Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips & ideas to help you grow your business, by Jim Connolly

Page 60 of 172

The sandwich shop that closes for lunch

If you want your sandwich business to survive, it’s probably a bad idea to close for lunch. Lunchtime is when you are likely to sell the most sandwiches, so you need to be there and ready, for when the hungry masses arrive.

Before you laugh at a sandwich shop closing for lunch

Consider this: What happens to 99% of business websites, as soon as they get hit with a lot of traffic?

Answer: The site becomes either too slow for people to use or the site collapses under all the traffic!

At the point where their content marketing or advertising is pulling in the most potential customers, many small business owners are pretty much closed for business! They often invest huge amounts of time and money, trying to drive potential customers to their websites, without making sure the doors are open when people arrive.

Closed to traffic

I was prompted to write this post after trying to access a site, which some a social media big shot had tweeted. He has over 200,000 followers and by the time I clicked the link, the site was already inaccessible to me and probably hundreds of others. I know this will have lost that site a lot of visitors, because when he tweeted about the launch of my creative thinking site, there were hundreds of people simultaneously on the site, for hours. That site, like this, is on dedicated hosting and was able to remain speedy and reliable throughout. For those interested, my hosting is provided (and sponsored) by Webfusion, though I was a very happy paying customer of theirs, long before they sponsored the blog.

Here’s why this matters

Through a lot of effective marketing and some solid launch content, I managed to attract tens of thousands of visitors on the first week of my creative thinking site. That traffic earned me my first few hundred subscribers, social media shares and back-links. This got the site established fast. None of that could have happened, if the server the site was on had gone down or been too slow to use, once the initial few hundred people arrived on that first day! The momentum would never have been created.

I would have been like a sandwich shop, closed for lunch.

Considering the cost

Don’t leave yourself in a position, where your site can’t cope with a retweet from a social networking star or a rush of traffic from a viral blog post. As with my example a moment ago, those kinds of targeted traffic spikes are often the launchpad to a quantum increase in your sales, readership numbers, subscribers and customer inquiries.

If you are serious about your marketing and business development, build the foundation of your online presence on the strongest, most reliable hosting you can afford. Cheap hosting can be extremely costly in missed opportunities.

Photo: Charleston

April 23, 2012 /

What everyone needs to know about blame

Who is responsible for our results?

I spent some time recently, with the former owner of a retail outlet. He explained that the reason his store flopped, was that the economy was too weak. I know a number of the people whose retail outlets are on the same high street as his and although a few have flopped, they are the minority. Most are doing fine, others are doing very well and expanding.

Not his fault?

He was blaming the wrong culprit. The reason that guys retail outlet failed, was that he did too few of the things required for success.

For example, he was trying to compete based on price, against online retailers who had a fraction of his overhead – playing to his weaknesses, rather than his strengths. His marketing was ineffective compared to his competitors and his in store experience was also very poor.

Blaming the economy for the failure of his business is like a bank robber blaming the police for being in jail, rather than taking responsibility for having robbed the bank.

We see the blame game everywhere

Listen to the coach of a losing team after a game and you will often hear all kinds of blame being dished out. Listen to the winning coach and you will hear them talking about how effective the planning was and how committed the team were.

The most effective people in any area of life, take responsibility for their actions and inactions. The buck stops with them and they wouldn’t have it any other way. Why? Because accepting responsibility gives them complete freedom. It motivates them to do the right things, correctly; knowing that the right results will surely follow.

The only way we can improve our results, is to accept responsibility for them.

  • If you want more sales, build a better marketing plan and work that plan.
  • If you want higher profits, build a better profitability plan and work that plan.
  • If you want to start getting bankable results from all that social networking you do, build a better social networking plan and work that plan.
  • If you want to retain more customers, build a better customer retention plan and work that plan.

If you want better results in any area, build a better plan and work that plan.

In short: Take responsibility. Decide what you want. Do the research. Then do the work. Don’t wait for the economy or Lady Luck to save you.

Photo: Laffy4k

April 22, 2012 /

Time to get Thunky again!

