Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

The easy switch: Attract clients like a magnet

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switching providers, make switching easy, marketing tips

Today, I’m going to share an extremely powerful marketing tip with you. It’s something that the vast majority of your competitors either won’t be doing correctly or won’t be doing at all. Get it right and you’ll give yourself a massive competitive advantage. 

It starts with this fundamental truth.

People, including your prospective clients, universally HATE the hassle associated with switching providers.

Think about it.

I’m willing to guess that you and I probably have at least one current provider, who isn’t ideal. Their charges may have increased, with no meaningful increase in the value we get from them. Maybe they’re slow to respond when we contact them for support. Perhaps they’re not as interested in dealing with our problems, as they used to be. And we’re pretty darn sure that there are better providers out there.

So, why do we stay with an under performing provider?

We stay, for the same reason your prospective clients have stayed with their current provider.

It’s simply this.

Switching providers is risky and a time suck

People are hardwired to intentionally avoid risk. And because switching to a new provider feels risky, we tend to avoid it.

Yes, YOU know there’s no risk whatsoever in switching to you from their current provider. You know that you’ll look after them better than they could dream of, because you’re capable, reliable, trustworthy and honest. But THEY don’t know that!

People are also busy and switching providers is often time-consuming and frustrating.

So, what’s the answer?

Make switching stress free and easy

The proven solution to this problem is something I call The Easy Switch. It’s a strategy where you make it as easy as possible for prospects to switch to you. It requires a two pronged approach.

1. Showcase your trust assets.
Make it as easy as possible for prospective clients to see for themselves, why they should trust you. You do this using your trust assets; things that help establish you as a safe, low-risk option for them.

Your trust assets might include providing them with a list of your success and achievements. You can also highlight the promises and guarantees you offer, along with testimonials you have from extremely happy clients. And if you’ve been in your current line of business for a long time, don’t keep it a secret. Include that, too. 

2. Make switching to you as simple as possible.
This is the most important part. Even after trust has been established, the perceived challenges involved and the time required in order to switch providers is enough to put people off.

Some providers use a version of the lock in effect / vendor lock in, where they deliberately make moving from them as hard as they can, for their clients. This is a huge problem in some industries, but less of a problem in others.

Regardless, you need to make the switch to you as frictionless, uncomplicated and stress-free as possible.

The best providers have a client transition process in place, where someone from their team manages the whole process for new clients. They stay in close contact with the new client to answer questions, overcome issues with the former provider and offer all the help they can. I do this with my new clients and I very strongly advise you to do the same. 

Show them how easy it is to switch to you

Once you’ve addressed those two parts of the switching process, it’s really important to let your prospective clients know. It needs to feature very prominently in your marketing, especially if you’re in an industry that’s known for making it hard to switch. It needs to be a key point in your conversations with prospective clients.

Equipped with visible trust assets and an equally visible strategy to make switching to you an absolute breeze, you become a much more attractive choice for prospective clients.

You will become the natural choice. The stress-free choice. And for many, you will become the only choice.

Closing the sale?

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close the sale, closing tactics, business

When I started out in sales and marketing, it was all about closing the sale.

In fact, good salespeople were often referred to as good closers.

Decades later, I still see sales recruiters asking for candidates who have a proven record of closing.

Here’s why you need to be extremely careful, before using any of the countless closing techniques and tricks.

Closing for business?

The challenge with the closing mindset, is that it positions the prospective customer as little more than an obstacle. A barrier between you and the sale. A hurdle to be overcome. It’s little wonder so many closing techniques are based on aggressive, psychological tactics.

Here are a couple of the worst, widely used examples today.

  • The silence close. This is where a series of long, uncomfortable silences are used at key points in the sales process. The person selling uses this discomfort to exert the maximum mental pressure on the prospective client. It’s borrowed from interrogation techniques!
  • Assuming the sale. This is where the person selling literally ignores the prospect’s lack of interest and acts as if the prospect has agreed to make the purchase. They just start asking for the delivery address and a suitable date. When/if the prospect objects, the salesperson responds with a series of why? questions, further pressuring the prospect.

