Jim Connolly Marketing

Bring me your problems

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bring me your problems, marketing

There’s real power in the following 4 words: Bring me your problems.

Why?

Because everyone has problems. And nobody wants them. That includes your prospective clients. What they want (and need) are answers. They want to get unstuck. They want to free themselves from frustration. They want reliable service providers, who they can trust. And this is extremely important to them.

In short, your prospective clients are highly motivated to get their problems solved.

Okay. Hold that thought for a moment.

Now let’s look at the service you provide

Your service is the answer to a problem. Or a series of problems. How do I know this? Simple. Every service provider is a problem solver.

So, I’d like you to answer a question: When was the last time you asked people to bring you their problems?

Sure, every service provider markets the services they provide. They have them listed on their websites, they mention them when they speak with prospective clients, they may even mention them in a newsletter, blog, vlog, podcast or on social networks, etc.

But that wasn’t what I was asking.

My question was a lot more literal than that.

In very literal terms, when was the last time you used these four words [bring me your problems] in your marketing?

Bring me your problems is a powerful, direct request. It bypasses all the fluff. It cuts right to the chase. It strikes at the core of what your prospective clients want and need. And this is especially the case when those 4 words feature prominently, in the right place.

Here’s how it works

It looks a lot like this.

  1. Your prospective client has a problem.
  2. She finds your website (or any of your marketing assets).
  3. She can see that the services you provide are related to her problem.
  4. She then sees a direct request, asking her to bring you her problems.
  5. Boom! Your message has engaged with her needs like a laser.
  6. You’re now massively more likely to have motivated her to contact you and hire you.

Is it really that easy?

Absolutely.

Something important just happened

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comfort zones, what if

Something important just happened. Today, you and you’re business crossed the 2021 half way mark.

You now have 6-months of 2021 data to review and learn from. Data that when acted on correctly, will help you finish the year massively stronger.

For example.

  • You know what the new needs and wants of your marketplace are.
  • You know how your clients, your team, your competitors and your suppliers act in times of great uncertainty.
  • You know the real commercial value of your trusted advisers; those who were there for you with rock solid advice and those who were not.
  • You know whether your business growth strategy needs to be adjusted a little or radically improved.

So, what if?

What if you were to determine the improvements you need to make; how to adapt, who to replace, who to reward and how gently or rigorously to adjust your strategy… and than make all the changes? Even the uncomfortable, scary changes?

What if you were to use this as an opportunity to radically improve your business, so that it’s set to absolutely thrive before the end of the year?

I’m just asking you. What if?

Why?

Because of the thousands of business owners and C-suite leaders reading this, some will never have given themselves the opportunity to see just how high they can fly.

They will often have wondered what they’re truly capable of. But they won’t yet have ripped the lid off their potential, by examining the data around them and doing what they believe is required, for them to achieve the biggest rewards. I’m talking about the tough decisions. The decisions that ruffle feathers… the decisions that force them out of their comfort zones.

If you’re not that person, I’m sorry to have just wasted 5 minutes of your time.

But if you are that person, please take a moment today to ponder on this: What if?

Seriously. What if?

What I learned, after making two massive mistakes

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business lesson, mistake

Image: Sarah Kilian

I made a couple of epic mistakes when I started out in business. Here they are, along with a powerful lesson that you may find useful.

I was prompted to write this after a talk I gave to a group of young entrepreneurs. One of them asked me a great question. They wanted to know; what was the most valuable lesson I learned, from my first year in business?

The answer was easy.

I remember it well.

Because it was so painful.

Sincerely wrong

My answer began with a quote from Jim Rohn:

“Sincerity is not a test of truth. We must not make this mistake: He must be right; he’s so sincere! That’s because, it’s possible to be sincerely wrong.”

I explained that during my first year as a business owner, I’d made 2 extremely bad decisions. I made them based on feedback from a couple of people I trusted. I was in my twenties at the time. They were 20 or 30 years older than me. They were also good, genuine and sincere people.

