Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

7 Things that will grab the attention of your marketplace (and how to use them)

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markeing, get noticed

Photo: Shutterstock.

I’ve talked a lot lately, about the importance of being useful with your marketing. A number of you have asked me, if I can give you some specific topics you can use, which your prospective clients (or customers) will be attracted to.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done for you today.

So, for Ashley, Hasan, Thomas, Noah, JJ, Padraig, Ben, Melissa, Calvin and Georgia (and you, dear reader), here are some almost-universally useful topics. Each one represents something, which your clients and future clients are attracted to or extremely attracted to.

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following topics and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing or general marketing messages. Each topic ends with a question, to help you focus on how it applies to your business.

  1. People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: What are you doing, to connect them 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
  2. Everyone is trying to succeed at something: What are you doing, to help people achieve their targets, goals or dreams?
  3. We all need security: What are you doing, to help people reduce risk or feel secure and safe?
  4. We also share a common need for a sense of belonging: What are you doing, to create a community?
  5. Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: What are you doing, to help people maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks, faster?
  6. People want to improve and expand their knowledge: What are you doing, to share useful information with them. This is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.
  7. Everyone wants to avoid unnecessary stress: What are you doing, to help people feel more relaxed and assured?

Are any of those topics missing from your marketing messages or content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Whatever industry you’re in, you should be able to benefit from all 7 topics. And if your business doesn’t do anything to address one or more of these needs, look for a way to add it to your services.

3 Ideas to help you create content, which your marketplace will love

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content marketing

Photo: Shutterstock.

If you’ve ever wondered, how some people are able to regularly produce effective content marketing; (newsletters, blog posts, articles, podcasts, etc), and how you can do the same, this post is for you.

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 be clever. Just useful. And as long as I think you’ll find an idea or observation useful, I share it.

Some small business owners are put off creating content, because they try and make everything 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 crappy ideas block you

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

The challenge is that in order to get that 1 useful idea, you need to allow yourself to have the crappy ones… without getting disheartened.

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

When you view lower-value ideas as essential steps in the development of better ones, they switch from being disheartening to highly motivating.

3. Give your work the respect it deserves

We often overestimate the ideas 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, which were really interesting. She looked to see who wrote them and found they were all her own work, from 6 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 your content marketing in 2020; focus on being useful, see your average ideas as necessary steps to your useful ideas, and give your work the respect you deserve.

How to add credibility to your marketing and why it’s now essential

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marketing credibility, sales trust

Photo: Shutterstock.

Have you ever looked at the marketing promises made by your competitors?

  • Your most unreliable competitors will promise to deliver on time, every time.
  • Your lowest quality competitors will promise premium quality at low prices.
  • Your least competent competitors will promise a highly professional service.
  • And they’ll all have testimonials. Testimonials that are often the opposite of what a real client or customer will experience from them.

It makes sense.

It’s horrible, but it makes sense.

After all, they’re hardly likely to admit that working with them or buying from them is a total nightmare. You see, the mindset that says it’s okay to produce low quality work and charge over the odds for it, has no problem being dishonest in other areas of their business.

What does this have to do with you?

Your prospective clients or customers have been lied to before. So, the claims you legitimately make in your marketing will only be treated seriously, if you back them up.

Here are a couple of ideas, to help the truth of your marketing stand out.

Adding credibility to your marketing

One way to add credibility, is to link from your website to external (preferably independent) sources. For example, link from your website to external reviews or positive press / media coverage on news sites. (Here’s how I do it). Similarly, if you’ve been accredited by a respected organisation, link to the page on their website, where you’re mentioned.

Another way to add credibility, is to show up regularly with useful information, via a blog, vlog, podcast or on social networks. By providing genuinely useful, informed advice, you demonstrate your knowledge. You also have an opportunity to show your personality. By demonstrating your knowledge and allowing your marketplace to get to know you, you create a potent marketing mix, which helps build trust.

In short, be aware that today’s marketplace is highly sceptical of unsubstantiated marketing promises. And use as many credibility assets as possible.

Marketing 101: Step away from the noise

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marketing, noise

Thanks to social media, talk is cheaper than ever before.

The world has a megaphone. Everyone can now tell everybody about everything.

Here’s the thing: As the noise from this chatter has increased, we’ve become better and better at ignoring it. Yes, technology let’s us filter the notifications and reduce the noise somewhat. But we ourselves are paying less attention to the chatter. It tends to wash over us.