In a nutshell, the focus is on outmanoeuvring your opponent. It’s them against you. A confrontation.

Here’s a very different approach, along with why I strongly recommend you use it.

Opening

I built my reputation in sales by adopting the total opposite approach. Instead of focusing on closing, I focused on opening. And I made a fortune.

Opening?

Yes. Opening relationships and opening opportunities. I found the idea of closing to be self-defeating. I discovered that you can achieve a great deal more, by opening relationships with people. This means taking time to listen to them. And then learning about their challenges and what they want or need. If our marketing is targeted correctly, we’re automatically only speaking with people who are our ideal profile of client.

When handled correctly, and preceded with effective marketing, this means there’s no need to close anything or close on anyone.

The whole process becomes a natural, flowing conversation, where we seek to help people overcome a challenge, with the products or services we provide.

It’s an effective, rewarding and professional way to achieve amazing sales results, and build masses of high-value relationships that last.

Too passive?

No way! This approach may sound passive, but consider the people YOU like. The people you trust. The vendors you’re already purchasing from. Are they pushy? Are they confrontational? No! That’s because we avoid people like that. Conversely, we’re attracted to those who respect us and are open and honest with us.

We trust people who are open and honest.

We buy from people who are open and honest.

We value people who are open and honest.

We recommend people who are open and honest.

In short, the more open we are, the more opportunities we’re open to, the more sales we make and then, the more referrals we receive.

Stop offering solutions

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copywriting, marketing tip,

The word ‘solutions‘ is one of the most damaging in marketing. Here’s why. Plus, how to stop it from losing you a fortune in lost sales.  

I need to stat with a quick question: What is the main reason someone should buy from you or hire you?

That’s a question, which many small businesses struggle to answer correctly. And it means they’re unable to provide their prospective customers or clients with a clear, compelling reason to buy from them, rather than a competitor. 

This is where the problem with solutions comes in.

The thing about solutions

The lack of a clear, compelling reason is why we see the word solutions used in small business marketing all the time, to describe what their business does.

Note – I’m only talking about when business owners use solutionsinstead of being specific. For example, when their marketing offers prospective customers.

  • HR solutions.
  • Email marketing solutions.
  • Cost effective solutions.
  • Training solutions.
  • Or “a range of solutions”, etc.

By using solutions, they’re telling us nothing. Their message is weak. There’s no reason for us to contact them. So, their marketing is largely ignored. And it loses them a fortune.

I don’t want that to happen to you, my friend. So, here’s a far more effective approach.

The alternative is to get specific

Determine the core value you bring to a prospective client. Then, communicate it with impact.

For example, instead of saying you, “offer a range of email marketing solutions”, get specific. Tell them, “We can help you increase sales and boost your profits, with professional, proven email marketing.”

Back in the 1980’s, business owners were advised to develop an elevator pitch. The idea was to create a compelling 5 or 10 second business introduction. Commerce today, online and offline, is like a series of elevator pitch-type interactions. Your prospective customers are busy. Really busy. They’re being bombarded with emails, calls, social network updates, text messages… it’s relentless.

They don’t have time for long or vague marketing messages. They want answers. Fast! That’s why a specific, brief and well-crafted message has never been more important or more effective.

So, get specific.

Look for the core reason why a prospective customer should hire you, rather than hire a competitor. Look for the tangible, measurable value your service offers. Then, communicate it in a compelling way.

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.

Accurate marketing data can cause us problems

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.

  • Readers are mostly just that. They’re readers. They read our free stuff. That’s it. I myself have newsletters I read, which I don’t make purchases from. You probably do, too.
  • Only a subset of readers are prospective clients. This is usually a relatively small percentage.

In short: The vast majority of people who subscribe for useful, free business information have no intention of spending a dime with us. They’re looking for free information. Period.

Oh yeah. They really mess 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, free special reports and free white papers, etc. They are 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 over-hyped approach that gets opens and clicks from freebie hunters, 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 just how informed we are; the depth and breadth of our knowledge.

Plus a ton of other things they pick up on, which guides their decision to hire us or not.

