Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Marketing 101: Vigorous, written marketing

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vigorous written marketing, marketing copywriting, content marketing

Most of the marketing copy I see is at least 75% too long. Overlong copy lacks impact. It also lacks clarity and fails to motivate prospective customers or clients.

I want to help you avoid this expensive mistake, which is why I wrote this for you.

Vigorous, written marketing

And it starts with one of the best-known quotes on the subject.

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell“.

Professor William Strunk Jr. – The Elements of Style.

The vigorous writing referred to here, is writing that is strong and full of energy. That’s the kind of writing that moves people to take action; to contact you, buy from you or hire you. It’s the kind of writing that gets the results you need.

How can you and your business benefit from the power of vigorous, written marketing?

The answer comes from understanding why the problem exists.

Google usually gets the blame

That’s because Google’s search algorithm rewards overlong, written content. It prefers 2500 words to 250. So, for over 20 years, online marketing writers have been rewarded for high word counts. That’s certainly not what’s needed for vigorous, written marketing.

But Google isn’t responsible for the wider problem.

Email marketing and off-line media is just as ruined by overlong content. Neither of those formats have ever required the writer to dance the Google dance.

The problem exists because most written marketing is created by people who lack sufficient training. It’s either written by business owners who ‘dabble’ or by below-par copywriters.

The solution?

The business owner wishing to switch to vigorous, written marketing has two options.

  1. Learn how to do it effectively.
  2. Pay someone who already knows.

How to decide?

  • The cost (in time) of learning is considerable. It takes years of practice. However, you’ll start seeing improvements relatively quickly.
  • The cost of hiring an expert is lower. And it’s a lot faster.

The price you pay for starving your business of vigorous, written marketing is far higher than either of those options. So pick one of them and run with it.

Photo by Cherrydeck on Unsplash

The horrible truth about marketing

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There’s a balance required if you want to rise above the competition. Yes, you should strive to be the best provider you can be. But that’s only one side of the scales. You also need to be the best marketed.

Think about it. There’s a world of difference between being the best… and the best selling.

  • The best selling album is never the best recorded album. It’s the best marketed album.
  • The best selling movie at the box office is never the best produced movie. It’s the best marketed movie.
  • And the best selling sportswear brand is never the best quality sportswear brand. It’s the best marketed sportswear brand.

You already know your best selling competitor is not the best quality competitor. It’s just their marketing that’s better. Note: this doesn’t mean their marketing is outstanding. It only means that they do more of the right things than their competitors. So, they get noticed more than you and/or they’re better at converting that attention into paying clients or customers.

Give your business the advantage

If you’re sick of watching competitors doing better than you, you need to decide to outperform their marketing, the way you already outperform their service. Because an average service that has great marketing, will always beat a great service that has average marketing.

The great news: If you decide to fight back, you’ll have better marketing and a better service. That’s an unbeatable combination. I’m telling you, your competitors won’t know what’s hit them.

I have no clients. Seriously. Not even one!

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marketing tip, earn attention, earn trust, earn clients, earn customers

It’a true. I don’t have any clients.

I also don’t have any customers, newsletter subscribers or readers. Oh, and I don’t have anyone connected to me on social media either.

I don’t have them. They’re not mine. Instead, I borrow them.

Brace yourself…

The same is true for YOU

Once we’ve earned the attention and trust of a new client, a new customer, a new subscriber or a new social media contact, it’s just the beginning. We must then work to keep on re-earning over and over again. The moment we begin to think otherwise, we risk becoming complacent. 

Then we find out the hard way: complacency causes casualties.

For decades, sales trainers talked about the importance of closing the sale. Some still focus on it today, though only in high-pressure sales environments. Closing the sale was all about using psychological tricks to motivate someone to make a purchase.

Once this was achieved, the deal was closed.

Today, we know better.

Today, we know better. The most successful business owners don’t focus on closing the sale. Instead, they focus on opening the relationship. This is the mindset that says when a sale has been made, a new client acquired or a new subscriber gained, it’s only the start. It’s the mindset that compels us to continuously seek better ways to delight them. It’s the mindset that inspires us to raise the bar on what we deliver. 

Let your competitors become complacent. Let your competitors assume that the people doing business with them, are their clients or customers.

But not you, my friend.

Instead, remain focused on opening relationships, being useful and constantly delivering better value.

