Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

How to get the best, free marketing advice

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marketing research

Photo: Shutterstock.

There’s a lot of free marketing advice available online. Some is good. Sadly, most is ineffective. Today, I want to help you identify the best marketing advice and show you how to avoid the worst.

A new client with a familiar problem

I was prompted to write this after my initial session with a new client. I went through some questions with her, as I do with all my new clients. I quickly noticed that she was making a number of serious marketing mistakes. During our session, I asked her where she got those marketing ideas from and she named around half a dozen marketing sites.

I soon figured out what had happened.

Today, I want to help you avoid making the same, expensive mistake. I need to start by drawing your attention to 2 types of marketing blogger.

1. The marketing blogger, who doesn’t have a business

Many marketing blogs are written by people who are career employees, paid to produce lots of content. Others are employees, who were previously entrepreneurs, but they failed to build their own business and are now paid to produce “content” for their employers.

Think about that for a moment: On sites like these, you’re taking marketing advice from someone, who has either never marketed their own business or whose own business failed.

2. Guest bloggers on popular marketing blogs

The vast majority of top marketing blogs rely very heavily on unpaid, guest bloggers. Guest bloggers are people who write for free, in return for access to a popular blog’s readership.

None of the guest bloggers I checked on the sites my client mentioned, had the assets you’d expect from a competent marketer. In other words, they were unable to market their own brand.

Think about that for a moment: Their readers are taking marketing advice from bloggers, who feel forced to work for free. Bloggers who still haven’t figured out how to grow their own valuable readership, community or tribe. Bloggers who still have no idea how to market their own brand, other than by guest blogging. Taking advice from them lost my new client a fortune.

Check the source

No, not every employee / guest blogger who writes about marketing is clueless. Some will be knowledgeable. At least a little.

My point is simply this: Always check the credentials of those offering free marketing advice, before you act on what they tell you.

They should have an about page on their site, (like this one). See if they’ve achieved what you need to achieve. See if they have a proven track record at the highest level. If not, then find a better source.

Well-written and sincere

Lots of bloggers write extremely well and make a compelling point, when what they’re telling you is incorrect or ineffective. They may be sincere, but it’s possible to be sincerely wrong.

I estimate my new client has lost at least 5 years worth of business growth. And probably missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenues. All because she followed the same, ineffective marketing advice as thousands of other small business owners.

Don’t let it happen to you.

Before you invest your time or money on marketing, check the source.

Always, always check the source.

You’ve been lied to for years

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marketing style

Photo: Shutterstock.

The following statement will sound counter-intuitive. That’s because you’ve been lied to for years. Okay. Here goes.

In marketing, there’s a case for style over substance.

It’s a strong case, too.

Just think about this for a moment:

  • The top political commentators get paid a ton of money, to deliver their take on the news for major networks.
  • The also-ran commentators get paid peanuts, to deliver their take on the news, for small, local networks.

Here’s the thing. In both cases, the news (substance) they comment on is the same. Here’s why one of them is earning 10 times or 50 times more than the other. It’s their style. The style with which they work.

For example:

  • Their courage, when choosing to take (or avoid) a controversial stance.
  • Their vocabulary.
  • Their energy.
  • Their ability to communicate with confidence.
  • Their effectiveness when injecting their personality (style) into their work, so that it’s truly theirs.

Here’s my point. When it comes to business, the substance should be there by default. Every qualified consultant, coach, lawyer, whatever… knows what their service (substance) is and how it works. It’s their style that makes all the difference. It’s their style that sets them apart from the crowd.

Style over substance in marketing

The newsletters, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, Facebook groups, Medium publishers, etc., that people take notice of, all have their own style. The same is true of the most successful email marketing, advertising, marketing campaigns and copywriting.

And the ones that fail to grow, fail to get noticed, fail to make an impact… well… they don’t.

Instead, they follow the cookie-cutter approach to marketing. They bought into the lie. The lie that says, “Just do things this way and it works. Follow the steps. 1-2-3”.

That’s bullshit.

