Jim Connolly Marketing

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Being predictable can bite your ass

By

Predictable, marketing tip

Predictable can be life saving: The braking system on your car is a great example. You need to know that each time you put your foot on the brake, you’re going to slow down or stop as expected.

Predictable can be reassuring: It’s reassuring to know that the quality of products or services you receive from a vendor, will be predictably excellent.

However, predictable can also hurt your business. Imagine a prospective client is looking for a new service provider. For whatever reason, their previous provider didn’t fulfil their needs. The last thing that prospective client will want, is another provider that seems too similar looking, to the one they just fired.

Conversely, they’ll be extremely attracted to providers that combine being reassuringly professional, with fresh ideas and uncommonly great service.

That’s where YOU come in my friend. At least it should be.

Don’t let predictability bite your ass

Being predictable in the wrong areas will destroy your marketing.

  • It will attract fewer enquiries.
  • It will motivate fewer prospects to hire you.
  • It will position your business as a commodity. People buy commodities based on the lowest price or fee.
  • It will camouflage your business and stop you getting noticed.

This is the total opposite of what you need in order for your business to succeed.

Make no mistake, it takes guts to build your own version of how a service provider in your niche should operate. It’s hard to zig when your competitors zag. It’s so much easier to play follow the follower. That’s why only the top few percent in any industry truly stand out.

Those of us who want our business to fly need to be smarter than that. We need to only be predictable where it matters. Because the alternative is to be invisible. And a business that lacks visibility, places a very low ceiling on its potential.

What keeps your prospective clients awake at night?

By

marketing hot prospects

What keeps your prospective clients awake at night?

There are 2 broad answers to that question.

  1. The things they’re worried about. Their fears, apprehensions, anxieties or concerns.
  2. The things they’re excited about. Their goals, dreams and the opportunities ahead of them.

Why those answers are critically important to your business

Anything that keeps your prospective clients awake at night is an extremely high priority to them. They’re looking to take action immediately. It’s where their urgent attention is.

In order to help them, and for you to benefit from helping them, your task is twofold.

  1. You need to determine exactly what they’re worried about or excited about.
  2. You need to clearly demonstrate how your services or products will help them in that key area.

Most marketing doesn’t do this. Instead, it focuses on how great the provider is. How happy they are to help. How their clients or customers love them. And it’s spectacularly less effective, than addressing the issue, which is both urgent and of high priority for your prospects.

Improve your strategy

If you want to attract vastly more red hot prospects, you should strongly consider using a better strategy. Like the kind I develop for my clients. Their marketing speaks directly to the most urgent wants and needs of their prospect.

It addresses that thing, which is keeping their prospect awake at night. Only after that, does it position my client as the answer.

  • Get this right and it attracts enquiries from super-motivated people, eager to take action!
  • Get it wrong and you’ll attract prospects who’re not in any hurry, and often lose interest.

Take a look at the various marketing assets you use. Do they focus primarily and directly on the things that have your prospective clients’ urgent attention?

If not, you’re needlessly leaving money on the table. And you’re missing out on an amazing opportunity to attract the most motivated prospects. Those urgently looking for a service like yours, right now!

Everyone will ignore you

By

Marketing to everyone

Almost everyone will ignore you.

And that’s perfectly fine.

Because some people will love you.

The message in those 3 sentences is worth remembering. For example, when you’re creating a new product, or putting a marketing strategy together.

Here’s the thing

You can’t appeal to everyone.

You don’t need to appeal to everyone.

Think about it, if everyone wanted to hire you or buy from you, you couldn’t cope!

So focus your marketing, and wider business development, on some people.

Some people?

  • The kind of people who ‘get’ the way you work.
  • The kind of people who value your vision.
  • The kind of people who will love working with you or buying from you.
  • The kind of people who make the very best clients or customers.

In a nutshell, ignore everyone with your marketing and focus very specifically on some people.

It’s the fastest, least expensive and most straightforward way to dramatically improve your marketing results. And build a world-class client base.

A list of business experts you absolutely must avoid

By

marketing stop

In life there are certain people who you absolutely need to avoid. The same is true in business.

Some are easy to spot

  • The web designer whose website is a piece of crap.
  • The marketing expert, who embarrassingly needs to pester people on Linkedin because their own marketing doesn’t work.
  • The consultant or adviser who claims to be in high demand, yet offers free consultations.
  • The self-proclaimed leadership guru, who clearly isn’t leading.
  • The copywriter whose content is poorly-written and lacks impact.
  • The creativity expert who’s just like all the other creativity experts. (Think about that for a moment).

Others are trickier to spot

  • The marketing consultant, who used tricks to attract a million social media followers.
  • The accountant who understands numbers, but can’t clearly explain what they mean to their client’s business.
  • The strategist whose own strategy is failing.
  • The business development adviser who has never built a successful business of their own.

Protect your business from bad advice

The personal recommendation of a trusted friend is usually the least risky way to find an expert provider. Just make sure the friend has recent, first-hand experience of the quality of the provider’s work.