Finish strong

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Finish strong. That’s solid advice for most things. But when writing persuasive marketing copy, the advice becomes explosive.

Most written marketing makes a powerful point, or a number of powerful points, but then fizzles out. The prospect is inspired to read past the powerful points. But when they reach the, fizzling-out copy, the impact on them is weakened. They go from hot to cold.

The key is to finish strong.

As Poynter’s  Roy Peter Clark said: “Shakespeare did not write ‘The Queen is dead, my lord’. He wrote ‘The Queen, my lord, is dead'”.

marketing, finish strong

By placing the emphatic word at the end of the sentence, the power of the overall message is greatly increased. It ends with a bang. That’s exactly the impact your marketing needs, in order to motivate your prospect, and compel them to take the next step; buy from you, call you, visit your store, make an enquiry, subscribe, etc.

Not just sentences

Finishing strong applies not only to your sentences. It equally applies to finishing the overall written marketing piece strong. This means making the last sentence in each paragraph as emphatic as possible, and the last paragraph itself, as emphatic as possible.

Think of it like this: You’re aiming for your words to build a crescendo of motivation, which inspires your prospect to take the next step.

What next?

Take a look at your written marketing and see if it finishes strong. Check the sentences, the paragraphs and the overall piece. If it doesn’t create a growing wave of desire, fix it. Otherwise you’ll continue to miss out on new sales or new clients. And none of us can afford that.

Read this and improve your advertising results, fast

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A lot of small business owners spend a ton of money on advertising. Often with pretty poor results. So, I put this post together, to help you avoid the most common advertising mistakes.

Here they are in no particular order.

  • You’re using brand advertising (ads that contain no obvious call to action), when you should be using direct response advertising (ads that contain a direct call to action). Almost all small businesses should use direct response.
  • You’re advertising on a platform your prospects don’t use / don’t pay attention to.
  • Your advertising is online, when it should be in print media. Or the other way around.
  • You’re buying advertising on platforms that people don’t trust, rather than advertising on highly trusted websites, podcasts, etc.
  • You’re advertising at the wrong time in your prospective client’s (or customer’s) buying cycle.
  • You’re advertising to get maximum click-throughs, rather than targeted click-throughs from actual prospects.
  • Your advertisements are not written by a proven copywriter.
  • Your advertisements are bought based on what they cost, rather than their potential effectiveness.
  • Your advertisements are in places where lots of your competitors are advertising.

There are lots more common reasons why advertising doesn’t work.

For example, your advertising message is irrelevant to your target prospect, or it’s lacking in targeted motivation, or it points to a poorly converting landing page, or it points to a landing page that loads too slowly, or the special whatever you’re offering isn’t as special as you think, or it explains too much, or it sounds too similar to an advertisement they’ve already clicked on, or it sounds too good to be true, or your target prospects are privacy conscious and your landing page requires cookies, or you are not bidding for your advertisements correctly, or your advertisement is reaching just a fraction of the number of people you think it is… seriously, I could go on and on, but you get the drift.

In most cases, small and medium-sized business advertising makes lots of these mistakes simultaneously. These simultaneous mistakes are more damaging than the individual damage each one causes.

That’s because they compound together. Think of compound interest, but working in reverse!

Do you even need paid advertisements?

For many small and medium-sized businesses, their biggest advertising mistake is that they’re buying them in the first place! I don’t buy advertisements. My clients have no need to buy them either. It’s an increasingly expensive, complex game. And you don’t need to play. It’s just one form of marketing. Nothing more.

I hope you found this useful, my friend.

Photo by Stas Knop on Pexels.com

Marketing 101: Get your prospects to buy now

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marketing, take action, buy now

What keeps your prospective clients or customers awake at night?

There are 2 broad answers to that question.

  1. The things they’re worried about. Their fears, apprehensions, worries or concerns.
  2. The things they’re excited about. Their goals, dreams and the opportunities ahead of them.

Here’s why those answers are critically important to your business.

Urgent attention and immediate action

Anything that keeps your prospects awake at night, is an extremely high priority to them.

Why?

Firstly, it’s where their urgent attention is. Secondly, they’re looking to take action immediately. 

In order to help them, and for you to benefit from helping them, your task is extremely simple. Just 2 things are required from you.