Making decisions based on their advice seemed sensible.

It wasn’t. Oh man. It really wasn’t!

One of those decisions lost me an amazing opportunity. Another cost me a fortune and almost left me broke. I quickly learned that I had to be a lot more discerning, regarding who I went to for important advice. It was around that time that I discovered the above quote from Jim Rohn.

From that point onward, I decided the best source of business advice was from people, who’d already achieved what I wanted to achieve. I’ve followed that rule ever since and have never once regretted it.

My original approach failed me in 2 important ways

Firstly, their geographical proximity to me was not a useful way to determine the value of their feedback. I rely on experts today, who are located all over the world.

Secondly, they were knowledgeable, but they were not entrepreneurs.

  • One was the branch manager at the bank where I opened my first business account.
  • The other was the practice manager at my accountant’s office.

They remained salaried employees for the remainder of their careers; never actually going into business for themselves. They operated from the employee mindset.

They saw risk in everything. They’d advise me against doing anything, unless there was a guarantee, in advance, of success.

Business doesn’t work like that.

In fact, life doesn’t work like that. And it never has. Otherwise no one would ever start a business, or get married, or start a family, or buy a new home, or travel the world or do anything. Success comes from minimising risk. Not from avoiding potential risk. Both of the people advising me were sincere. But the advice they were giving me, as Jim Rohn said, was sincerely wrong.

Who is currently influencing your decision making? That’s a question worth considering. Especially if your business isn’t making the progress you want or need.

The BIG marketing problem that no one talks about

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Marketing silence, feedback marketing

Image: Nick Fewings

You’ve probably heard the old phrase; “Silence is golden“?

Well, that’s not the case when it comes to the marketing of your business. In today’s post, I’ll show you how silence can have a devastating effect on your results, plus how to avoid it from happening to you.

I was in a coffee shop once, when a guy with a very obvious hairpiece came in. He had natural, thick brown hair around his ears, with a jet black hairpiece on top. Of course, no one mentioned it to him. People just smirked when he wasn’t looking. Whether this guy needed the hairpiece for vanity or medical reasons, it’s entirely possible he has no idea that it’s so poorly matched to his natural hair.

A very similar kind of silence happens regularly in business. And when it does, it costs you a fortune.

Allow me to expand on that.

  • We check out the social media accounts of a potential vendor. We notice their updates are mostly just a series of sales pitches or automated quotes from famous people. We don’t tell them their social media activity is so dull that we leave in seconds. We silently move on.
  • We go to a website to check out a potential service provider. We then see that their site looks amateurish and decide not to consider them. We don’t email them to let them know their site created such a bad impression. We silently move on.
  • We start reading a poorly-written piece of marketing and quickly discard it. We don’t call the company and tell them their content is losing them business. We silently move on.

Faced with all this silence, how do you figure out if what you’re doing is working for you?

You ‘listen’ to what your results are saying. That’s where the most accurate signal is.

Don’t wait for someone to tell you your marketing sucks. Because they won’t. Your friends don’t want to upset you. Your competitors don’t want you to become a threat. And strangers don’t give a rat’s ass.

In short, the silence of your marketplace is easy to miss. If things are too quiet, for too long, take action.

The HER strategy. Something to get excited about!

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marketing

As long-time readers will know, I tend not to write about the specific work I do with my clients, or how effective / exciting some of the strategies I use are.

Today, I’m going to show you behind the scenes. You’re going to discover an amazingly powerful marketing process that I use daily, but haven’t written about in over a decade!

I call it the Highest Ethical Return (HER) strategy. If you followed my work back in the 1990’s, you’ll remember this as a foundational part of my marketing ethos. It’s also how I earned an international reputation for results, despite being one of the youngest, independent marketing professionals out there.

Here’s a very quick look at how the Highest Ethical Return strategy works. You’ll also get an idea of how I, as a Marketing Mentor, work with my clients.

