Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

  • Home
  • About
    • About Jim Connolly
    • My top marketing tips for 2025. Yours now, for free!
    • Privacy Policy
    • How I use cookies
    • Contact
    • Disclosure
  • Hire me
    • Let’s Grow Your Business
    • Pick My Brain for the results you need!

How to get more clients from your newsletter or blog

By Jim Connolly | July 23, 2014

content marketing, newsletters, blogging, list building

Leigh emailed me with a great question. She wanted to know why her newsletter, which has over 5000 subscribers, generates very few client enquiries for her consultancy.

As Leigh was making a mistake that’s common to lots of newsletter publishers and bloggers, I thought I’d share my answer with you.

Building your list

The root cause of Leigh’s problem, is that she is doing everything possible to build her list. This is the mantra of pretty-much every content marketing guru and newsletter / blogging course out there.

It’s also total, utter bullshit.

The numbers

If the purpose of your newsletter or blog is to generate business leads from prospective clients, then your focus should be on quality, not quantity. It’s about building meaningful, deep relationships with the right people, not shallow relationships, with a wide, vague readership.

For example.

  • If you have just 50 engaged subscribers, who value your newsletter or blog and are a perfect fit for your services, you have a valuable list.
  • If, like Leigh, you have 5000 poorly-targeted people on a list, who you gained using list building techniques, you’re wasting your time and money.

Get out of the list building mindset

So, make sure you’re not chasing the wrong numbers.

Instead, focus exclusively on earning the attention of your prospective clients. Learn about their most pressing challenges. Then, publish answers and ideas, which will help them. Become a valuable asset, before they need your services.

If you get too few client enquiries from your newsletter or blog, it’s probably because you’re building a list, rather than creating connections with prospective clients.

The message here is simple: Go deeper. Not wider.

FREE marketing tips & advice

Get my best marketing tips, advice and ideas delivered direct to your inbox. Just add your email below.
I respect your privacy.

Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help small business owners to increase sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. Read more here.

Featured by

marketing advice, marketing help

Site sponsor

packaging consultancy

Categories

  • Blogging (406)
  • Business development (479)
  • Copywriting (303)
  • Email marketing & mail shots (186)
  • General marketing (1,663)
  • Professional development (534)
  • Social media marketing (355)

Hosting provider

20i hosting

Search

Recent posts

  • The feels? July 11, 2025
  • Give it away July 8, 2025
  • The false assumptions that destroy your results June 30, 2025
  • Here’s how the best paid service providers earn the highest fees June 25, 2025
  • Hard work isn’t enough (here’s what is) June 24, 2025
  • Make your marketing totally unmissable. Here’s how! June 19, 2025
  • Discounts: The full cost to your business June 17, 2025
  • Rapid, massive business growth: With MBRs June 9, 2025
  • For next-level success, swap your fears. Here’s how! June 6, 2025
  • It works better than advertising June 2, 2025
  • It’s the most valuable question in sales! May 27, 2025
  • Grab. Focus. Urgency: How to vastly increase your sales May 20, 2025
  • Attract. Don’t sell May 14, 2025
  • Marketing gold: The follow-up May 10, 2025
  • How to make more sales, in uncertain times May 8, 2025
  • 17 Tips to help you grow a stronger business May 6, 2025
  • How to increase your prices May 2, 2025
  • Your economy April 27, 2025
  • From rags to riches? April 26, 2025
  • Tiny tweaks. Huge wins April 21, 2025
  • Home
  • About
  • Hire me

Copyright © 2025 Jim Connolly