  1. You need to determine exactly what they’re worried about or excited about. How? By talking to your marketplace, by listening to them on social networks. It’s easy.
  2. You need to clearly demonstrate how your services or products will help them in that key area. How? By providing a powerful message that talks directly to them and their pain or joy.

The vast majority of small business marketing doesn’t do this. This means the door is wide open for you. What an opportunity to thrive. I couldn’t be more excited for you.

Note: This approach works in every economy… BUT it works 10X better when times are uncertain.

This is one of the easiest and fastest ways to dramatically increase your sales or client acquisition numbers. It starts to work for you, the moment your prospects see your new, optimal marketing message.

Discover their need.

Talk to their need.

Provide for their need.

Everybody wins.

The persuasion gap

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marketing tip, the persuasion gap, sales

Today, I’d like to show you a great way to make far more prospects hire you or buy from you.

Here’s what we know.

  • Testimonials from former customers or clients have limited persuasive effect on a prospect. Everyone uses them. And they’re always positive.
  • Samples of previous work we’ve done have limited persuasive effect on a prospect. Everyone uses them. And they’re always best-case examples.
  • Even being recommended to the prospect by someone they trust has limited persuasive effect. Everyone’s been let down by something recommended by a friend.

What’s left is what I call the persuasion gap: It’s the gap between how persuaded the prospect is, and how persuaded the prospect needs to be, before they will hire you or buy from you. 

So, how do you fill the persuasion gap?

We start by understanding a basic fact. When someone buys a product or service, they’re buying the future.

The future?

Yep!

It’s all about the future.

Think about it from the prospect’s perspective. Our product or service hasn’t been successfully delivered yet. It hasn’t worked as expected yet. It hasn’t provided the prospect with outstanding value yet. This is all future stuff. That’s what causes the persuasion gap. They simply don’t know if they’ll be delighted with buying from us in 12-weeks, 12-months or 12-years time.

To fill the persuasion gap, we need to convince them ahead of time. We need to convince them now, so they have a complete picture in their mind of a wonderful, future outcome. And to convince them, we need to confidently explain why we believe in the value of our product or service.

The more confidently we explain it, the better.

Why?

By confidently sharing the story of our product or service with prospects, and building their confidence in us, we help them fill their persuasion gap. That’s when they happily buy from us or hire us.

Photo by Cytonn Photography

Why email marketing doesn’t work in 2025

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why doesn't email marketing work, email marketing doesn't work, newsletter, email campaign 2025

A reader shared an interesting observation with me. She told me she had “found out the hard way that email marketing doesn’t work in 2025″.

She asked me for my thoughts on why email is so ineffective. I said I’d share them here, as I’m sure some of you will find it useful.

Email marketing works

Email marketing works. In fact, email marketing works extremely well. Better than ever.

Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. Whether it’s used for newsletters or promotions, the return on investment is off the charts.

Email marketing also works more predictably than just about any other form of marketing. And the tiny financial investment required for email marketing makes it the most cost effective form of marketing out there.

Email marketing doesn’t work when…

What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. Just ask anyone who’s doing it incorrectly.

Here’s the thing: ineffective email marketing can’t work.

why doesn't email marketing work, email marketing doesn't work, newsletter, email campaign

Here are just a few, very common examples of how small business owners get email marketing wrong.

  • A poorly written email won’t work. It will fail to motivate the reader to take action; to call you, email you, visit your website, make a purchase from you, whatever.
  • A professionally written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a want or need for your services.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a dull subject line, won’t work. That’s because no one will open it. The subject line has to be compelling or no matter what your message is, it will literally be ignored.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, offering a generic product or service, won’t work. No one wants to switch to a service that’s no better then their current service.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, but sent on the wrong day of the week, won’t work. At least, it won’t be anything like as effective as it would be, if you research the best time of day and best day of the week, to send it.
  • Oh, and if you send your emails frequently, or not frequently enough… that’s right, your email marketing won’t work.

You get the idea.

In short, before you reject any form of marketing as ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly.

So, instead of telling yourself that email marketing doesn’t work, ask yourself why YOUR email marketing doesn’t work. Otherwise, you’ll needlessly miss out on one of the most powerful forms of marketing on the planet!

Image: Shutterstock.

Be first

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do it first, proactive

Here’s a powerful, proven thought experiment I often use, to help people rapidly increase the growth of their businesses. I believe you’ll find it useful, so here it is.

I’d like you to muse on the following.

