marketing advice Archives | Page 15 of 16

Not all business is good business

October 29, 2009 by Jim Connolly

It can be tempting, to accept any kind of business that comes our way – especially during a tough economy or when sales are flat. However, this is often a bad idea, as some new clients or customers can have a toxic effect on your business.

For example, I was listening to the owner of a pub / bar yesterday, as he described how his trade increased, after a particular customer stopped coming in for lunch each day. Although this customer spent money with him on a regular basis, it seems he was such a disagreeable character that his presence stopped other customers coming in. They would apparently see this person’s car parked outside and decide to go somewhere else.

It’s easy to see what a client pays you – but sometimes harder to see what they cost you!

Marketing advice: Start with gold

October 17, 2009 by Jim Connolly

Many businesses offer 3 levels of service and define them based around the words; gold, silver and bronze. The idea is to show prospective clients or customers (herein called clients) that the value/quality of each service improves as they go up the scale from bronze.

It’s used as a way to justify charging 3 different prices, for 3 different levels of service. However, is it possible that we can improve upon this gold, silver and bronze model?

Ask any athlete, who’s out training at 6am on a cold morning, if he or she is motivated by the prospect of becoming a bronze medal winner. I think you already know what their answer will be – a resounding “NO!” That’s because bronze does not have the same motivational pulling power of gold.

In business, we often refer to the best product or service in a category as the gold standard.’ We talk about those cherished memories from the past as golden memories. Highly valued information is often referred to as gold dust. We use the word gold in many ways, but it always conjures up images in our mind of high quality.

Make gold your starting point

So, here’s a question to consider: Why not make gold your starting point? If you offer 3 levels of service, why not make a statement and start with gold, then go to platinum and then on up to diamond?

In an age where every business is claiming to go the extra mile, this is an opportunity for you to tell the marketplace what your attitude to service excellence is. It’s a bold marketing statement, which requires the very best from you if you are to back it up. But what a message to give your prospective clients and those who work with you, internally and externally.

What do you think?

Free marketing can cost you everything!

September 11, 2009 by Jim Connolly

The message behind this post can save you from years of frustration and help you dramatically improve your future sales results!

I received an email yesterday, from someone who has occasionally emailed me for marketing advice over the past couple of years. This person (who will remain nameless for obvious reasons), is one of my newsletter subscribers and has been in business for years as a trainer and author. She emailed me, asking for some free marketing advice – Before explaining that she was still unable to afford professional marketing help.

By the way, her work is very good and people seem to love her courses, as the feedback she gets is excellent. She also works extremely hard.

So, we are talking about a hard working person, with a great product – Yet after years of trying, they are still making so little progress that they are unable to even afford a basic, inexpensive business service.

Here’s why:

Hard work is NOT the secret of business success

If it was, our grandparents would have been millionaires!

By working hard marketing her business incorrectly, this lady is like the rower; rowing their boat as hard as they can in the wrong direction. The harder they work, the further they go from where they want to be.

I have to admit, even after 15 years of running a successful marketing business, I’m still amazed whenever I hear an intelligent person say that they have been conducting their own marketing for years with no success; yet they persist in carrying on with no professional help.

Now, I can understand a relatively new business forgetting to put a budget in place for their marketing. However, when a business has been trading for years, never making any real money because it’s determined not to invest in professional marketing help, that’s just something that makes zero sense to me.

Ironically, these businesses often spend MORE on marketing, than those that have their marketing looked after professionally.

How come?

Because they waste so much money on ineffective marketing:

They send out mail shots that cost money, but no one reads.
They buy costly brochures, which achieve nothing for them and in many cases will LOSE them sales because of how they are used and how they are worded.
The send email marketing to people, which contains ‘pedestrian’ copy and thus fails to inspire people to call them or buy from them.
They attend dead-end networking events.
They market haphazardly, with no idea of how to leverage what they are doing so it’s massively more effective.
They get websites built that fail to convert readers into customers.
They waste massive amounts of their valuable time building online networks via; Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc – with little if anything financially to show for it.
They buy advertising, which contains the wrong message, so no one takes any notice of it.
They make short-term marketing decisions – rather than work from a simple but powerful marketing strategy.