The freebie crowd don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that!

In a nutshell: For a service provider, the most valuable feedback from your content marketing, is if it’s generating high quality paying clients or not. So please, don’t chase the numbers that have little or no, real-world commercial value.

How to get your fees right

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get your fees right, fee setting, set fees

Yesterday, a business owner asked me if I had any tips on how to get your fees right. That question is often asked by newsletter subscribers. So, I’m not only going to answer it today, I’m also going to show you how to earn more than you’ve ever earned before, from prospects who eagerly want to hire you.

Let’s start with a few questions.

  • Do your clients pay you what you’re worth?
  • Do your clients give you the freedom to produce your best work?
  • Do your clients respect you?

Even if you found yourself answering ‘no’ to all three of those questions, you don’t have three challenges to overcome.

You only have one.

The news gets better, my friend. Because it’s an easy challenge to solve and the rewards are far, far greater than you might think.

Overcome the fee setting challenge

Here’s why this is an easy challenge to solve.

  • You don’t need to figure out how to know in advance if a client will respect you.
  • You don’t need to be able to tell ahead of time, if they will allow you the freedom to do your best work, either.

All you need to know is that you’ve set your fee correctly and they’re happy to pay you what you know you’re worth.

Here’s why.

When a client pays you what you’re worth, you don’t have to rush. Your time is being rewarded correctly, so you’re free to consistently provide your very best work, on schedule.

And clients who pay you what you’re worth, who rely on you for this consistently high-quality service, also respect your contribution.

They rely on the value you bring. They respect you for all that you do, to enrich them or their business.

All this was built on the fee you quoted and their decision to agree to your fee.

Why getting your fees right is essential to your success

When you set your fee, you set more than the financial return for your services. You set the whole framework for your relationship with the client.

And in turn, you set the profitability, on every level, of your business.

Here’s what happens.

You create a positive cycle. It’s a cycle where…

  • You’re free to produce your best work.
  • You’re regularly recommended by your delighted clients.
  • You’re respected in your marketplace, because of what your clients say about you.
  • You’re paid accordingly by new clients, who know about your excellent reputation.
  • These new clients then start that cycle all over again.

Not sure how to set your fee? It’s really easy.

Decide exactly what your fees need to be, in order for you to provide your very best work, and smash your financial targets. Then, make your services so good that they’re worth at least twice as much as your fees. This makes your fees extremely attractive to prospective clients, as you’re charging them just half of what your services are worth.

Achieve high impact sales, with minim effort or budget

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high impact marketing, low budget marketing, alternative marketing ideas

Small business owners have limited resources to dedicate to marketing. This should not be a barrier to success. Far from it. Here are some high impact marketing ideas that require very little time, and little or no marketing money.

Allow me to explain.

When you find yourself with limited resources, the key is to focus on doing less, but doing better. However, lots of small business owners find they spend a lot of time and/or money on marketing, for relatively little reward.

The most common example is social media marketing. Yes, it can work. But I can’t think of a less effective, yet more demanding and stressful option. There are small business owners who regularly spend their valuable time, feeding content black holes like Instagram, LinkedIn, TikToc, etc. Other’s pay ‘social media managers’ to do it for them. There are much better, easier, faster, free-of charge ways to achieve vastly higher sales results.

Here’s a high impact example of what I mean.

It’s an idea that came to me while enjoying a coffee. And it took the coffee shop owner just 20-minutes to deploy. Today, over a year later, it still gets regular customers from various social media networks, without the coffee shop owner having to invest time on any social network. Read how I did this, here.

Here’s another example.

Attract customers on YouTube… without a YouTube channel

You can achieve high impact results from YouTube, without even having a YouTube channel. And not just results, but results that will put you, your business, products or services in front of thousands of targeted viewers.

No advertising required.

No money required.

Just a high impact marketing idea.

You’re an expert in your area of business. YouTubers who interview, or chat with experts in your business niche, struggle to find enough high-quality people to speak with. This is especially the case with YouTubers who have well-established channels.

