Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing ideas to help you grow your business

How to find the income, energy and inspiration you need!

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professsional development, business

Let’s talk about money.

Do you know what’s really, really difficult? Trying to make money by doing something you’re not passionate about.

Yet, that’s exactly what the majority of business owners do. Paradoxically, it’s also why most will go broke or even worse, make just enough to survive in false hope that things will improve… THEN go broke.

Yes, every business needs a viable way to make money. However, money should be the inevitable result of doing what you love, extremely well. Not an end in itself.

Steve Jobs on money

The world’s most successful businesspeople already know this. The late Steve Jobs made the point beautifully:

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money”.

Do you think Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Sir Richard Branson go to work for 14 hours a day, because they need more money? No. Branson was wealthy from birth and has never needed to work! These people already have more money than they can spend. What drives the most successful business owners is the need to do something, which they are passionate about.

The money follows.

Working with great passion

When your work is driven by passion, it shines through everything you do. It gives you the energy and robustness required to do your best work. Passion is contagious too, which helps you attract the resources you need. It inspires customers, clients and investors to want to be a part of your vision.

  • If work is a grind.
  • If you’re working hard for too little reward.
  • If you find yourself lacking the energy you need.
  • If you don’t spend enough time with your family.
  • If you feel too stressed, too often.
  • If prospective clients or customers are unenthusiastic when you tell them what you do.
  • If business leaves you feeling unfulfilled.

… there’s a very good chance you’re not doing something that inspires you. And that has to stop. Seriously. You can’t keep on like that. It’s pointless and 100% unnecessary.

The answer is as easy and challenging as this

Find something you’re passionate about and build a viable business model around it. Work really hard. Then watch your whole world improve.

If this is something you are struggling with right now, let me know. Here are my contact details.

Marketing 101: Exceed expectations

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marketing tips, marketing ideas, sales

Here’s maybe one of the best kept secrets in business.

Never underestimate the power of exceeding expectations.

In business, every person we connect with has an expectation of us. When we meet their expectation, we literally do no better than they expect. It’s a great way to be average!

However…

When we exceed expectations

Everything improves.

  • The way people feel about us improves… dramatically.
  • The experience that exceeded their expectations becomes a story. When we give people a story worth sharing, they spread the word.
  • We retain our clients for longer.
  • We also attract the best clients — those who value and are willing to pay for a great experience.

As you go through your work today, ask yourself if what you are doing will meet or exceed expectations. If you feel it’s pretty-much what people expect, make at least one improvement that will push it over the top.

Then do the same tomorrow.

How to grow your business in a uniquely valuable way

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word of mouth, referrals, sales leads, enquiries

You are the biggest asset your business has. Those are not just kind words. They are based on fact.

Allow me to explain.

The Internet has presented business owners with a series of benefits and challenges. One challenge, is that it is now extremely easy for competitors to discover and copy one another’s best ideas. It’s little wonder then, that providers in just about every industry now offer an almost identical range of services.

Today, I’m going to show you how to overcome this challenge and build a massively valuable marketing asset for your business.

How to stand out in a meaningful way

Some things are easy to copy. For example, if a local restaurant starts opening an hour earlier and then attracts an extra hour’s worth of profitable trade, it’s simple for competing restaurants to do the same.

However, some things in business are extremely difficult to copy because they’re based on unique, human experiences. A wonderful example of this is the use of a newsletter or blog, to showcase your expertise and knowledge.

Here’s why it works

You are unique. You have a unique collection of life experiences, which your unique mind processes in a unique way. When you write (and speak) your communication style is unique too.

This uniqueness allows you to stand out from the pack and connect with your future clients!

Here’s an example of what I mean. Both Seth Godin and I write about marketing, yet we write very differently:

  • Seth grew up in a very wealthy family and was educated at Stanford — along with the CEO’s of many of the world’s leading companies.
  • I grew up in extreme poverty, the son of penniless immigrants.

It would be extremely difficult for either one of us to write like the other. For instance, when Seth thinks about being broke, he (thank God), won’t recall his mother begging for food to feed her children, the way I do.

So, when Seth and I write about business owners experiencing hard times, we will see the hard part extremely differently. This is reflected in what we write and how we write.

Your unique voice

Your life experiences will cause you to write very differently from your competitors. The only caveat here, is that you need to allow your personality to shine through your writing. If you try and sound like someone else, you lose your unique voice — the very originality that will allow you to stand out.

Now, compare that to the generic approach most business owners take with their newsletters and blog posts. Instead of delivering useful, valuable information from their own unique perspective, they churn out a series of thinly-disguised sales pitches. They then wonder why it isn’t working.

Allow your unique voice to communicate value. These brief tips may help:

  • Learn about the challenges facing your marketplace. A great way to do this is to connect with them on social networks and listen. [Compare this approach, to the typical service provider who uses social networks to broadcast.]
  • Provide answers to the most pressing challenges facing your marketplace. This positions you in the mind of your prospective clients, as a source of expert help and advice.
  • Share case-studies of how you have helped people, who had similar challenges to your prospective clients.
  • Turn up regularly! Treat your newsletter or blog as a high priority business activity. If you think it’s hard to write regularly, remember that writing is a lot like speaking — and you speak every day.

The unique connection these prospective clients form with you, is a massively valuable marketing asset.

Think of it like this: Who are they going to hire?

  • Some stranger they find on Google.
  • … or you, someone they feel a connection with and whose expertise and knowledge they already know about.

Yes. You win!

PS: This will help you — How to get more clients from your newsletter or blog.

You are extraordinary

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Have you ever imagined what you could achieve, if you summoned the courage to put into play, everything you have learned so far?

The extra that makes all the difference

I have had the privilege of working with some incredible people — people who have achieved amazing things. In every case, without exception, these extraordinary people were just ordinary people, who put extra into what they did. Extra time, effort, care, passion, attention, joy and creativity, etc.

Make no mistake, you already possess what it takes to be extraordinarily successful.

The only question is, are you prepared to do the extra required?

Is your website hurting your business? Quite possibly!

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marketing tips, marketing ideas, sales

I have a question for you: What do prospective clients think, when they visit your website or blog?

[You do know they check you out online, before they decide to get in touch with you, right?]

Just as you check out a potential provider’s website, so do your prospective clients. What they find will either position you in their mind as a professional they feel they can trust… or plant toxic, seeds of doubt in their mind.

Even low traffic sites are checked by prospective clients

Many small businesses make the mistake of thinking that the only people who check their websites out, are those who tell them they found them via the website. For many small business owners this is a tiny percentage of the leads they get, so they assume their site isn’t helping or hurting their business.

What they seem unaware of, is that the people who hear about them via; referrals, word of mouth, email marketing, advertising, social networks etc., also check their website out, before deciding whether to get in touch or not!

Here’s the thing:

  • We wouldn’t eat at a restaurant, which had dirty tables.
  • We wouldn’t hire a fitness instructor who was out of shape.
  • We wouldn’t by a car, which looked like a wreck.

In the same way, we can’t expect a prospective client to believe we are professional if we operate behind a cheap looking website. A badly designed, dated or poorly-written website says 2 things about us.

  1. We think it’s fine to operate behind an unprofessional website.
  2. We can’t afford anything better.

Both of those messages are extremely toxic. Combine them and you end up with a message that causes enormous damage to your business and your reputation!

The kicker here, is that websites today need not be expensive. An entry level, professional website will cost you hundreds not thousands.

That’s a tiny price to pay, to stop turning away all those prospective client inquiries. Right?

Tip: Read this – Is your website ready for the fastest growing group of Internet users?

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