Another option is to hire someone whose work you’re already familiar with. For example, if you subscribe to a provider’s podcast, YouTube channel, blog or newsletter and they regularly share useful information, they’re giving you some powerful clues.

  • The fact they have turned up consistently, demonstrates a degree of reliability. This is especially the case if they have many years worth of material available.
  • You get to experience first hand, how knowledgeable they are from the quality of information they provide.
  • In addition, you’ll know in advance if they share information with the clarity you need.
  • You also gain an insight into their personality and mindset, which can help you determine if they’re the kind of person you work best with.

With an attractive looking website and some testimonials, anyone can claim to be an expert at anything. And that’s why you need to look deeper.

Because the cost of taking bad advice is far, far higher than the person’s fee.

Exposed: The fact that determines the potential of your business

By

business potential, marketing, decisions

How much is the potential of a business worth?

Well, it depends.

  1. If the potential isn’t implemented, it’s of zero value. These businesses fold soon after they start.
  2. If the potential is implemented by someone, but they don’t give it the resources it needs, it will be worth something. Though just a fraction of its potential value. This is the most common situation for small business owners.
  3. If the potential is implemented by someone, who commits to fully realizing it, it could be worth an absolute fortune. A small percentage of business owners take this route.

The difference in those 3 valuations

What takes the potential from literally zero value, to being worth a fortune, is how, and if, the potential is deployed.

Every business owner in that 2nd group uses an established business model. A proven business model with high potential. We know this, because people in EVERY industry move into the 3rd group and make a fortune.

Here’s the thing: Regardless of your industry, YOU can decide to move into the 3rd group.

It’s a decision.

But, it’s ALSO a decision to stay in the 2nd group and spin our wheels. It’s an extremely important decision, too. With huge consequences for our future.

The mistake we make as business owners, is to fool ourselves into thinking that ‘staying as we are’ isn’t a decision we make. It absolutely is a decision. It’s a major decision that impacts not just our business, but our quality of life and our legacy. Every day we decide to run our business and market our business ‘as usual’, we’re recommitting to that decision.

That’s a fact we must be fully aware of. Because even if it makes us feel uncomfortable, as they say; “the fact remains”.

Accepting the fact gives us an objective foundation, from which to make better decisions.

  • We can decide to aim for a place in that 3rd group, and enjoy the possibilities and potential our decision will bring.
  • We can also decide to live with the limitations of being in that 2nd group, and never know what we could have achieved.

As long as we accept that both decisions are, in fact, decisions, we’ll be fully equipped to make in informed choice.

We’ll be able to see and accept the risk attached to remaining in the 2nd group, as well as the risk attached to improving.

We’ll also be able to avoid the regrets of those who went before us, who only saw risk in the decision to improve.

The biggest lie in marketing!

By

The biggest lie in marketing is almost certainly not what you’re expecting.

Here it is.

If you ask the average, struggling business owner about marketing they will tell you the following: “I don’t have enough time for marketing”.

That’s a lie. 

And here are 30 examples to prove it

Whether these business owners know it or not, they are marketing their business all day every day. That’s because everything in business is marketing.

Here are 30 examples.

  1. The eagerness you demonstrate for helping your clients or customers.
  2. The cleanliness and age of your company vehicles.
  3. The way you speak: From the words you use to the warmth of your welcome.
  4. The experience you give your clients or customers, which they share with their friends.
  5. The way you handle phone calls.
  6. The causes that you or your business publicly support.
  7. The prices or fees you charge.
  8. The type of offers you use to attract new clients.
  9. The range of services you provide, especially in relation to how similar they are to what your competitors offer.
  10. The confidence you inspire in others when you connect with them.
  11. The way you respond to email enquiries, both in the speed and tone of your response.
  12. The content you use on your website.
  13. The places you choose to advertise.
  14. The type of advertising messages you use.
  15. The groups your business belongs to.
  16. The energy you have for your business.
  17. The way you connect with people on social networks.
  18. The time it takes you to make a decision.
  19. The quality of the photos and other graphics you use.
  20. The type of clients or customers you choose to work with.
  21. The type of clients or customers you choose not to work with.
  22. The leadership you demonstrate.
  23. The guarantees you offer.
  24. The flexibility you show, when a client or customer has a unique challenge.
  25. The professionalism of your marketing copy.
  26. The working atmosphere you provide.
  27. The way you communicate with your clients or customers.
  28. The way you handle problems, both internally and external (client) problems.
  29. The regularity with which you achieve deadlines.
  30. The way you and your team dress.

It’s all marketing

Everything your business does is marketing.

That’s to say, it’s giving people a story about your business. It’s setting their expectations. It’s building confidence in your services or creating doubt. It’s telling the world what your priorities are.

In short, if you run a business, you are already engaged in marketing. And you’re doing it all day, every day.

So the question is never if you market your business or not.

The question my friend, is whether you’re doing it effectively or not.