Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

You’re only as good as your last performance

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only as good as last performance, good 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 article 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.

Given that you’re only as good as your last performance, here’s a suggestion. List some of your past performances, which you’d love to improve, then replace them with better ones. That’s a great place to start.

Mistakes, birthdays and billionaires

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marketing, think different

Photo: Shutterstock.

I have an idea to share with you today, from a weird combination of sources. It involves mistakes, birthdays and billionaires.

My friend Amy has a landmark birthday today. One of those birthdays with a zero at the end. She said she was now “officially old” and that it’s the first time she’s not felt like celebrating a birthday.

I offered her another way to look at things, as she was clearly feeling down.

  • Imagine you’re just a penny away from becoming a billionaire. Nothing really changes on the day you earn that final penny. You were already pretty-much a billionaire and probably extremely wealthy for decades. You may feel different now you have that extra penny, but you’re just a penny richer than the day before. That’s all.
  • Landmark birthdays work the same way. You may feel very different. In reality, you’re just a day older than yesterday. That’s all.

What does this kind of thinking have to do with business?

Every year in business, you make countless decisions, have thousands of conversations, give numerous presentations and send lots of proposals… it’s an almost endless stream of activity.

  • When you make a poor decision, it’s just one decision.
  • When you have an unproductive conversation, it’s just one conversation.
  • When your proposal is rejected, it’s just one proposal.
  • When a meeting doesn’t go the way you want it to, it’s just one meeting.

In the same way as the final penny doesn’t make you rich, and the day your age has a zero on the end doesn’t make you old, a negative commercial outcome must be seen in context.

  • When you make a poor decision, learn from it and make better future decisions.
  • When you have an unproductive conversation, unpack it and make the next one more productive.
  • When your proposal is rejected, look for ways to make the next one stronger.
  • When a meeting doesn’t go the way you want it to, review what happened and improve.

A recent failure does not define us as failures. The last penny doesn’t make us rich. And I hope Amy now has a very happy 20th birthday.

Marketing tip: Press pause!

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I want you to think about the following for a moment:

  • The last tweet you sent.
  • The last newsletter you published.
  • The last Linkedin post you shared.
  • The last Facebook update you posted.

Each of those actions could easily be a prospective customer’s first exposure to you (and your business). If so, it will help form their first impression of you.

Here’s the thing. First impressions count.

  • First impressions count, even if you are having a bad day.
  • First impressions count, even if they are inaccurate.
  • And first impressions count, because if you screw it up, you often won’t get a second chance!

So, what’s the solution?

Well, here’s something that can certainly help you.

Drum roll please…

Pause…

It pays to pause for a few moments before you publish ANYTHING. That’s because most of what you publish is easy to find via search engines or the social networks you use. And we know that the vast majority of people now check providers out, before deciding to hire them or buy from them.

Think about the wider, longer-term implications of what you are saying. Never underestimate the impact of an angry tweet, a needy Linkedin post or a spammy Facebook update, etc.

Once it’s published, it’s out there. It’s in play. It’s carrying your name. And it’s carving your reputation.

Tip: Read this » How To Build a World Class Reputation.

WordPress: Now with added GIFs

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If, like millions of WordPress users, your site is connected to Jetpack, you can now add GIFs to your blog posts and pages in seconds.

This news has left some users happy.

Whilst other users were less impressed.

Adding a GIF is extremely easy. If you want to know more, the folks at Jetpack have put this handy guide together .

Enjoy.

Be where their attention is!

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marketing

The next time you’re on your way to or from work, try this.

I want you to take a look at the people around you; car passengers, bus passengers, train passengers or pedestrians. Notice what they are paying attention to?

No, they’re not looking at billboards.

They’re looking at a phone or a tablet.

So, be where their attention is

There’s a huge opportunity for you here. That is, so long as you’re willing to publish useful information, which your prospective customers will want to consume, to combat the boredom of a dull journey. Newsletters, podcasts, videos and blog posts are perfect for this.

However, there are a couple of things to consider, before you invest your time and effort getting onto their mobile device.