  1. Think of a business, which offers a unique blend of services, unlike others in their industry.
  2. Think of a business, which dedicates time every week to improving its effectiveness in one key area.
  3. Think of a business, which is dedicated to customer retention, so it seldom loses a client or customer.
  4. Think of a business, which actively builds a valuable network of decision makers.
  5. Think of a business, which uses highly effective marketing strategies, so it attracts the best customers.

Now, take a few moments to consider the following. What will happen when that type of business moves into your area, targeting your customers and targeting your future customers.

Here’s how to protect your business, AND make a ton of extra sales along the way.

Let’s go!

Be the threat

Before something like that happens to you, it’s essential for YOU to do it first. Become that threat, to your existing competitors. Take action on every one of those 5 steps above and watch your business grow faster and stronger than ever before.

The hardest part is not applying those 5 steps. There’s lots of ways to put all 5 of them into play. By far, the hardest part is getting started as soon as possible and working on it until your business is protected.

If you’re not quite motivated enough to take action yet, this may help. It’s what we see happen every time a well-prepared competitor targets an area.

  • The competitor arrives with a well-planned strategy in place and is making waves.
  • The competitor also has total control of the time line. This gives them a massive advantage.
  • The unprepared businesses are shocked to find themselves in the middle of a commercial attack.
  • The unprepared businesses are left scrambling for ideas as they try to figure out what to do. All the while, the competitor is gaining more and more market share.

In short, don’t wait. Be the threat. Plan for massive success right now. Choose to become that proactive, uniquely valuable, constantly improving threat to your competitors.

Plus, once you get started, you’ll quickly find yourself with more confidence, energy and greater peace of mind. It’s a natural consequence of proactively planning for success.

Photo by Ant Rozetsky

Why your subscribers aren’t hiring you (and how to fix it).

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monetize subscribers, subscribers into customers, marketing

Hannah has almost 2000 newsletter subscribers. Her open rates are always over 80%.

And yet in 5 years, she’s attracted just 4 paying clients directly from her newsletter readership.

She asked me what she was doing wrong. I suggested, with her permission, that as this is a really common problem, I’d share my answer with you.

Marketing data can mislead you

We’re now able to test and measure our digital marketing with great precision. And it’s causing hard working small business owners to make very expensive marketing mistakes.

For example. Service providers like Hannah, often look at the data for their newsletter’s open rates, clicks or shares, then write certain styles of headline or content, based on what’s popular.

That seems to make sense.

Until we look at the massive difference, between what’s popular with readers… and what generates bankable income for our business.

The key point here is that readers are mostly just that. They’re readers. They read our free stuff. And that’s it. This is especially the case when you provide free business information. The vast majority of people who subscribe have no intention of spending a dime with us. They’re looking for free information. Period.

Oh yeah. It really messes with your marketing data

That’s because the free stuff crowd are also the people most likely to open newsletters and click links.

They especially love sensational headlines. They’re attracted to them because they dabble rather than hire expert help, so their businesses are constantly struggling. Over-hyped headlines give them hope that they’re one ‘killer free idea’ away from solving their latest problem.

It’s not a coincidence that none of the 4 readers who hired Hannah directly from her newsletter, had high open rates or click rates. They almost hired her in spite of being on her list. This is because our ‘prospective client readers’ behave very, very differently from the ‘free stuff readers’.

The same approach that gets opens and clicks from freebie readers, leaves our prospective clients rolling their eyes.

Allow me to explain.

Yes, our prospective clients are certainly looking for great, useful information. And that’s a fact.

The BIG difference, is that they are also looking to provide their businesses with the resources and expertise it needs. This means when they consume our newsletters, podcasts, YouTube videos, whatever, they do so with a prospective need for our services and are building a picture of us.

And unlike the freebie crowd, they’re looking for clues.

For example.

  • They’re looking to see how reliable we are over a period of time. They want to know if we regularly show up with ideas or go missing unexpectedly for long periods.
  • They’re also looking for clues as to whether we’d work well together or not.
  • They want to see if our communication style is consistently clear and easy to understand.
  • And they want to see the depth and breadth of our knowledge over a period of time.

Plus a ton of other things they pick up on, which guides their decision to hire us.

In a nutshell: Don’t chase the subscriber data that has little, if any, real-world commercial value. Focus instead on creating for your prospects.