It doesn’t work. In fact, it can’t possibly work. Because your style can’t be found in a book.

You can certainly learn substance that way. However, your style, the very thing that gets you noticed, by default, can’t possibly be learned from a marketing seminar, a course, a book or any other generalized form of information.

Why?

Because your style is all about you.

Where are you right now?

Okay, I already know that you totally understand your subject. So the substance is there. It’s taken care of. That’s covered. You’re good.

But what about the style?

When it comes to your marketing, when it comes to the story behind your service, are you telling it from your perspective? Are you sharing the substance of your knowledge, using your voice, your stories and your experiences? Because it’s your style that people connect with.

  • It’s your style that sets you apart.
  • It’s your style that causes people to return for more.
  • It’s your style that makes you approachable.
  • It’s your style that gives you a voice.
  • It’s your style that inspires people to share your message.
  • It’s your style that gives value to your substance.
  • It’s your style that motivates people to hire you or buy from you specifically, rather than a cheaper alternative.

And none of that can be robotized. Or automated. Because it’s you. It’s your authentic experience. It’s your greatest marketing asset. In fact, with so many competitors out there, with so many people trying to get the attention of your prospective clients, your style is the most powerful tool in your arsenal.

So, give your style the oxygen it needs.

Be stingy with your time, but not your ideas

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Photo: Shutterstock.

Laura emailed me with a great question. She wanted to know why I give so many ideas away for free.

I’ve chosen to share my answer with you, because I believe it contains a really useful idea.

The contribution mindset

I see it like this:

  • If you own 3 bags of gold and you give 1 of them away, you are left with 2 pieces of gold. Give all 3 bags of gold away and you’re left with nothing.
  • However, if you give someone an idea, you still have just as many ideas as you had before. Plus, you have just enriched the other person. Even better, you may have just made a new friend too.

Scaling generosity

The key is to find a way to share your ideas, which scales. In other words, a way to be generous with your ideas that doesn’t leave you with too little time to do the things that you need to do.

  • If you give an hour of your time away to 10 individual people every day, you have just lost 10 hours of your time. It doesn’t scale. It’s unsustainable. You’ll soon end up broke.
  • However, 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 still only invested 1 hour. Blogging, newsletters, vlogging and podcasts are just some of the ways you can achieve this.

We must be stingy with our time

It’s important to remind ourselves that the clock is ticking. We only have a limited supply of time each day. But when it comes to helping people, by adopting the right strategy we can choose to be generous. We can choose to contribute to the success and happiness of others.

Being generous with our ideas is always important. But especially so in times like these, when so many others really need our help.

List building: How to build a list that builds your business

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marketing, list building, subscribers

People often ask me for tips on how to build a bigger list. They want more subscribers; more readers, more listeners, more viewers, more followers, etc.

The short answer is simple. It’s this.

Create useful content, which is worthy of people’s attention and make it really easy for them to subscribe.

If you do that, you’ll attract more people and because your content is useful, many of them will subscribe. Think about it. That’s the exact process, which motivated you to subscribe to every list you’re on. Something attracted you, you found it useful, you subscribed.

This begs the question: If the answer is so simple, why is it so darn hard to build a large and valuable list?

Here’s the slightly longer answer.

The advice is simple. The process is tricky

There’s some tricky stuff between you and that massively valuable list you want.

Finding something useful to share, on a regular basis, is tricky. Remember, if you just churn out the same stuff as others in your industry, you won’t attract subscribers or retain them. This means you’ll need to be willing to do some research. You’ll need to become a regular note-taker. A collector of ideas. It’s interesting work, but if you’re not already someone who studies and takes notes, it can take a while to transition.

Finding the time to create content is also tricky. You’re already busy, right? Developing content around all that interesting material you have, takes time. That time is easy to justify when you have a huge list. It’s harder to justify, when your hard work is being consumed by just a small number of people. You’ll need to push through the tumbleweed and crickets of the early stages. And I know from personal experience, that can be a real challenge. I explain why here.

