Marketing ideas to help you grow your business
Someone emailed me with a question, which I’d love to share with you.
She wanted some free advice, on how to “deal with the losers” who ask her for free advice.
The lesson here? It pays to look in the mirror before we’re critical of others. With a little reflection, we may learn something about ourselves… or avoid looking silly.
What is the main reason someone should buy from you or hire you?
That’s a question, which many small businesses struggle with. And it hurts their marketing. It means they are unable to provide their prospective clients with a clear, compelling reason to buy from them, rather than a competitor.
This is why we see the word solutions used in amateur marketing all the time, to describe what a business does.
Note – If you’ve already, clearly stated the value you bring, it’s okay to use the word. I’m talking about when business owners use solutions instead of being specific.
For example:
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 your business, my friend. So here’s a far more effective approach.
Determine the core value you bring to a prospective client. Then, communicate it with impact and brevity.
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 clients 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 client should hire you, rather than a competitor. Look for the tangible value your service offers. Then, communicate it in a compelling way. It’s far more powerful than claiming to offer a non-specific “solution”.
Ever wondered why so many articles, blog posts, videos and newsletters are based around the idea of a list?
Yes, you’re right. It’s because they’re extremely popular. People love them. And it’s easy to see why.
List-based content promises a number of bite-sized ideas or suggestions. And fast! So when we see “10 habits of highly successful business owners“, we’re not expecting an in-depth examination of commercial success.
No.
We’re expecting ideas. And we hope that at least one of those ideas will help us in some way. If it does, it will repay the 3 or 4 minutes we invested in reading it.
This begs the question: Does your marketing mix contain list-based content?
If not, I suggest you give it a try. Lists are perfect for sharing, which makes them ideal if you want to expand your reach on social networks. New readers who discover your work through list content, will then get the chance to see your more detailed work. Others will follow you on the networks, where they see your lists shared. Almost all of my most shared blog posts are lists. This list-based page has been shared over 50 thousand times.
Lists can also be very powerful, when it comes to increasing your email marketing open rates. Email marketing that has a list in the subject line, can result in massively increased open rates.
Here’s why.
Most small business owners are not expert copywriters. As such, the subject lines they use for their email marketing tend to under-perform. And poorly written subject lines result in low open rates. This means no matter how good their marketing message is, very few people will see it.
Using an average list title as the subject line of a marketing email, will always out-perform an average, regular subject line.
No. No you shouldn’t. Seriously. Don’t!
Allow me to explain.
True, there are YouTubers making a fortune from creating only list-based videos. And yes, there are sites that attract millions of readers, who rely very heavily on list-based content. However, relying exclusively on lists is a bad fit for most small business owners. They should be used sparingly.
For example, I could have written this post as a list.
However, I wanted to dig a little deeper into one thing… the marketing effectiveness of lists. I didn’t want to weaken that focus with “15 Reasons why lists dominate the internet”.
Here’s the thing: Sometimes, you need to offer more substance around one subject. Other times, an issue could be impacting your readers and you need to address it. And there are times when you want to share one really useful idea, which wouldn’t work if you broke it down into a list of sub-ideas. In other words, that same surface-level approach that makes lists so popular, renders them useless for anything that requires depth.
So mix it up.
If you haven’t already used list-based blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts or newsletters, give it a go. Experiment. Test different types of list. Measure the feedback. Check things (metrics) including; sales, leads, open rates, social shares and new subscribers.
In short, if you’re not embracing list-based content, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
Lawrence from New Jersey emailed me with a great question. He wanted to know why I don’t provide any step-by-step marketing guides.
Here’s my answer. It contains an exceptionally valuable marketing tip, which I hope you find useful.
Cookie cutters are extremely effective when you’re making cookies. They let you produce lots of identical looking cookies, very fast.
Conversely, a cookie cutter approach to marketing is of very little value.
Why?
Because by using the same marketing approach as your competitors, your marketing becomes identical to theirs. You become camouflaged. This makes it very, very hard for prospective clients to find you. And when they do find you, you’ll seem way too similar to your competitors, so there’s no reason to contact you. Oh, and if they do contact you, they’ll be price sensitive.
