Jim Connolly Marketing

This works better than marketing. Try it!

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Creative marketing, marketing small business, jim connolly

Photo by Eva Bronzini on Pexels.com

So, how do you grow your business without doing something that looks like marketing, feels like marketing or is as dull as marketing? 

You replace regular marketing with something better. It’s worked for me and my clients for 30-years.

Here’s how it works, along with a few examples.
 

This is better than marketing

Imagine you’re walking in the park on a scorching hot day. You didn’t bring enough water and now you’re feeling really, really thirsty. It’s getting warmer. You notice your throat is now dry. Thankfully, you finally spot a sign for ice-cold drinks with an arrow pointing to a small hut. You walk over, buy a bottle of water and eagerly gulp it down. You then buy another bottle for you to enjoy on your journey home. You thank the vendor and head back.

That sign with the arrow, saying ‘ice-cold drinks’ didn’t feel like marketing.

It didn’t pester you, it didn’t bore you, it wasn’t dull and it certainly was not an unwanted interruption. It was exactly what you were looking for. And the vendor just sold a couple of bottles of water to a very happy customer.

You’re happy. They’re happy.

Everyone’s happy.
 

Also better than marketing

I recall walking into the study to ask my wife, (the author Sharon Bennett Connolly) if she wanted a coffee. I quickly noticed that she was listening to an interview with a musician, whose work she loves. He was talking about his new album and the inspiration behind some of the tracks. Like thousands of other listeners, Sharon was buying the album as he spoke.

That radio interview sure didn’t feel like marketing.

Sharon had been looking forward to the interview all morning. She was listening intently and enthusiastically as the musician spoke. He wasn’t being dull and she was delighted, after enjoying his interview and ordering the new album. The musician was happy having had a great interview and probably selling tons of albums. The radio show had just provided a great 30 minutes of entertainment.

Everyone’s happy.
 

And this is better than marketing, too

People like myself, who share our knowledge in a newsletter, on social networks, a podcast or whatever… we don’t need to market what we do. People hire us, knowing in advance what to expect. We simply make it easy to contact us and we keep being useful.

It’s a joy to share useful ideas. Our community gets some useful advice. Everyone’s happy. It doesn’t feel like marketing. 

I don’t buy ads. I don’t network. I have never had, or needed a LinkedIn account. And prospective clients come to me, I never have to pester anyone, ever.

Here’s the thing: growing a business doesn’t have to be dull and uninspiring. It’s a choice. A really bad choice, but a choice nonetheless.

Now what?

Simple.
 

Follow your heart and follow your head

Follow your heart: if you dislike the prescriptive marketing crap that’s based around pestering, interrupting and irritating people, please stop. You won’t be very good at it and it will make you miserable.

Follow your head: if you want to thrive, you’ll need to replace bullshit marketing with something better. 

The examples I’ve shared are all things that have been intentionally baked into the business. That means they’re not something you add to the business. They’re the natural consequence of their day-to-day workflow. And by default, unlike traditional marketing, these are non-prescriptive. I know from the work I do with clients, that your specific mix must be developed around you: your personality, your industry, the things that bring you joy, the kind of business that would inspire you every day and pay you a ton of money as part of the process. 

That’s how to grow your business in a way that feels natural and authentic. And it’s how you create a business that thrives for you on every possible level.

Be stingy with your time but not your ideas

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share ideas, stingy time

Laura emailed me with a great question. She is a member of my newsletter community and wanted to know I find time to give so many ideas away in my newsletter, blog and on my Twitter or X account. My reply contains a really useful idea, so I decided to share it with you.

It starts with understanding that sharing useful ideas is a very different type of sharing.

  • If you own 3 bars of gold and you give 1 of them away, you are left with 2 bars of gold. Give all 3 bars away and you’re left with nothing.
  • However, if you give someone a useful idea, you still have just as many ideas as you had before. Plus, you have just enriched the other person. That person could tell others how your idea helped them. So you may also have made a new business contact or a number of new business contacts.

However, there’s something else about sharing useful ideas that’s extremely important.

Scaling your sharing

You need to choose a way to be generous with your ideas, which scales.