Firstly, make sure you publish something that’s useful to them. If you do, they’ll share it. Your audience will grow. And your name and reputation will spread.

Secondly, make sure that whatever you publish is mobile friendly. Many small business blogs and newsletters are challenging to read on mobile devices, and that’s just not good enough. If you want to engage readers, give them a great reader experience. If you want to engage viewers or listeners, make the audio-visual experience crisp and clear.

The payback?

When you’ve earned the attention and trust of your audience, by turning up regularly with useful, interesting information, and you have a business announcement for them (a new product, offer, service, event, book etc.), they will listen. And because they know your work and trust you, the response rate can be off the charts.

The opportunity is here and it’s huge. Plus, the financial cost of reaching all those prospective customers is tiny.

The question is, what are you going to do with all this potential?

And your answer will depend on this: Knowing and doing.

Review: Shutterstock gets 5 Stars

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shutterstock review, shutterstock 5 stars, premium images

Last October, I announced (in this post) that I was going to trial Shutterstock’s premium images on the blog for a few months. I wanted to know what benefits, if any, professional, premium images provided over freely available images, so I could share them with you.

Here’s my quick review.

I saved a massive amount of time

The first benefit I noticed from using Shutterstock images, was also the biggest. It saved me a huge amount of time.

Normally, I either use images I’ve created myself or I search free image libraries for something suitable. This sometimes takes as much time as writing the actual post.

The shutterstock image library isn’t only enormous (hundreds of millions of images), it has an exceptional search facility. Just to qualify that, it’s the best search, for accuracy and speed I have ever used. This means there are not only millions of premium images to choose from, but you can find what you want in seconds.

If you publish as frequently as I do, this makes a real difference.

Shutterstock’s images create a powerful impression

The overall quality of the images is absolutely superb. You can tell instantly that you’re looking at high quality work.

Investing in premium images should be a no-brainer, for anyone with a website, where they’re seeking to create a polished and professional impact. There’s just no good reason not to use a premium image library and Shutterstock is rock solid.

For bloggers who write magazine-style content, premium images are an equally good idea. The same is true of company blogs, where you want consistency with the quality and look of your images.

And, of course, premium images are a lot less commonly used than free ones, so using them can help your content create a stronger first impression

Ironically, I’m one of very few edge-cases, where a professional image library isn’t ideal. As I wrote last month, I’d already decided to make my blog posts more personal. This includes investing the extra time required, to create more of my own photos and images, rather than using 3rd party image content.

Shutterstock’s pricing

The prices are significantly lower than I imagined. Here’s the link to their various prices and plans.

Shutterstock’s pricing scales from one-off purchases, to plans for users who need hundreds of images a month. There’s something for just about every commercial use-case and budget.

Did it move the marketing dial?

Because the images are so quick and easy to find, posts took me a lot less time to create. As a direct result, I’ve been able to publish several (or more) additional posts over the past 3 months. This will have moved the dial, because of the SEO benefits of frequently publishing fresh content.

Shares of my posts remained about the same, as did client enquiries via the blog.

Hard to find a negative

It’s been very hard to think of anything negative. In fact, only one very minor thing comes to mind.

Some of the marketing-related images I found, included relatively old technology. I’m really nitpicking here, but these images will instantly look dated, even if they’re not. Of course, you can quickly find up-to-date alternatives. Like I say, I’m picking nits.

Shutterstock gets 5 Stars

This is a very comfortable 5-Stars for Shutterstock. The service, images and my overall experience has been superb.

Shutterstock’s content looks professional, will save you time and ensure you always have an image that matches your needs. I have no hesitation in recommending them and I’d like to thank them, especially Amanda, for all their help.

Battling blindness and making mistakes

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Please note: Today’s post includes a little about my 18-month battle with blindness.

Have you ever noticed someone making an obvious mistake, then realised YOU were making the same mistake?

Well, it just happened to me. Ouch!

Here’s what happened, along with a second mistake I’ve been making, which is why you don’t know I’ve been battling blindness for 18-months.

How I spotted my first mistake

I was watching a Youtube video. Well, I tried to. That’s to say, I needed to fast-forward almost 6 minutes, before the speaker started to talk. The video was a conference keynote. And it followed an all-too common path.

