Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing ideas to help you grow your business

Marketing 101: Total website optimization

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marketing tips, optimisation, optimization, seo

There are lots of ways to optimize a web page or blog post. The most obvious and popular is SEO. However, it’s only half the story. In today’s post, I’m going to share another kind of optimization, which is even more important.

As you know, with SEO you optimize your content and site. The idea is to make it rank as highly on search engines as possible, for the correct search terms. It means getting the balance right, with things like:

  • Word count.
  • Image tags.
  • Keyword repetition.
  • The use of bold (and italics) on certain words
  • The use of keyword weighted subheadings.
  • External link building.
  • Internal linking.

Basic SEO is both important and easy. Really easy.

There are software packages, which will show you exactly what to do. As of August 2017, Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress alone has over 3 millions active users. And many of Yoast’s users have thousands of pages optimized. There could be hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of SEO’d pages out there. Remember, that’s just one of many SEO packages, on just one framework.

Another way to optimize your website or blog

As well as optimizing for search engines, there’s another area of optimization. It’s something, which gets a lot less attention. That’s because it’s a lot trickier. Plus, you can’t automate it. I’m referring to optimizing your writing for people. For example:

  • Improving the clarity of your message.
  • Summoning the courage to write what you believe, rather than repeat your version of what everyone else is saying.
  • Maximizing the motivational impact of your message, so it becomes utterly compelling and converts readers into clients, customers, sales leads, subscribers, etc.

Be sure to get the basics of SEO right. Make it as easy as possible for search engines to understand what your site is about, so they can offer it as a resource to the right people.

More importantly, when people arrive on your website or blog, your words need to inspire them to take action. So, consistently strive to optimize your writing. Make it as compelling as possible. Every word must count. No fluff.

Because there’s no point attracting people to your site, if they leave as quickly as they arrived.

5 Ideas my clients found useful this week

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mareting tips, marketing ideas

Here are 5 ideas, which I shared with business owners this week. They’re based on some of the answers I provided, during a couple of Pick My Brain Sessions.

Here they are in no particular order. I hope you find them useful as my clients did.

  1. The more questions you answer in your marketing, the lower your response rate will be. Great marketing creates curiosity. Bad marketing reduces it. Every answered question makes the prospective client less curious and less likely to contact you.
  2. People don’t visit coffee shops for the coffee. They already have coffee at home and at work. They leave home or work, and pay 500% more for coffee at the coffee shop, because of the experience. Understanding this principle is essential if you’re serious about growing your business.
  3. If you have a business challenge and you can’t talk about it, now you have two challenges.
  4. Your competitors work hard and are passionate about building their business. Not all of them. But enough of them, for it to hurt your business if you stand still for too long.
  5. If you’re struggling with a new challenge, you may need a new strategy. If you’re struggling with an old challenge, you definitely need a new strategy.

You can Pick My Brain here.

How to make the right choice for your business

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marketing advice, choices

Would you like to get far more, highly targeted client/customer enquiries?

If you just answered yes, then I have a suggestion for you. I want you to consider a more deliberate approach to your marketing. It’s about intentionally choosing what your business stands for, then acting in accordance with it.

Here are just a couple of examples.

  • Do you want your business to be known as a reassuringly expensive, high quality brand or a no-frills provider? Choose. Then set your prices and quality accordingly.
  • Do you want your business to be remarkable or do you want it to be similar to your competitors? Choose. Then either offer something amazing or do what’s expected.

The thing is, you need to choose

In the examples above, both options can be amazingly successful.

There are billion dollar luxury providers and billion dollar no-frills providers. These successful brands intentionally choose which end of the market they want to serve. Then, they market their brand accordingly.

There are remarkable and unremarkable businesses, who make billions.

  • The remarkable brands put their time into developing something spectacular, which people will talk about, recommend and share.
  • The unremarkable brands invest their time developing high-return advertisements, introducer networks and hustling.

Both approaches work extremely well, when done correctly.

What doesn’t work well, is either failing to choose what your business stands for, or choosing, but acting inconsistently with your choice.

Overcoming the main challenge here

Over the years, I’ve found there is a major reason why small business owners get this wrong. It’s that they almost always feel as though they MUST be a high price or remarkable provider. And that if they aren’t, they’re somehow setting their sights too low.

This thinking is totally, utterly incorrect! Your business can thrive whatever end of the market you choose to serve.