Here’s how to start. Email the show’s host with an introduction or call them. When one of them invites you on their channel, you will be swapping your stories or expertize for exposure. So, for their part, the host will let their viewers know who you are and how to contact you. Once you’ve appeared on a number of channels, invites from other show hosts will start coming to you. Remember, YouTubers have the trust of their viewers. Their positive words about you and your services or products, can have off-the-charts sales results… short, medium and long-term.

In short, there are a lot of ways to massively increase your sales or attract new clients, without spending your valuable time or money. You do not need to buy ads, pay social media managers or dance the social media dance.

So please, aim for high impact instead, my friend.

You’ve grabbed your reader’s attention. Now what?

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content marketing, newsletters, copywriting,

You have grabbed your reader’s attention. Your next step is extremely important. Here’s what to do next, plus something you must avoid in order for your marketing to be effective.

Let’s go.

Getting the reader’s attention is the easy part. We can do that with a clickbait headline or an outrageous statement.

However, a marketing message needs to tell them something or sell them something. And it absolutely must be consistent with that headline or statement we used.

If not, we lose twice over.

  1. We’ll lose the sale.
  2. We’ll lose the reader and the chance to market to them again. They’ll remember that we used an inaccurate headline to trick them into opening that email or clicking that link. They’ll feel foolish. They’ll feel duped. They’ll remember for a long time.

It’s a terrible tactic with a limited lifespan. The longer a business owner uses it, the more prospective clients they will alienate. That means when we have something to share with them, which is well-written, which is worth their time, which is what they need, which is what they want… they won’t click on it or open it.

The solution

By all means, grab their attention. Just make damn sure that your message is of interest to them, that it’s consistent with your attention-grabbing headline or statement, and that it motivates them to take whatever action you require.

That way, you win twice over.

  1. You’ll win the sale.
  2. You’ll win the attention of the prospect, because you’ll have trained them that you’re worth taking notice of.

Now that’s a win-win situation worth striving for!

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Keep the good. Lose the bad!

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marketing review, small business

A friend of mine regularly appears as an expert on business programs. She called me with a question. It’s a question about a foundational truth of all business success and I think you’ll find my answer useful, so I’m sharing it with you.

Okay. Here’s my friend’s question.

I need a piece of business advice, which would work as a very short sound bite. I’m live on TV in just under 30 minutes. Can you help?

Fortunately, I had been working a few days earlier with one of my clients and shared something, which he found really useful. I figured it might be what she was looking for. She loved it. She used it. And it worked perfectly.

It was this. “Hold on to what’s working and let go of what isn’t”.

Allow me to explain.

Holding on and letting go

Much of what we do as part of our day-to-day business is habitual. At least to a degree. Here are just a few common examples.

  • We have certain service providers we go to for particular challenges.
  • We have a familiar set of business strategies, which we’re comfortable using.
  • We rely on specific people for professional, expert advice.
  • We use a pretty fixed selection of software and hardware for certain tasks.

Over the years, these providers, strategies, people and technologies become a key part of how small business owners operate their business.

However, the most successful business owners use a different approach.

They keep their eyes open for better alternatives all the time.

They know that meaningful improvement is only possible by reviewing what you do, holding on to what’s working and letting go of what isn’t.

Not already a subscriber? Then join my mailing list here.

Is it working or not?

It’s only natural for us to feel comfortable with what seems to be working. And after all, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it! The thing is, we can only be certain that something isn’t broken if we check for better alternatives.

Here’s a recent example. Organic SEO was a very powerful form of marketing. Is this true today? For millions of business owners the answer is a resounding ‘no!’. Since Google’s AI Overview was announced on May 14th 2024, organic search results have been pushed way, way down their search engine results page.

Google’s AI Overview is also answering the very questions people used to visit your website for. So, you could be the number one organic result and see a fraction of the traffic you used to receive.

And what about the assumptions we make?

For instance, consider the assumptions we make about the market we serve. Are these assumptions working for us? If not, we need to let them go and make better, informed decisions. This is especially the case if we’re seeing a drop in sales or marketing results.