  • If you give an hour of your time, to share useful ideas to each of 10 individual people, you have just spent 10 hours of your time. It doesn’t scale. It’s unsustainable.
  • But if you give an hour of your time to your community every day, in a way that reaches 10 people or 10,000 people you have only invested 1 hour. Newsletters, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and social media publishing are just some of the ways you can achieve this.

Be stingy with your time

Here’s how I explain the balance required: Be stingy with your time, but not your ideas.

You have a limited number of hours available each day and you need to use them wisely. Thankfully, by scaling the way you share useful ideas with your prospective clients or customers, you can choose to give generously. You can contribute to the success of dozens, then hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of your prospects. And the initial financial investment required from you, in many cases, starts at zero.

Just think about that for a moment. And if it sounds interesting, why not give it a try?

Want to regularly create great content marketing? Use these 3 tips

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If you’ve ever wondered how to regularly produce content marketing that converts prospects into clients or customers, this information is for you.

I’ve divided it into 3 core tips.

1. Is this useful?

There’s a sign on the wall in my studio. It’s a small sign, containing just 3 words: “Is this useful?”. That’s the mark I set for everything I create. Nothing gets published unless I believe you’ll find it useful. I don’t try and look clever. I don’t try and be edgy. I don’t try to shock people. I just try to be useful to you. And as long as I think you’ll find an idea or observation useful, I share it.

Many business owners are put off creating content, because they try to make it as close to perfect as possible. The thing is, your prospective clients or customers want something useful, not perfect.

Once you stop aiming for perfection you’ll find it a lot easier. You’ll also get massively better results.

2. Don’t let duff content ideas block you

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that most of the content ideas you get are pretty average. Most of mine are terrible! But maybe 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 are good enough to be turned into a useful piece of content marketing.

The challenge is that in order to get that 1 useful idea, you need to give yourself permission to have the duff ones.

The way I overcame this, was to deliberately allow myself to think of lots of duff ideas, knowing that something useful would come from it.

So, regard your duff ideas as essential steps on the way to creating the content you need. This switches them from being disheartening, to highly motivating.

3. Your work is way better than you think

We often overestimate the ideas and the work of others and underestimate the value of our own. Here’s a great example of what I mean.

A business owner told me how she was taking some files off a computer for archiving, when she discovered an old documents folder. It contained loads of articles that were really interesting. She looked to see who wrote them and found they were all her own work, from 9 years earlier!

She didn’t publish them at the time, because she thought they weren’t good enough. It was only when she thought they were written by someone else, that she saw them for what they really were. Your work is almost certainly way, way better than you think.

So get it out there!

In short, if you’re looking to improve the quality and quantity of your content marketing, focus on being useful. See your duff ideas as necessary steps to your useful ideas. And give your content the respect it (and you) deserve.

Lists dominate content marketing. Here’s why you should use them

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lists, content marketing, power of lists

Ever wondered why so many articles, videos and newsletters are based around the idea of a numbered list? It’s because lists are extremely popular. People love them. Today, I’m going to explain why, and how, you should incorporate lists in your content marketing.

Why then are lists so popular?

Lists promise ideas. Lots of ideas. And fast!

Lists promises a number of bite-sized ideas or suggestions. And quickly. So when we see “21 Business habits of highly successful people“, we’re not expecting an in-depth examination of 21 habitual characteristics of people who have achieved business success.

No.

We’re expecting lots of 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. That’s a good return for just a few minutes of our time.

Now, I have a question for you. Does your content 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 social networks, where they see your lists shared. Many of my most shared blog posts are lists.

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 significantly 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, always out perform an average, regular subject line.

Should you focus exclusively on lists?

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 page views, who rely very heavily on list-based content. The business model behind both of these examples is primarily advertising. If your business sells ads based on open rates, keep churning out the lists.

However, for every other kind of business, relying exclusively on lists is a bad idea. And they should be used sparingly.

For example, I could have written this article as a list.

  • It would have taken me a lot less time to write.
  • It would have been shared a lot more on social networks.
  • And the email version of the post would have been opened by a lot more people.

However, I wanted to dig a little deeper into one subject; the content marketing effectiveness of lists. I didn’t want to weaken that focus with “10 Reasons why lists dominate the internet”.