McDonald’s, globally, will generate more income and profits today, than the most expensive, high class restaurant in your city will manage, in the next year or 10 years.

So, get intentional. Choose what you want your business to stand for and market it accordingly. This 1 step alone, will give you a huge advantage over your competitors.

And that’s not all my friend.

It will also provide you with massively more clarity and allow you to make better decisions.

Email marketing doesn’t work

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marketing advice, email marketing

A reader contacted me over the weekend with an interesting observation. She told me she “found out the hard way, that email marketing doesn’t work“.

She asked me for my thoughts. I said I’d share them here, as I think some of you will find it useful.

Email marketing works

In fact, it works extremely well. It works predictably, too. What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. Ineffective email marketing can’t work. 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, whatever. And almost all small business marketing emails are DIY attempts, not professionally written.
  • A professionally-written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a demand for your services.
  • A great email, sent to the right people, with the wrong subject line, won’t work. No one will open it!
  • You get the idea.

The same holds true with every kind of marketing.

Take a look at the various types of marketing you’ve used in the past, which you stopped using because they didn’t work. Review exactly what you did. Then, see if you can identify where things went wrong.

Why? Because it’s very, very likely you’re missing out on a ton of new customers or clients. Marketing works. But only if you’re doing the right things, correctly.

7 Proven ideas to attract more sales or client enquiries

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marketing tips, marketing help, marketing advice

Look at the 7 ideas below. Each one represents something, which your clients and future clients are attracted to.

If you currently attract too few sales or client enquiries, you’ll almost certainly be missing one or more of the following.

  1. People love to succeed: What are you doing, to help them achieve their dreams?
  2. People love to feel secure: What are you doing, to help them avoid risk?
  3. People love to learn: What are you doing, to educate them on something important to them?
  4. People love to belong: What are you doing, to create a community for them?
  5. People love to save time: What are you doing, to help them reclaim wasted time?
  6. People love to talk: What are you doing, to give them a story worth sharing?
  7. People love to relax: What are you doing, to reduce the stress in their lives?

Are any of those areas missing from your marketing message? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them.

Plan your work and work your plan!

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Plan your work, work your plan,

I shared an idea earlier with some entrepreneurs, which I think you may find useful. It’s a powerful, yet very simple difference in how they run their day. It’s about the need to plan your work work your plan.

I’ve also included a tip, which you can use to accelerate the growth of your business.

It starts with an observation I’ve made, time and time again, since starting my business in 1995. When I speak with business owners, who work hard for too little reward, they tend to spend a lot of time reacting. Specifically, reacting to the demands of their clients / customers and colleagues. As such, they spend too little time developing their own business.

This scenario is most commonly expressed in that often-repeated business advice; “You need to spend more time working on your business and less time working in your business.”

Of course, every business owner needs to respond to the needs of their business. What I’ve discovered is that the most successful business owners respond differently from their average counterparts.

Plan your work and work your plan

It looks like this.

The smartest business owners remain focussed on their plans. This means they do what’s required for their clients, colleagues etc., and then refocus like a laser on their own plans. They plan their work, then work their plan. As a result, each day brings progress. Some days more than others. The key thing is they move their business forward every single day.

The average business owner also has a plan or at least a to-do list. However, they find their plans are often derailed by the demands of others. So, whilst they start their day correctly, their plans often go out the window. They work hard, but make little if any progress on their plans. Before they know it, a day of too little progress becomes a week of too little progress, a week becomes a month, a month becomes a year… drip, drip, drip.

What’s the answer?

The short answer is that we need to plan our work and work our plan. It’s the second part that’s tricky. As I mentioned a moment ago, most business owners have a plan of some description.

plan work, work plan, and work plan

The challenge is sticking with the plan, when the day-to-day needs of their business come along.

Here’s what worked for me

I used the following, simple approach, to ensure my focus returned to my plan for the day. I set a reminder on my phone, which went off every 3 hours during the work day. When the alarm went off, a message would appear on my phone, saying work the plan.

Did you notice how the previous paragraph is in the past tense?

That’s because after a couple of weeks, I didn’t need the alarm. I learned to automatically refocus on my plan for the day, as soon as I’d completed an off-plan activity. It’s hard to overstate what a huge, measurable improvement this has made to my business and the businesses of many I have shared the idea with.

Plan your work and work your plan. Harder then it sounds, sure. However, it’s extremely valuable my friend.

Let’s grow your business!

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