…. and they keep on repeating these mistakes for years; until they either go broke or become too demotivated to continue.

Conclusion

Here’s what I have found: Many businesspeople confuse having the tools to do the job, with having the experience and expertise. They think that because they have a; computer, Internet access, a car and a phone, that they can market their services. They just need that ‘lucky break.’

This is like suggesting that owning a surgeon’s operating theatre, means you can perform heart or brain surgery; so long as your luck’s in!

Thankfully, sales and marketing results are extremely easy to measure. If you are getting the sales and profits you want, change nothing. If not, I strongly suggest you speak with a marketing professional.

Marketing and value

September 3, 2009 by Jim Connolly

Here’s a quick marketing tip that can help you produce amazing sales results on an ongoing basis.

If you have read my blog for any period of time, you will know that I am passionate about the importance of pumping as much value into your products or services as possible. The marketplace is sick and tired of ‘average’ products and services – so when something comes along that represents great value, they LOVE it.

By making your offering as valuable as you can, you will never have to sell based on price again – even in a recession.

Really?

Oh yes!

Apple Inc’s recession beating profits

For example, Apple Inc sells hardware that’s typically far more expensive than their rivals. However, their sales have grown impressively throughout the current economic recession. Impressively? Yes – Whilst PC sales have fallen during the recession, Apple Inc has posted record profits. Although Apple has great marketing, what sets it apart from its competitors is the value its products bring to the marketplace.

The good news is, small and medium sized businesses can use the exact same approach as Apple, to achieve great results too!

I have a client, who’s a UK based accountant and his company has experienced phenomenal growth during the past 18-months – a period where many good accountancy practices have really struggled or gone under. Accountancy Extra specialises in helping its clients develop their businesses and improve their profits; (rather than just processing columns of numbers for them and keeping the tax man happy). As a direct result, people have flocked to their services, rather than pay a similar or smaller fee for a more limited accountancy service.

Your prospective clients are attracted to value

The marketplace is attracted to value – The bigger the value, the more attracted they become.

Now, one way that many smaller businesses try and increase the value of their offering, is to lower their prices or fees. Whilst this can be effective, it can also drag you into a price war or what I call a race to the bottom. Additionally, we know from years of research that customers attracted to bargain basement prices, are the most likely to leave as soon as someone beats your price.

In my experience, it’s far better to find ways to pump massive value into something (like Apple do), and sell your offering for a great, value for money price, than to offer an average product and sell it cheap.

The most successful companies I know of, are always looking for ways to add more value to whatever they do. They say that; “success leaves clues,” and I believe the ongoing pursuit of genuine value is something we can all benefit from enormously.

Marketing advice

August 29, 2009 by Jim Connolly

I was looking at our search analytics yesterday and saw that a number of people found this blog, searching for the phrase marketing advice, using google.

I entered the phrase into Google and saw that I was on page 1 of google.com. As I write this, I’m still on page 1, though this will change – possibly by the time you read this. See below:

Is Google getting smarter?

Although I use meta tags for each post and title tags for some posts, the copy writing here is not deliberately optimised. In other words, I write exclusively for humans and not to keep search engines happy. Even so, google has been able to identify that there’s lots of marketing advice on this blog.

This confirms what many experts have told me; that the easiest way to optimise a site, is to stick to your topic and make it as valuable as you possibly can. After all, the content on your site is what encourages people to link to you. These links allow new people to discover your site – But they are also used by google as a way to ascertain the value of your content.

Any good search engine optimisation (SEO) expert will be able to help you get more targeted traffic to your site. In my opinion, every business these days should have a budget for professional SEO. However, it’s comforting to know that by focusing on good quality content, you can still achieve page 1 rankings for valuable search terms.

Jim’s 1 Year Marketing Program

September 30, 2008 by Jim Connolly

As some of my more eagle-eyed readers will have noticed, I have just added a new page to this website; all about my popular 1 Year Marketing Program.

If you are serious about dramatically improving your sales and profits, this program is exactly what you need! To find out more, click here!