And that’s really, really important for business owners to know.

Why?

Because now that talk is cheaper than ever, our actions have spectacularly more impact.

  • People don’t notice the noise.
  • They notice the difference we make. And this is especially true, when we make a positive difference to them or something they care about; their business for example.

In short, to earn the attention and trust of our prospective clients, we need to look for ways to demonstrate the value we bring, which they’ll find useful. If it’s useful (to them) it isn’t noise. So, they pay attention.

For example

Rather than having a ton of social media accounts and filling them with noise (automated retweets, funny images and GIF’s, sharing famous quotes, etc), go for quality. Make a difference.

The message you’re reading right now is an example of what I mean. By taking a little time this morning, I’ve produced this information, which I believe some of you will find useful.

  • I do almost nothing on Facebook.
  • I don’t even have a Linkedin account.
  • I share ideas, like this one, and I use Twitter.

That’s it.

And every day, amazing prospective clients reach out to me.

Here’s the thing.

It’s increasingly hard to get noticed on social networks. Millions of business owners, marketing people and agencies are using the same, so-called tricks and tactics. And in doing so, they become camouflaged by the millions of others, who are doing the same thing.

We need to step away from the noise, my friend.

If you find you’re not getting the results you and your business need, focus on making a difference. Find something you can do, which will have a positive impact (be useful) to your prospective clients.

It’s less time consuming than adding to the noise, and massively more effective.

Marketing in a hurry?

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marketing, plan work, work plan

I shared the following idea with a group of very smart entrepreneurs. They found it extremely useful, so now I’m sharing it with you.

It’s simply this:

“Marketing isn’t something you do in a hurry, when business is sluggish. It’s an ongoing part of running a successful business”.

Successful business owners already understand this

As a result, there is a growing awareness of them in their marketplace. And because successful businesses use content marketing, their prospective clients (or customers) will regularly receive useful information from them. This useful information not only informs their prospective clients, it helps build trust.

Awareness and trust are essential. And ongoing, content marketing achieves both. Here’s how it works.

The rest market sporadically

Usually, when business is sluggish. So they take their need for sales to the marketplace, via special offers or out-of-the-blue advertising.

Because they fail to market on an ongoing basis, their prospective clients have no real awareness of them. And no awareness means no trust. So, even if the prospective client has a requirement, the marketing fails.

It has to fail. That’s because people buy from providers they trust. And a competing provider, whose marketing they regularly receive and whose brand they know, already has the prospective client’s awareness and trust.

In short, make content marketing an ongoing part of your business. Not something you do when times are tough. Get it right and you’ll find you never have to market from a position of need.

That’s worth considering, with a potential recession on the horizon.

Is this the best kept secret in marketing? If not, it’s really close!

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success multiplier effect

You may find this idea really useful and I’ve never written about it before. So, I thought I’d share it with you.

Around 25 years ago, in Greenwich, London, I was introduced to a concept known (back then) as the success multiplier effect.

The idea is extremely simple: If you want a business that grows quickly, design it so that when someone uses your services, they get more value from it if their contacts also use your services.

This was how Facebook grew. Early users asked their friends and family to join, so they could connect. It’s how every hit TV show becomes a hit. The first viewers tell their friends about it, so they can chat about the show with them or share in-jokes, which only fellow viewers would understand, etc.

But what if you already have a business and it doesn’t have the success multiplier effect built in? After all, the vast majority of business owners are in this position. Including me.

One option is to retrofit a success multiplier effect to your business. Retrofitting is tricky and takes creativity, but it’s possible.

However, there’s an easier and extremely powerful alternative. It’s also the option I chose for my business!

The best success multiplier effect for your business

A second option is to add it to your marketing, rather than your service.

An example of this is the email version of my blog. Someone within a company will subscribe. Then, they forward one of my emails to some of their colleagues, because it’s about an idea the company is interested in. It’s easier for them to get their colleagues on board with an idea I shared, if they’re able to read it too. A subset of those who had the email forward to them will subscribe and do the same. Rinse repeat. This is how I attracted many of my largest clients.

In short, you can bake the success multiplier effect into a new product or service. You can retrofit it to an existing product or service. And you can do as I do, and create marketing with the success multiplier effect built in.

Whichever route you choose, if you get it right the impact it can have on your results is amazing.