically) they want to achieve. They know they want to do better, but fail to really focus on exactly what that means for them, in real terms. By identifying and picturing in your mind, exactly what your ideal business and lifestyle would look like and how it would provide you with a vastly better quality of life, EVERYTHING changes!

Here’s why.

The word motivation comes from the fusion of two smaller words: Motive and action. The ability to take action increases massively, when the motive (reason) is clear and exciting enough to drive you forward.

Now, compare that kind of clarity to the vague way that many small business owners think about their business. They want a better month than last month. They want a better year than last year. That kind of vague, foggy thinking is nothing like as motivating, inspirational or compelling as having an exciting, clearly visible picture of exactly what you want to achieve.

What next?

Take a look at those questions from earlier in this post. Jot them down and then write the answers to each one, in as much detail as you can. Make that “perfect future” the inspiration that drives you forward to the results your hard work deserves!

PS: By the way, if you need a little help getting started, check this out.

Photo: La Prima Donna

Published on: November 25, 2013

A heartbreaking email that every small business owner should read

Posted by Jim Connolly

I want to share something important with you today. It’s a heartbreaking email I received last year, from a reader.

He was a small business owner, who had to cease trading after 5 years in business, because of 2 critical errors he had made. As well as showing you the errors, I’m going to show you how to make sure this never happens to you.

The following excerpts are quoted, with the author’s consent, though they have asked me not to use their name. Here’s a section of the email, quoted unedited:

“Me and my wife quit our regular jobs in 2007 to start a business. We were excited and worked like crazy to make it a success. By mid 2011 we knew we were in trouble as our life savings were almost gone and the business was still making too little money to cover our overheads. We’d been dipping into our savings from the get go to make up the short fall from the business. By February this year we knew we had to quit the business and get jobs. Last week the business was closed for the last time”

He went on…

“Looking back I see we made two major errors that I’d like to share with your readers to stop them doing the same. First up, I was trying so hard to keep our costs down that I didn’t invest in the help we needed. I wanted our savings to last as long as they could so we hardly spent anything and ended up starving the business of the professional help that would have saved us. Second up, we were waiting for some big sudden sign to show we were screwing up but it didn’t happen like that at all. We didn’t go broke over night. It was a slow process which looking back had been happening for years. That’s what stopped us taking urgent action years ago.”

Failure doesn’t happen overnight

One of the reasons so many intelligent, hard working business owners fail, is that failure doesn’t happen overnight. It’s extremely subtle. It creeps up on you. It’s seldom the result of one cataclysmic decision, but usually the result of small errors, repeated often.

Here are just a few examples:

When you push your marketing at people, it hurts your business a little.
When you think you’re saving money by doing it yourself, rather than hiring an accountant, a marketing professional, a web designer etc, it hurts your business a little.
When you copy the social networking approach of your peers, making yourself almost invisible, it hurts your business a little.
When you can name the judges on the top reality TV shows, but you don’t know who the key people in your marketplace are, it hurts your business a little.
When you allow an amateur looking website / blog to make you look bad, it hurts your business a little.

Success doesn’t happen overnight

Like failure, success doesn’t happen overnight either. People want overnight success, which is why there are so many bullshit books, webinars and seminars that promise it. In reality, we know that business success takes time. It’s subtle. It’s seldom the result of one smart decision, but usually lots of smart decisions repeated often, over time.

Here are just a few examples:

When you learn how to attract the attention of your marketplace, so you never have to push your marketing at people, your business gets a little stronger.
When you decide to get the expert help you need, rather than try and succeed in the worst economy in living memory without it, your business gets a little stronger.
When you stop using social networking sites like a sheep and start building a highly visible presence, your business gets a little stronger.
When you take time to learn about the people who make up your marketplace, so you can help them overcome problems and embrace opportunities, your business gets a little stronger.
When you invest in a professional looking website or blog, which reinforces the promises you make in your marketing, your business gets a little stronger.

The link between failure and short term thinking

If you want a business to succeed in the medium and long term, you need to avoid making decisions based on the short term.

Short term thinking means you see money going out of the business as a bad thing, so you avoid it. People thinking short term are fearful of making an investment, even an essential investment as mentioned in the email earlier, because they see little difference between a business cost and a business investment. In reality, the 2 couldn’t be more different.

Keeping costs down is a great idea, but starving a business of essential investment, is like starving a plant of sunshine!

Short term thinking also leads us to look for short term answers. That’s why every scammy, bullshit filled webinar, ebook, software product and seminar – promises fast results or secret formulas to get rich quick. We have to be smarter than that.

In short: Business success requires a long term perspective. If you are not seeing the results you need, now is the time to take action.

Published on: November 22, 2013