  • It started with a guy walking on stage.
  • The guy then introduced a woman, whose job was to introduce the speaker.
  • The woman walked on stage.
  • She thanked the guy who introduced her.
  • She then introduced the speaker.
  • Finally, the speaker was rolled out and started their talk.

Those first 2 people weren’t pitching anything. They didn’t have anything to say. They were there simply because they wanted to be on stage. This was especially the case with the second presenter, whose introduction was actually longer than the introduction she gave the keynote speaker. Her job title suggested she was senior enough in their organisation, to make it happen.

Here’s the thing: People who attend a keynote are there to watch or listen to the keynote speaker. Literally no one is interested in the person who presents the speaker or the person who presents the person who presents the speaker. A brief introduction to the speaker is all that was required. The 6 minutes of nonsense before the keynote was indulgent, selfish and unnecessary.

So, how did I make the same mistake?

Just as I was considering how self-indulgent the nonsense was before that keynote, I realised I do the same. Right here on Jim’s Marketing Blog. Here’s how my self-indulgence manifests:

  • There are posts I publish, because I’m motivated to share something I think you’ll find useful. That’s as it should be.
  • However, there are also posts I publish, because it’s been a few days since I published anything. Often, the value of these posts is less than you deserve.

I only realised the drop in quality of those ‘better publish something’ posts, after spending a whole day, reflecting on the blog. (I spent all of yesterday, trying to find ways to make it more useful to you in 2019).

I then identified something else, that’s been missing from my work for a very long time.

My second (and bigger) mistake

Over the past 3 or 4 years, my posts have become less personal. I use almost none of my own images or photos any more (unlike today). I use very few of my own stories. I share very few of the resources I find useful; books, videos, articles, podcasts, etc. So, the blog has become too sterile / synthetic.

This realisation came when I suddenly remembered that I haven’t mentioned, even once, a huge part of my life since June 2017.

Unless you follow me on Twitter or know me, you’ll have no idea that I’ve spent almost 18-months battling diabetes-related blindness. Actually, you won’t even know I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in May 2016. I didn’t mention that, either.

I’ve had multiple surgeries. Initially, the diagnosis was bad. Very bad. But after reversing my diabetes (my blood is perfectly normal now and I take no medication), the vision has responded well. On Christmas Eve, I had my latest eye scans done and was told my eyes are now self-healing, no additional damage is likely to occur and I should be fine.

It was a great Christmas present. Blindness is no longer on the horizon.

My point is that I regularly mention this on Twitter. But it never occurred to me that readers may want to know. And all because I allowed the blog to become too impersonal.

Moving forward, I’m going to work hard on improving those 2 areas. You’ll no longer hear from me just because ‘it’s been a while’ and when you do, I promise to make it a lot more human.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. I’ll do better in 2019!

I’ve had some ideas. And now they’re yours. You’re welcome

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marketing, pick you, choose you

I shared a few ideas with business owners this week, which they found useful. So, I thought I’d share them with you.

Here they are in no particular order.

Become a proactive collector of ideas

When you get an idea, stop what you’re doing and capture it. Then set a little time aside at the end of each day to focus on what you’ve captured.

I usually grab ideas using the voice recorder on my phone. Especially if they come to me whilst out walking, which is where most of my best ideas come from. Later, I get them down in writing. This allows me to dig a little deeper. If an idea still seems like it could be useful, I keep it. By the way, this post is the result of an idea I had yesterday.

Invest in something your business needs

Invest in something today, which you know your business needs. Succeeding in business it challenging enough, when we give our business everything it needs. If we choose to starve our business of these resources, it’s impossible to survive… let alone thrive.

Make a tricky decision

Find a decision you have been avoiding and take action on it. Indecisiveness destroys progress. It’s also a major source of stress and unhappiness. It’s no coincidence that the most successful business owners are all proactive decision makers.

We need to remember that the decision to avoid a decision (to do nothing) is also a decision. By proactively making decisions, we regain control.