I have just relaunched JimConnolly.com, also known as my Thunky.

What is a Thunky?

I got the idea for the name Thunky, because the blog was a place for me to put random thoughts, things I had Thunk.

Anyone can have a Thunky. It’s simply a self-hosted blog, where you post the kind of interesting information you usually just give away to social networking sites.

How it works

It works like this: You get an idea for something to share on Facebook, but rather than go direct to Facebook and post it, you post it on YOUR Thunky first… Then share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or whatever networks you use.

The benefit? You have a site that you control, which has the original version of all your most interesting social networking posts. These posts are then indexable by search engines, can be shared across all the social networks, are findable by friends (or potential clients) and most importantly, YOU own them! Here’s what a Thunky is, in more detail.

The site is not marketing specific, but a place for me to share general ideas, thoughts, photos, and videos, with anyone who is interested.

So, why not pop over and take a look!

April 21, 2012 /

You’re just 5% away from the success you want. Here it is!

My mentor, the late great Jim Rohn, used to say:

‘Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.’

The 5% that matters

Most business owners will do 95% of what’s needed, in order to achieve the results they REALLY want. They work hard. They work long hours. They make sacrifices for their business. The challenge, is that the missing 5% is the magic that turns a living into a fortune. It’s the 5% that means we get to build a wall of financial security around us and those we love, which nothing can breach. It’s a very important 5% indeed.

Now, it may not always be 5%, it may be a little higher or lower. That 5% represents the small number of things, which we know we need to do in order to blow the lid off our potential. Thankfully, as my mentor taught me, the 5% bridge, between where we are today and where we want to be, can be spanned with discipline.

The magic of discipline

  • The discipline to spend less time watching TV and more time feeding our brain with rich, mental protein.
  • The discipline to embrace our uniqueness rather than play it safe and look like our competitors.
  • The discipline to lead rather than follow.
  • The discipline to focus on what we want, rather than what we fear.
  • The discipline to listen to what our business results are telling us and invest in the help we need.
  • The discipline to give ourselves permission, rather than wait for someone to pick us from the crowd.
  • The discipline to do work that matters, rather than work that pays.
  • The discipline to accept responsibility for our business and stop blaming the economy, the weather, the competition etc, for our lack of progress.
  • The discipline to stop accepting less than we deserve.

A great place for us to start, is with the discipline to do all the work. Not just the 95% that every business owner does.

Photo: Hugo90

April 19, 2012 /

5 Ways to grow your business!

If you want to grow your business, there are 5 ways to do it. They are:

  1. Increase the transaction value of your existing clients. In other words, sell them more products or services each time they buy from you.
  2. Increase the frequency of your clients purchasing. Instead of them buying from you 4 times a year, allow them to buy from you once a month.
  3. Attract more clients.
  4. Increase your prices or fees.
  5. Retain more clients (also known as attrition management.)

Marketing is more than just attracting new clients

Most small business owners focus on number 3 and  number 4. They are always looking for new clients and ways to increase their fees, unaware that they can massively increase their revenues and profits, from their existing client base.

In working with my clients, I have helped some develop their existing client base to the point where they have increased profits by over 700%, without them having to win a single new client.

For example, you can develop additional products and services, which compliment what you already offer. This allows you to bring greater utility to your clients and as a result, additional revenue streams to your business too. It’s quicker and easier to sell additional products or services to existing clients, than to people who don’t know you. It’s usually more profitable too, as the lead-in time is shorter and the potential for non-payment almost nil, as you already know their payment history.

Increasing the purchase cycle

Business owners often limit their revenues and profits, by sticking to needless purchasing cycles.

For example, I recall a DIY company that made the massive majority of it’s sales from a bi-annual catalogue. They had always done things that way and were used to having 2 busy months each year, which sustained the business. By simply turning that catalogue into a quarterly publication, they were able to almost double their sales.

