Marketing tips, marketing help and advice

Get specific. Really specific

May 26, 2018 by Jim Connolly

As a business owner, there are 2 ways you can choose to market your services. One works extremely well. One doesn’t. And most people are choosing the wrong option. I don’t want that to happen to you.

Here are both options, along with how to make the right choice for you and your business.

Try and appeal to as many people as possible.
Intentionally choose the type of customers or clients you want to service. And ignore the rest.

The first option seems to make sense

The thinking looks like this: If we try and appeal to as wide a range of people as possible, we’ll have more prospective customers. This should mean we’ll make more sales (or attract more clients).

The reality is different. Very, very different.

By trying to be relevant to almost anyone who could have a need for your services, you end up being directly relevant to no one.

Here’s the problem: Only a directly relevant message has the power to motivate a prospective customer to take action.

Vague, diluted, semi-relevant messages are ignored.

Here’s a far better approach

The most successful business owners get specific. They decide exactly who they want to serve. They then intentionally focus on communicating with this section of their marketplace. They learn what matters most to this group. They uncover their main challenges. They then connect with them in a way that’s directly relevant and therefore exceptionally powerful.

That kind of specific, directly relevant marketing is what’s required, to inspire people to buy from you or hire you.

Focus on the edges, not the middle

May 24, 2018 by Jim Connolly

The middle ground feels safer. That’s why it’s so crowded. However, it’s very hard to stand out, when you embrace the middle ground. The real value comes from pushing what you do to the edges.

There isn’t an area of your business, which you can’t edge.

Here are some examples to get you started:

Push your copywriting to the edges, so it motivates people to take action.
Push your quality to the edges, so your brand becomes a byword for excellence.
Push your communication skills to the edges, so people feel motivated when you speak.
Push your leadership to the edges, so people follow you.
Push your creativity to the edges, so you can find the answers and ideas you need.
Push your courage to the edges, so you do what’s right rather than what feels safe.
Push your commitment to the edges, so your business gets the resources it needs.
Push your service to the edges, so it’s different from your competitors and of unique value to people.
Push your customer service to the edges, so people tell their friends how well you looked after them.
Push your visibility to the edges, so prospective clients can find you.

Let others cling onto the middle ground. Let them offer average services, to average people, for average fees. You deserve batter than that!

Embrace the edges, my friend. Embrace the edges, stand out and let your prospective clients see just how remarkable you are.

The secret to attracting regular referrals

May 23, 2018 by Jim Connolly

Cindy asked me a great question earlier. She wanted to know the best way to generate word of mouth referrals for her business. Here’s one of the tips I gave her, which you may find really useful.

The key to attracting word of mouth referrals, is to understand the following:

Word of mouth spreads between the people in your marketplace. It goes from person to person. NOT from you to them.

So don’t interrupt people.

Don’t pester people for referrals.

Because you don’t need to!

People love to talk. And they really love to share stories about their experiences. Either face-to-face or online. Your task as a business owner, is to give people a story about your business that’s worth sharing. For example, give them a customer service story, that’s so good they want to tell their friends. I list 9 more examples here. That should give you enough ideas to get you started.

Right now, you’re just 1 story away from having your marketplace buzzing with people talking about [recommending] your business. So, what are you waiting for?

Tip: For a world-class example of how it works, read this — Why storytelling is the cornerstone of successful marketing.

An incredibly easy way to turn time wasters into gold dust

May 21, 2018 by Jim Connolly

How do you feel about people, who either ask you questions about your service or look around your products, then leave without buying?

Some business owners get angry. They perceive these people to be time wasters. In doing so, they miss out on a massively valuable opportunity. They leave a huge business asset on the table, untapped.

I’m referring to the feedback, which so-called time wasters can provide you with. Feedback, which can help you dramatically improve your marketing and sales results.

Allow me to explain.

You attract time wasters for a reason

If you’re attracting lots of the wrong type of enquiries, there’s a reason. It’s usually a sign that:

Your marketing message needs to be improved.
You are marketing to the wrong people.
Or both.

It’s extremely easy to learn which applies to your marketing, so long as you ask for feedback. Armed with this valuable information, you can then adapt and improve your marketing so you attract the right kind of enquiries.

Before they end the call or leave your premises, ask something like: What was it that prompted you to (visit or call) us today? This will give you some outstandingly valuable feedback to work with.

For example

If people often say they were looking for a low-priced whatever, (yet your prices are average or above average), you need to review your marketing message. Take a look and see if you are overstating how low your prices are.
If you are not overstating how low your prices are, then you could well be targeting your marketing message at people with too small a budget.

You get the idea.

The key is to get as much feedback as you can from those who fail to hire you or buy from you. It will help you improve your marketing message, improve your targeting and generate more business!