Share something useful

Publish something today, which will be useful to your marketplace and showcase your expertise. This might be a blog post, vlog, newsletter, social media update… whichever you prefer. The key is to make sure that what you’re sharing is useful (to them) and not just a sales pitch.

Useful, knowledgeable people are always in demand. Think about that for a moment.

Start a new book

Start reading a book today, which will educate you or inspire you. The internet is useful for lots of things, but nothing quite beats a book, for delivering the written word with the focus and detail required.

This need not be a business book.

None (literally not one) of the most useful things I have learned from a book, came from a business book. They came from books on; faith, art, design, psychology, comedy, sport, music, history and lots more.

I’m not saying business books have no value. Just that the big lessons tend to come from outside the narrow business arena.

For example, a business owner who’s starting with very little money, will probably learn more from a book about the amazing success of Andy Warhol, than a business book. Plus, it’s extremely hard to get noticed, if you feed your mind on the same ideas from the same business gurus as your competitors.

I hope you found at least one of these ideas and suggestions useful, my friend. If you did, the next step is to put it into action and measure the results.

The marketing impact of premium quality images

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As regular readers may have noticed, I’ve recently started using Shutterstock images in my blog posts. They reached out to me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I’d partner with them. Shutterstock has given me access to their 225 million-strong image library, in return for exposure on Jim’s Marketing Blog.

Note: If you haven’t already heard of Shutterstock, they are headquartered at The Empire State Building with an IPO value of over half a billion dollars. In short, their service lets users find and buy images, vectors, videos, and music.

What interested me, was the opportunity to test, and then share with you, if using ‘paid for’, premium images would have a positive, measurable impact on my marketing results. So, I’m going to use their images until January, then I’ll report back to you with my findings.

Previously, I’ve used images from freely available image libraries or made my own. The obvious challenge with free images, is that they are used everywhere. In theory, because premium images are less commonly used and look better, they should be more effective at capturing attention.

Some immediate feedback

There is one immediate, measurable improvement I can share with you already. And that’s speed.

It’s massively easier to find exactly the right image, when you’re searching a huge professional library, with powerful indexing. To qualify that, it has often taken me as long to find the right image for a blog post, as it took to write the post. And the image tended to be, at best, ‘okay’. With Shutterstock, it takes just a few minutes and the image is always highly professional. That’s allowed me to spend 100% of my blogging time actually writing.

It remains to be seen whether the visual impact will move the dial, from a marketing perspective. Rest assured, you’ll be the first to know my results.

Content creation: Music, coffee and prayer

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marketing ideas

People often ask me if I follow a routine for content creation.

I do. It’s pretty basic. It’s built around music, coffee and prayer.

  • Music: When I write, I always have music playing in the background. I find lyrics distracting, so I listen to instrumental work. Right now, I’m listening to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. Other writing companions include John Coltrane, Moby, Bach, Skrillix and Tchaikovsky.
  • Coffee: Once the music is on, I grab some coffee. (By the way, most of my blog posts are 2 coffees long). I’ve seen various studies regarding how coffee works on the brain. I’m not sure there’s any neurological benefit whatsoever. I drink coffee because I love the taste. As a type 2 diabetic, I don’t add sugar. Just a splash of cream.
  • Prayer: This is obviously a very personal part of my routine. Before I start, I say a very simple prayer, asking God to inspire me. I used to try and do everything myself and found it a lot harder.

That’s pretty-much it.

Your content creation routine

Obviously, you need to find something that works for you. And one size does not fit all.

For example, many of my friends can’t have music playing when they work, they don’t drink coffee, and most of them are atheist. There are others I know, who have to write from a coffee shop or café, because the atmosphere gets them into a resourceful state.

The key is to experiment. Try different inputs and atmospheres. Keep what works for you. Discard the rest. You’ll be amazed how much easier your content creation becomes, when you have an effective routine.

By the way, a lot of you have told me that you found the 6 Idea Trick extremely useful, for generating content ideas. If you haven’t tried it already (or you read my stuff via Gmail and never saw the post), give it a try.

NOTE: Gmail users typically miss over 40 percent of my posts. Here’s how to stop that from happening to you.