Client retention and acquisition

Another benefit of building your service, so that it’s of greater value and of greater utility, is that you will encourage clients to stay with you for longer. This helps take care of point 5 on the above list; client retention. When clients are getting a better, more inclusive service from you, it makes it harder for a competitor to win their custom. Similarly, the increased value and utility of your service, will make it more attractive when you market it, which will help you attract more new clients too.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to attract new clients and look for ways to offer a better service, so you can charge stronger prices or fees. But never underestimate the potential for huge windfall revenues, when you focus on delivering excellence and increased utility to your existing client base.

Photo: Kirsty Hall

April 18, 2012 /

Doing the work

With any project, you plant the seeds of success at the beginning, when it’s difficult, when there are no guarantees.

It’s easy to get up and write a blog post, when you know that 5,000 or 10,000 people will read your work that day. The reward justifies the effort. Everyone writing to that kind of readership did something a lot harder at the beginning, though. We turned up and wrote useful posts, knowing just 5 or 10 people would read us that day.

Decide what you want to achieve.

Do the research.

Then do the work.

Photo: Ljubisa Bojic

April 17, 2012 /

Are you sitting comfortably? Then read this!

Here’s a great question, to help ensure you’re not mistaking activity for progress:

“Is my marketing based on doing the right things, correctly OR doing things I feel comfortable with?”

Review what you are comfortable with

Whilst most small business owners have varied working weeks, there are certain things they do routinely. Now, if those routine activities are correct they will work for the business and the business owner will see measurable progress. However, many routine business activities are repeated simply because the business owner feels comfortable with them. They get into a habit of doing certain things a certain way, often unaware that if they improved their approach, they could be enjoying massively better results.

The perfect scenario is for us to become comfortable, doing the correct things. This starts with a willingness to embrace change and let go of ineffective marketing activities. Like many things in business, this is easier said than done. However, those only prepared to do what’s easy in business, place a very low ceiling on their potential.

Quick Tip

If you are not getting enough sales or sales inquiries, take a look at the marketing activities you engage in. How many of them are you confident can generate the results you need? How many of them are you certain, you are doing correctly? Stop anything that isn’t working and either fix it or replace it with something that works. Don’t stick with anything, just because it’s comfortable!

April 16, 2012 /

How do people feel about your business?

I heard a guy in my local coffee shop explaining to a friend, why he bought himself an iPhone. “I needed cheering up, so I decided to treat myself to a new iPhone. I had to wait 3 days for the phone to arrive and to be honest, the wait was pretty exciting.”

That’s an example of someone using the purchase of a product, to improve how he was feeling. His feelings about Apple and the iPhone brand are extremely positive and he knew that he’d feel better if he ordered one.

Now, can you imagine someone feeling so strongly about the prospect of working with you, that even the process of waiting was exciting?

Marketing and feelings

Whether you are a service provider or a vendor of products, you need to be aware that feelings have a huge part to play, in the purchasing process. The relationships you forge with prospective clients at the pre sales stage, are extremely important. Equally, the way people feel about the idea of working with you (or buying from you) is a key factor in whether you earn their custom or not.

Here are a few things to consider:

  • Do you demonstrate how passionate you are about helping your current clients, to your future clients? In other words, do your marketing, networking and social networking interactions suggest you love working with your clients, or are you one of those who finishes work every Friday, by posting ‘TGIF!’ all over Twitter and Facebook, because you can’t wait to get away from them?
  • Does your reputation showcase you as being friendly and approachable? The balance you are aiming for is professional and human. Business is all about people, so it’s essential to show your human side if you want people to feel good about the prospect of doing business with you.
  • Is there a feel good factor associated to working with you or buying your products? If not, you are losing more business than you can possibly imagine.
  • When people arrive at your website, does it look polished and professional or does it look like something that was done on the cheap? If the latter, you need to think about the image you are creating. If a prospective client sees a cheap looking website, it suggests the person behind that site either doesn’t care about presentation or is unable to pay for professional site. Both of these will hurt your business and lose you money.

Success leaves clues

Take time to think about the businesses, which YOU have strong, positive feelings about. Look at what they are doing, in order to earn that positive feeling from you and see what you can learn from them.

Photo: Ganmed64

April 15, 2012 /

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