Going a deeper than a list

Sometimes, you need to offer more substance around one subject. Other times, an issue could be impacting your audience 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.

The surface level approach that makes lists so popular, renders them ineffective for anything that requires depth.

So mix it up. But include lists as part of that mix.

In short, if you haven’t already used list-based articles, videos, podcasts episodes, posts or newsletters, give it a go.

Experiment. Test different types of list. Measure the feedback. Check the numbers, including; sales, client enquiries, open rates, social shares and new subscribers, etc.

And let the numbers be your guide.

Marketing 101: Use shorter sentences. Here’s why

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Jim Connolly marketing, write short

Here’s a quick copywriting tip, to help you improve your marketing results.

Your prospective clients prefer to read short sentences. This is especially true when explaining detailed information. For example, how your service works.

I’m not suggesting you use fewer words than required. Far from it! Use as many words per sentence as you need. Don’t remove a necessary word. Just don’t use more words than you need.

Why is that, Jim?

Over-long sentences lack impact and clarity. Those are essential elements of effective marketing. Most amateur writers tend to write over-long. Learning how to write shorter helps you avoid that mistake.

Tip: One way to shorten sentences without losing anything important, is to remove extraneous words. Look at the 2 examples below.

  • People should exercise on a regular basis.
  • People should exercise regularly.
  • We have no news at this point in time.
  • We currently have no news.

A whole story in 6 words

It’s amazing what can be achieved using fewer words. Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story in just 6 words. It’s a powerful story, too.

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn”.

Inspired by Hemingway’s brevity, look for opportunities to keep your sentences as short as required. Aim for clarity. Remove the fluff. And keep sentences confined to one thought.

It’s not as simple as it sounds. But if done correctly, your results will reflect the additional effort.

The content marketing your prospects want from you

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Marketing, list writing

I regularly write about the importance of creating marketing that’s useful to your prospects. So, here are some specific examples, which you can adapt and apply to your own marketing.

Let’s go.

Their needs and your products or services

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following topics or ideas and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing messages.

People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: Share ideas to help your prospects connect with useful contacts. The Wall Street Journal wrote about how I achieved this for one of my clients – 4 Marketing Strategies That Paid Off For Small Companies.

People also have an inbuilt need to belong: Share the opportunity to become part of your community. Lots of content marketing fails to address this. Newsletter creators talk about their ‘list’. Podcasters and Youtubers talk about their ‘subscribers’. These are all self-focused. Instead, do as I have done and build a community.

For example, when one of my community hits reply to my newsletter, they can email me direct. And they always, always get an answer from me. No AI. No automation. Just me. I make it very clear that I’m part of the same community as you… the small business owner community. Your prospects value that kind of connection. They’re less attracted to being part of an impersonal list.

Everyone is trying to succeed at something: Share ideas to help your prospects achieve their targets, goals or dreams. Obviously, as with pretty-much every topic here, if you offer a specific product or service that can help them in this area, incorporate that into the content.

We all need to feel safe and secure: Share ideas to help your prospects reduce risk or feel safer.

Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: Share ideas to help your prospects maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks faster, etc. I’m not a time management expert, but I’ve shared tons of ideas in this area, based on decades of running a successful business, without working crazy hours. The response is always excellent. So don’t be put off sharing from your experience.

People want to improve and expand their knowledge: Share your industry knowledge, sure. But also share your experience with them. For example, if you’re an accountant, don’t just focus on tax, profit and loss or the latest business news. They can get that anywhere. Tell them the common factors you’ve identified in successful businesses. And the ones you’ve identified in those that flounder or fail.

Your specific experience is extremely valuable. It sets you apart from all your competitors. And in doing so, you make it far easier for prospects to feel a sense of connection with you.

We also want to avoid unnecessary stress: Share ideas to help your prospects feel more relaxed and assured. If there’s a specific product or service you offer, which can assist them with this, incorporate that into the message or idea.

Aim for unmissable

Are any of those topics missing from your content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Because this kind of useful, relevant information is the cornerstone of successful marketing. You’ll know you have the balance right, when your content marketing is so useful that people would miss it if you stopped.