So, reframe how you think about time wasters. Speak with them. Listen. Learn from their feedback. Then, make the necessary improvements to your marketing. Don’t just assume that someone is a time waster and therefore of no value to your business. Their feedback could be commercial gold dust.

In fact, it usually is.

How to find winning ideas for your business AND put them into action

May 17, 2018 by Jim Connolly

In today’s post, I share a strategy with you that can help you have more, winning ideas than ever before.

Think about it: Behind every successful business are a series of ideas. Winning ideas, which open up new opportunities or set the business on a new path. The challenge with winning ideas is that they often look like average ideas, until after they become hugely successful. As a result, most great ideas never see the light of they. In fact, I bet you have a few tucked away right now, without even knowing it.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Some experts thought laptops would never become popular

In 1985, The New York Times announced the death of laptop computers; “Whatever happened to the laptop computer?” They wondered why laptops never became popular (seriously).

“[…] I.B.M. never legitimized the market with its much rumored ”Clamshell,” probably because the company realized that laptops are a small niche market, not a mass market.”

And when the electric light bulb was invented, most people said it would never become a mass market product. It was thought that there was no affordable way to get electricity to enough homes.

Ideas that win

Business owners sometimes ask me what I think of an idea they have. The challenge here, is that it doesn’t matter what I think or what their friends think. Winning ideas are not anointed. If you want to know how good your idea is, you need to get it out there. If you do, you will find it’s almost impossible to fail.

It’s a win-win thing.

If it flies, you’ll have a success on your hands.
If it flops, you’ll learn something, which you can invest in the next idea and greatly increase your chances of success.

Ironically, the only way to guarantee an idea will fail, is to try and protect it from failure by locking it away.

It’s a lose-lose thing.

The idea you fail to ship can’t succeed.
The idea you fail to ship can’t teach you anything new.

This not only insulates you from success, it insulates you from learning and growing.

When I started out in business, I found it very hard to put my ideas into action. I knew it made sense. I knew I needed to do it. But it’s one of those pieces of advice, which is ‘easier said than done’.

Thankfully, I discovered a way forward, which I’m going to share with you.

Here’s the strategy that worked for me

I’ve shared this strategy with countless people over the years and the results have been amazing. It’s actually really, really simple.

My breakthrough came, when I figured out that the part of my mind responsible for putting ideas into action, was weak. It needed improving, conditioning, strengthening. I thought one way to do this, would be to treat it like a weak muscle. To make a weak muscle strong, you start off by working with very light weights. As the muscle grows, you slowly increase the weight you’re working with. Eventually, the muscle becomes strong.

I started, by acting on what I considered to be small ideas. Ideas that were unlikely to set the world on fire if they worked, but where there was relatively little downside if they failed.

Every time I acted on one of these small business ideas, I’d write it down in a journal, along with the results. With every new journal entry, my ‘idea muscles’ grew a little. I also noticed that even with these small ideas, my business was starting to see some very encouraging results. This further built my idea muscles. Pretty soon I was working with excitement on big ideas. Today, I actively look for them. I seek them out. And if they’re interesting, I put them into play.

As the frequency and size of the ideas you act on increases, so does the development of your business. And something else happens. Business in general becomes a lot more interesting. That’s because working on new ideas, even small ones, is extremely invigorating. It causes you to think differently, meet new people and explore new opportunities. Just remember to start with small ideas. Slowly build it up. And be sure to chronicle your results, so you can see the progress you’re making.

I hope you found this useful. If you did, please share it using one of the options below.

This is totally, utterly unreasonable

May 16, 2018 by Jim Connolly

I’ve had an idea that could help your business in multiple ways. It’s an unreasonable idea. Yes, I know that sounds weird.

Allow me to explain.

If a product or service is only reasonably good, it’s nothing special. It’s just okay. It’s certainly not good enough to motivate people to buy from you, hire you or tell all their friends about you.

This got me thinking

The opposite of reasonable is unreasonable.

So… what if someone decided to embrace an unreasonable mindset to their business and the services they provide?

I believe it could lead to massive improvements, across their whole business. Here are just a few examples of what an unreasonable approach might look like.

The business owner could choose to:

Be unreasonably committed to customer service and the happiness of their clients.
Show unreasonable persistence, when it comes to keeping their promises.
Have an unreasonable attitude to life-long-learning.
Set the bar unreasonably high, on the quality of work they’re willing to ship. [This will help you get it right]
Have an unreasonable passion for helping others to succeed.

Any business operating from that kind of unreasonable mindset, is going to get noticed. They’re going to retain their clients for longer, too. And yes, they’re going to give their clients and their marketplace something to tell their friends about.

If being reasonable isn’t working for you, you now have an unreasonable alternative to consider.

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