The Highest Ethical Return strategy

I use this term to describe a strategy where you ethically achieve the highest possible return from every element of your sales and marketing activities. To achieve the Highest Ethical Return, you optimize multiple different marketing activities, so they compound on one another.

You start, by taking one marketing element and optimizing various, high return aspects of it. I’m going to use the example of email marketing because it’s so widely used.

  • You choose to optimize the subject line of the email and manage to increase open rates by 20%. (I’ve achieved increases of hundreds of percent)
  • You choose to optimise the timing of your distribution, so it arrives at the optimal time on the optimal day of the week. You increase open rates by another 5%.

At this point, you’ve increased the number of prospective clients or customers who will see your marketing by 25% and it hasn’t cost you a penny.

It hasn’t increased your risk. It hasn’t taken much effort. And you’ll benefit from these improvements again and again and again!

Naturally, you don’t stop there

  • You choose to optimize the content of your email and your CTA (call to action) so that it’s more compelling, and increase your sales rates by 15%. (Again, this increase can be 10x or 100x higher – depending on your baseline).
  • You choose to optimize your marketing proposition (offer) by pumping more value into it, and your 15% increased sales rate grows to 25%.

At this point, you’ve increased open rates by 25% AND you’ve also increased your sales conversion rates by 25%. This means you’re reaching 25% more people with a prospective need for your services AND 25% more of that bigger number are hiring you or buying from you.

Depending on the size of your marketing list and the lifetime value of your clients, you may have just increased your income or revenues my thousands… On just one mailing.

Continue improving it, and thousands can become tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

Did you notice something?

All that additional revenue and profit came from using your same old list, but using it to achieve the highest possible return.

No additional money was required, there was no additional risk and very little additional time required. Extremely high return. Extremely low exposure. Exciting eh?

This is a tiny example – a quick glance of a few optimizations, of just one marketing activity. There are tons more things you can deploy, to further increase your email results. (For instance, think how you could ramp up your sales numbers by getting the Highest Ethical Return on your email follow-up process. That one additional step compounds on the others to radically increase your results).

Remember: You’re still only getting started. Even after you’ve fully optimized email marketing, there are numerous, additional (and more profitable) marketing activities to apply the Highest Ethical Return strategy to.

The strategy is only fully utilized, when you’ve applied it to every element of your sales and marketing. Consider how this could improve your revenues and profits, if you choose to use it correctly.

I mean that. Ponder on the idea.

Acres of high profit, easy business wins!

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endorsed relationships, joint ventures, jvs

On a purely commercial level, something has continued to baffle me since the start of the pandemic.

It’s simply this:

Why have so few small and medium-sized businesses collaborated with one another?

There has never been a greater need for businesses to collaborate or a greater opportunity for commercial collaboration. Reaching out to another business, which offers a complimentary, non-conflicting service to yours is so easy. Joint ventures, endorsed relationships and many other forms of mutually beneficial opportunities are available.

Yet at a time when so many business owners are really struggling, they’re isolating themselves from acres of exceptionally profitable, easy wins.

I don’t know all the reasons why this is happening, but I believe it’s partly caused by focusing so much on survival, that business opportunities are not on their radar. If you’re hunkering down until things go back to ‘normal’, your mindset is all about how to survive, when it should be on how to thrive.

I’d like you to consider that thriving right now is not only possible, it’s highly probable, so long as you do the right things correctly.

Commercial collaboration in action

If you’d like to very quickly start attracting great new clients (or customers), try this.

  • Consider for a moment who your ideal client is.
  • Now think about non-competing providers who have access to your ideal profile of client AND who offer a service that in some way compliments yours.
  • Do some research and identify those who have a professional reputation. And reach out to them.
  • The way you reach out will depend on your industry or profession, whether you’re both local businesses, whether you’re members of the same association or group… and a ton of other things. There’s no one size fits all approach.
  • Find a suitable way to get the ball rolling. And roll with it!
  • Now identify the next collaboration partner and repeat the process.

If you’re not proactively developing commercial collaborations you really should. The opportunities are there. Just waiting for you.