Summoning the courage to publish your stuff is tricky. Why? Because if you do it right, you’ll attract critics. Someone once told me that we have a choice to make. We can either be criticized or be ignored. If we’re being ignored, we’re invisible. That’s not good for any business.

The alternative is to not only expect criticism, but to welcome it as a positive sign that we’re no longer being ignored. Don’t set out to attract critics. Set out to be useful and worthy of attention. But see criticism as an inevitable part of becoming visible and successful.

Note: Here’s why people criticize you and how to deal with it.

Once you know what’s involved, building a valuable list is pretty easy.

And the rewards are huge

Picture this: Just imagine what a difference it would make to your business, if you were in regular contact with thousands of prospective customers. Not via advertising, which is usually seen as an unwelcome interruption. But via a subscription to your content, which people proactively requested because they WANT to hear from you. It’s almost impossible to overstate just how valuable your subscribers are.

The opportunity is amazing. And it’s right in front of you. Right now.

You’re only as good as your last performance

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only good last performance, marketing last performance

Photo: Shutterstock.

I want to share maybe the most powerful mindset in business with you. Because when you understand it, it boosts your productivity, increases your confidence and supercharges your results.

It’s simply this: “You’re only as good as your last performance”.

Here’s how it works.

Why this mindset is so powerful

By learning from your last performance, your road ahead is always filled with potential. Always filled = never-ending. And never-ending potential is just another way of saying endless potential.

It gets even better!

Because you’re always free to bury an unsuccessful last performance, under a better performance, you can destroy the fear of failure from holding you back.

Here’s an example of how I embrace this mindset.

When I publish a blog post and find it didn’t resonate with my readers, (it bombed) I don’t just leave it there.

I understand that “you’re only as good as your last performance”. So I learn from my last performance, make improvements and replace it with something better.

I check things like the subject, the message, the conclusion, the clarity, and the relevance etc.

My NEW last performance is then an improvement. The previous performance is history. And knowing that if I get it wrong, I can always perform better next time, I’m free to work without fear. That’s huge. Because it’s exactly that kind of fear that holds people back from doing their best work.

In short: This mindset gives you the freedom to produce marketing (or do pretty-much anything), without the fear of failure crushing you.

When you embrace the idea, that each performance is an opportunity to improve, and that a bad performance can be buried under a great one, you’re free to blow the lid off your potential.

You’re only as good as your last performance in business

Here are a few real-world examples, of the way embracing this mindset helps business owners.

  • If your last public speaking opportunity didn’t go as well as you’d hoped, learn from it and make your next performance better. Because that’s the talk, which people will remember.
  • If your last newsletter or blog post didn’t generate the results you needed, learn from it and bury it under your next, newly-improved performance. Because that’s the one your readers will remember.
  • If your last marketing exercise failed to get the results you needed, learn from it. Make the required improvements. Then bask in the success of your newly-improved marketing performance.

As you can see, the idea can be applied extremely widely. This gives it the flexibility to help you in many of the most challenging areas of your business.

Embracing this mindset frees you to give the world a massively better (and always improving) version of you and your work. Oh, and just watch what it does to your results.

Knowing that you’re only as good as your last performance, list some past performances, which you’d love to replace, with better ones. That’s a great place to start.

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

Stay safe.

Why lists dominate marketing. And why you really should use them

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marketing lists

Photo: Shutterstock.

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.

Lists promise lots of ideas. And fast!

List-based content promises a number of bite-sized ideas or suggestions. And quickly! So when we see “15 Things you really should be doing right now. Yes you. Yes now!“, we’re not expecting an in-depth examination of 15 urgent commercial activities.

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 my friend: 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 social networks, where they see your lists shared. Almost all 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 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, always out-perform an average, regular subject line.

So, 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, 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 post 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 thing… the marketing effectiveness of lists. I didn’t want to weaken that focus with “10 Reasons why lists dominate the internet”.

Going a little deeper

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 short, the surface-level approach that makes lists so popular, renders them ineffective 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, client enquiries, open rates, social shares and new subscribers, etc.

Because you could be missing out on a huge opportunity.