Successful marketing is about standing out. It’s about being noticed by the right people and giving them a compelling reason to hire you or buy from you. And for that you need an individual approach.
However.
The marketing guides available via blogs, websites, seminars, webinars, and books, etc., are designed to be used by a wide range of business owners. This means you end up with the same generic marketing ideas as everyone else.
That’s the recipe for how to be ignored! It’s also the total opposite of what you need. And it explains why I don’t provide step-by-step guides.
Instead, I strive to encourage you to stand out. To get specific. To take your marketing seriously. Because that’s the only way to get the attention you need, the sales you need and the results you need.
It’s becoming harder and harder to sell the average product or service.
Why?
Because when something is average, the lowest price wins. And there will always be someone lower priced than you. Plus, your prospective customers can find these lower priced alternatives, on Google or Amazon, in seconds.
There are only two, proven ways to build your business today. Here they are.
You can decide to try to cut your costs back to the bone and undercut the competition. Lower prices attract attention. Lower prices get people talking. Average products or services do neither.
And if you can get the efficiency savings right, with a significant increase in sales, you can make a very nice profit. This guy sold a UK retail outlet where everything cost just £1, for £50,000,000.
Alternatively, you can decide to turn your back on average. There are more, wealthy customers out there than ever before. And they want to be treated differently. They’ll very happily pay for that premium difference, too.
That’s why luxury brands thrive in every industry and profession.
The important thing my friend, is to decide.
Either aim for low profit, high turnover or aim to be a premium provider. Then market your business accordingly. Don’t position yourself somewhere between the two. Because it has never been harder to succeed in the middle-ground, than it is today.
Wherever you are right now, whatever your past, you can be a successful entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur.
Look around any business network and it won’t be long before you find people, calling themselves serial entrepreneurs.
They’re everywhere. Or so it appears. However, as is often the case, all is not what it seems. In fact, 99.9% of the people I see calling themselves serial entrepreneurs… are not.
They aren’t even entrepreneurs.
They are serial starters!
Allow me to explain.
Serial entrepreneurs: These rare people build a series of successful businesses and fully realise the potential of each business, before they move on. A well known example is serial entrepreneur Ev Williams. Ev founded Blogger and sold it to Google for millions, then co-founded Twitter and is now developing the hugely successful Medium.
Serial starters: These are the people we see everywhere, who start a series of enterprises, yet never successfully finish developing any of them. They lack the commitment shown by entrepreneurs. So when the going gets tough, they get demotivated and quit. The vast majority of self-proclaimed serial entrepreneurs fit in this enormous group.
This begs the question.
It’s extremely easy to start a new venture. It’s exciting. It brings motivation with it. It gets them up early in the mornings and keeps them up late at night. Everything is new. A blank slate. A new beginning. Endless possibilities.
Then, after a while, the real work begins. Not the new enterprise, shiny work. The real nitty-gritty work:
As the shine wears off, the momentum drops for the serial starters. So, they look for the next big thing, rather than finishing what they started. The cycle repeats unless they summon the grit to make it to the finish line.
You don’t need to start of rich, to be an entrepreneur or serial entrepreneur. You do need grit though.
Yes, some entrepreneurs, such as Gary Vaynerchuk, inherit a multi-million dollar business from their parents, and can use that wealth to get all the additional investment they need and branch into other enterprises. However, most of us start off with little more than an idea, grit and commitment.
Ev Williams, who I mentioned earlier, is a textbook example of starting without money. Like most entrepreneurs, he had to do it the hard way. No wealthy parents. No million dollar assets. No easy way to access the financial investment he needed.
Ev was so broke when he started Blogger that he was living on a friend’s couch. He’s now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
History shows us that when it comes to business, money is less important than grit. Remember, Steve Jobs came from a blue collar family! The key is to decide what you want and then commit to doing what’s required, to make it happen. It’s that simple. And that hard.
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