Changes

With very few exceptions, people have significantly changed how they spend money and invest. The pandemic, followed by the economic fluctuations since, has radically altered priorities. Small business owners today, who are marketing similarly to the way they did back in 2022, are not even close to what their prospects need to hear from them two years later.

Why not take some time to review the things you’re currently holding on to. Especially those you haven’t changed in recent years. Make sure they’re still the best option for you.

Check if they’re still optimal.

Then hold on to what’s working and let go of what isn’t.

It motivates people to take action, now

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marketing, desire, short supply

Here’s the foundation of all successful marketing. In just 7 words.

It motivates people to take action, now.

I’ll break that down into 3 steps, so you can put it to work for your business.

  1. It motivates people: It gives them a compelling reason. A reason, which is powerful enough to grab their attention and generate enough desire within them that they’re ready for the next step.
  2. To take action: It makes a direct request. It asks them to; call us, click here, proceed to checkout, visit us, read this, subscribe, etc.
  3. Now: It asks them, whilst their motivation is high, to take the action required. Right now. Straight away. That’s because even if they love what you said and are genuinely interested, their attention will soon jump onto the next thing. This could be a notification on their phone, a delivery person might arrive with a package for them or they suddenly notice it’s time to meet their friend for lunch… and you’ll lose them. They tell themselves “I’ll do it later” and later becomes never.

The marketing from most small and medium-sized businesses is missing at least one of those essential steps. It’s either not motivating enough, lacks a direct call to action or doesn’t generate sufficient urgency. And it’s losing these businesses an absolute fortune.

We have to be smarter than that.

How to overcome the problem

Take a look at all your marketing messages and check you have all 3 of those steps fully covered. Try to be as open-minded as possible. Make sure it’s motivating, action driven and urgent. If you think any of those areas can be improved, improve them. Repeat this process until you have fully maximized everything.

Then remind yourself that you’ll always be able to wrestle another few percent improvement… and do it again. It’s hard to overstate what a massive, positive impact this will have on your marketing and sales results.

Marketing 101: Your prospects really need you

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marketing obligation, increase sales, professional obligation

Photo by Brooke Cagle.

Today marks the start of the final quarter of 2024 and I want to help you finish the year strong. So, here’s a proven way to significantly increase your sales.

Let’s go.

You’ve connected with a prospective client or customer.

You’ve taken time to fully understand their needs.

You are now absolutely certain that your service or product is exactly what they require. Experience of your industry assures you that they won’t find a better match than you, anywhere.

It’s at this exact point where you have a professional obligation to the prospect. An obligation to make sure they don’t make the mistake of hiring or buying from another provider.

Your professional obligation

The reason you have an obligation, is that as a professional, you always act in the interests of the market you serve. You have no way to know just how badly people will be served by one of your competitors.

The only thing you can know for certain, is that you take great care to provide your clients with a superb, professional service. In short, your prospects really need you!

Okay. Please hold that thought for a moment.

Now consider your next conversation with a prospective client.

Before you begin, simply remind yourself of the facts above; that you can provide exactly what the prospect needs, that you’ll serve them better than any of your competitors and that the prospect needs you.

Here’s what very often happens

Having shared this idea with countless business owners over the years, here’s what I have found again and again.

By approaching the conversation with your prospect, mindful of your genuine commitment to their best interests, it significantly improves how they feel about you and how they feel about what you say.

Interestingly, you don’t need to deliberately change the words you use.

Why?

Because what you’re doing is 100% sincere. It’s the real you.

It’s natural, not scripted.

It’s genuine, not a trick.

When I started to use this approach for my own business, I found that it soon increased my client base. And for decades, I’ve seen it help my own clients to greatly increase their sales.

What changes by is how you communicate; your eagerness to listen fully to what they say, the cadence of your conversation, your facial expressions and your body language, etc. You’re now communicating with them as an ally who is looking out for them and their best interests. Because that’s exactly who you are, and it’s exactly what you’re doing.

It all starts with reminding yourself how much you care for your clients, how truly committed you are to delighting them and how much you want to help them avoid making a mistake.