Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing ideas to help you grow your business

4 Tips to attract more clients and customers from your website

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marketing tips, marketing ideas, sales

Is your website a lead generating machine for your business? If not, here are 4 places to focus on for better results.

  1. Do not copy the conversion tactics of anyone, whose own site needs a pop-up box to attract people’s attention. If their site was optimized correctly, they wouldn’t need to smash people in the face with pop-up boxes.
  2. Your web designer may have created a beautifully designed site, but left out key elements, to make the design easier on the eye. I regularly see wonderful looking sites, which have all the main conversion elements missing or in the wrong place.
  3. Did you write the content yourself? If you did, the great news is you can probably improve your conversion rate by hundreds of percent, by hiring a proven, expert copywriter. I can help you.
  4. Do you sell, sell, sell? Stop that. Seriously. Use your site to showcase your expertise and experience. Aim to be useful and approachable. Remember, people skip through the ads. Put the marketing pages of your site where they can be seen. Link to them, from pages or posts, which provide lots of free, useful information. If your site is largely just selling what you do, people will leave just as soon as they arrive.

I hope there’s at least one idea there, which inspires you to improve the effectiveness of your site.

Tip: Are you one question away from 10,000 daily readers?

How to build a extremely valuable list, without a newsletter

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Content Marketing, list building, lists

If you want to build a huge, extremely valuable list, this post is just for you.

I get emails every day from people, who thank me for my free marketing newsletter. Some of you will find that odd, as I don’t publish a newsletter.

So, why does this happen?

Simple: I give people the option to read this blog, via a free email subscription. As a result, thousands of people get an email with the content of my latest blog post. These emails look and read just like a newsletter.

I suggest you consider doing the same.

Here’s why!

There’s a reason Seth Godin, the world’s most read marketing expert, also uses this approach rather than a newsletter. It’s an extremely powerful way to build a great, super-connected community of readers.

For example:

  • The blog (online) version of your posts get shared on social networks. Yes, this is technically possible with newsletters, but shares of blog posts are far, far more popular. People can then see your work and subscribe to it, knowing exactly what to expect. Newsletters are often little more than thinly disguised sales pitches and people are savvy to this.
  • The blog version of your posts get crawled by search engines.
  • Your blog posts can be found using search engines, when people need the information you provide.
    • These Top Marketing Tips attract traffic from search engines all day. A subset of these readers subscribe to the email version of the blog. It’s a list-builder all by itself, which grows the list all day every day. Again, because it shows people exactly what to expect, a far higher percentage will subscribe, than if I offered a newsletter.

Which is the best route for you?

If your newsletter is mainly special offers and promotions, a dedicated newsletter, marketed via your blog is a better option.

Otherwise, I strongly suggest you consider the benefits of offering a high quality, email edition of your blog posts instead.

  • It costs the same as a newsletter costs to send.
  • It’s a quicker way to build your list, for all the reasons already mentioned.
  • You don’t have to invest time writing a newsletter.

BONUS: It may also motivate you to publish blog posts more often, which will help your reputation, your reach, your authority AND your reader list… to grow!

Are you teaching people to ignore your marketing?

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Every piece of marketing material is created from 1 of the following 2 mindsets.

  1. I wrote this, so now I need you to read it.
  2. There’s something you need to know, so I wrote it.

The first approach is selfish. It’s focused on the needs of the writer, not the reader. It’s noise, not value. People ignore these selfish messages.

The second approach is contribution focused. It’s about giving value to the reader. This unselfish approach is so rare that when people see it, it captures their attention and grabs their interest.

Whether you know it or not, every message you send fits into one of those 2 categories. You are either training people to filter you OUT or tune you IN.

Choose wisely.

Stop working for toxic clients. Seriously. Stop it!

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business development, biz dev

It’s hard to overstate the damage caused by toxic clients.

Late paying clients destroy your cash flow and are responsible for the death of more businesses than lack of sales. Over-demanding clients can turn the joy of work into something you don’t even like any more.

Toxic clients cause stress, unhappiness and will slowly destroy your business.

Solution: Fire them!

If you think you can’t afford to fire your toxic clients, wait until you pay the full price for NOT firing them.

Then replace them with GREAT clients

Replace your toxic clients, one by one, with clients who give you the freedom to do your best work. This, ironically, will help you attract more and more great clients. A virtuous cycle is created.

The opposite is also true: If you allow yourself to work for toxic clients, the quality of your work drops, which makes it harder and harder to attract great clients.

Make the decision

If you want to work with better clients, who allow you to do your best work and will pay you accordingly, make the decision to do something about it today!

Here’s an approach to marketing that works every time

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marketing tips, marketing ideas, sales

This approach to marketing works every time. It isn’t easy, which is why so few people do it. However, it comes with a 100% success rate.

Here it is: Be so good that they can’t ignore you.

If your product or service is THAT good, people will hire you, buy from you AND tell everyone about you. So, if you show just 10 people what you do, each one will tell another 10 people, who will each get you another 10… repeat.

The opposite is also true

Average products or services are everywhere. They fail to stand out. We forget them within minutes. Very few people talk about them. They need to be pushed constantly. Networking groups were created for this type of average business.

I was prompted to write about this for you, after remembering a wonderful example of how to get it right.

An example from the rear end of a computer!

When Steve Jobs announced the first iMac computer, he showed people the rear of the machine and said the following:

“The back of our computer looks better than the front of the other guy’s”.

That was an amazingly powerful statement, which attracted people’s attention, got everybody talking and generated record breaking sales.

Why?

Because it made the iMac impossible to ignore. Computers at the time were dull, beige boxes. Here was an amazing, multicoloured range of machines, which looked better from the back than anything on the market did from the front.

One detail, which other computer manufacturers at the time totally neglected, gave the marketplace an amazing Apple story to share. It made Apple and the iMac too good to ignore.

Push or Attract?

Ultimately, business owners have a decision to make. They can:

  • Push a good, but predictable business on the marketplace.
  • Attract attention, by being too good to ignore.

Pushing a predictable product or service is expensive and places a very low ceiling on your potential. If you want 100 people to know about what you do, you have to pester 100 people with some kind of marketing AND pay to reach all of them.

Attracting attention is inexpensive and offers limitless potential. It scales to infinity. If you want a million people to know about what you do, just tell 10 people… and keep delivering on being too good to ignore.

Easy? No.

Worth it? Absolutely.

Here’s some free advice to get you on the right track.

Growing a successful business is a marathon, not a sprint!

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When it comes to launching a new business or project, it’s really important to remember the following:

Big launches are extremely overrated.

Success is not about having an amazing opening day or opening week. It’s what you do over time, which counts.

Anyone can launch something

The time for razzmatazz and parties is after you’ve remained committed and focused for long enough, to achieve what you wanted.

That’s why marathon runners get their medals after they cross the finish line… and not on the start line.

Let’s grow your business!

I can help you build a more successful business, increase your sales, attract more clients and boost your profits.

Find out how