Business development Archives - Page 63 of 83

The death of blogging

By Jim Connolly | January 19, 2018

I’d like to share something with you, which has greater potential to improve your marketing, than anything I have ever known.

Imagine you were able to communicate with your prospective clients. Not through advertising. Not through pestering them for attention. But through building a relationship with them, where they value your expertise. So they look forward to you communicating with them. And they want to hear from you.

Does that imaginary scenario remind you of anything?

Here’s a clue: You’re reading this. You’re a business owner. I provide services to business owners.

Blogging isn’t dead

Every year since I started blogging, people have claimed that blogging is dead. It isn’t. In fact, it’s vastly more effective today than it was 10 years ago, when I wrote my first marketing blog post. And back then, it was already the most powerful marketing tool I had ever known.

Blogging is so much more powerful now.

Why?

Here are just a few reasons.

1. People are eagerly looking for blog posts

There are close to 2 billion people using social networks. Many millions of them are actively looking for relevant information to share with their friends. And that’s exactly what they do. If a post is interesting and marketed correctly, it will be shared.

This sharing increases your reach, as new people subscribe to your blog. And not just “people”, but new people who are interested in what you do. Yes, prospective clients and customers!

2. The power of email

Email distribution of blog posts allows people to have a one-to-one communication channel with the blogger. If you’re reading this via email, hit reply and your email will arrive in my inbox. Readers do this every day. Think about that for a moment.

How useful would it be for your business, if prospective clients were reaching out to you every day?

And how valuable would it be, if you had a growing email list of thousands of prospective clients, who eagerly want to hear from you?

3. Your prospective clients or customers read blogs

People wrongly assume THEIR prospective clients don’t read blogs. And they’re wrong. (I wrote about this here.)

Did you know, Wordpress blogs alone account for almost 30% of ALL INTERNET traffic? Well, it’s true! Here are some you may have heard of: CNN, Time, The New York Post, Variety, USA Today, The Star Wars website, Sony Music, MTV News, BBC America, The Walt Disney Company website, The Harvard Gazette, The New Yorker, The Mercedes Benz website… all these sites (and millions more) are built on the same WordPress blogging software as mine.

If you’re serious about growing your business today, you need a blog and a darn good blogging strategy. Otherwise you’ll miss out on the world’s most powerful marketing tool.

How to regularly attract motivated clients

By Jim Connolly | January 18, 2018

I shared a proven success factor with you in my previous post, which is common to every successful business owner (read it here). Today, I’m going to share another.

This tip is very easy to use. And the results come extremely quickly. Let’s go!

The basics

One of the absolute basics of marketing, is that people buy based on feelings rather than logic.

It’s often said that the decision to buy a house, the largest purchase most people will ever make, is based on the way they feel about the house in the first 60 seconds!

This begs the question: How can YOU make people feel that way about your business?

The feel good factor

Unsurprisingly, people are extremely attracted to things that make them feel good. We call this the feel good factor.

The iPhone is a great example of the power of the feel good factor. It explains why so many people on low incomes go without things they need, in order to own the latest iPhone. They feel good about ordering the iPhone. They feel good about collecting their new iPhone. They also feel good about people seeing them with their iPhone.

As a result, this luxury item broke sales records every year, during the last economic recession. Think about that for a moment. It makes no logical sense. After all, fewer people could afford it. Yet more and more people bought it.

In fact, they not only bought iPhones in record-breaking numbers, but they started upgrading their phone every 12 to 24 months. Previously, people replaced phones when the phone became unreliable or stopped working.

That’s how powerful the feel good factor is. And why your business needs it.

Creating your feel good factor

Clearly, there are some very good reasons for you to create a feel good factor, around your business or brand. When I work with a client, I give them very specific advice on exactly what to do and how to do it, based on their industry, marketplace etc.

However, this post will be read by business owners from over 100 countries. So, here’s a very general strategy, based on just one element of the feel good factor.

The feel good factor is fuelled by positivity. When we hear good things and see good things coming from a business, it quickly improves how we feel about them. You’d assume every business owner knows this. Yet, when you look at the dialogue coming from them, you see it’s usually neutral or negative.

Look at the typical small business website, blog, newsletter, social networking accounts, etc. The messaging is bland. It’s predictable, low energy, lacking in personality and devoid of passion. As such, it totally fails to fire-up the marketplace with a feel good factor. It’s woefully ineffective. It’s easy to ignore.

Businesses that benefit from the feel good factor are very, very different.

Their overall messaging is based around the positive things happening in their business and their marketplace.
They build a picture of a business that’s productive, happy and helpful.
When you speak with people from these businesses, their energy and passion is infectious.
When they talk about their business and their plans, it leaves you feeling so motivated, you wish you were involved.
People want to work there. And it shows. It really shows.
When you visit their website, blog or read their newsletter, you quickly feel that theirs is a business that’s thriving.

It’s no wonder that these feel good businesses earn the attention of their marketplace, get people talking and attract the best clients.

I’d like to leave you with a couple of important things to ponder. Firstly, is there a powerful internal and external feel good factor around your business? And if there isn’t, what do you plan to do about it?

As my clients have discovered, getting this right doesn’t just increase your revenues and profits. It also makes business massively more exciting and enjoyable, too.

What every business owner needs to know about influence

By Jim Connolly | January 17, 2018

I’ve worked with and met some spectacularly successful business owners. Here’s something I’ve found, again and again: Successful business owners are extremely selective, regarding who and what they pay attention to.

It makes sense. After all, everyone and everything we give our attention to, influences us. Some more than others. But they all have an impact on how we feel and how we think. And our feelings and thoughts control what we do.

In business, we know that by associating with successful businesspeople, you massively increase your own potential.

Why?

Because their influence will have you thinking and feeling, in a way that’s consistent with commercial success. Your focus will improve. Your outlook will improve. Your energy levels will improve.

Your outcomes (results) will then improve, accordingly.

How a fee increase can attract more clients and boost your profits

By Jim Connolly | January 16, 2018

When marketed correctly, it’s possible to massively increase your fees and attract more clients, than you did at the lower fee.

It sounds counter intuitive. But it makes perfect sense. Allow me to explain.

I was prompted to write about this, after speaking with one of my clients. We talked about what’s happened since she tripled her fees. Yes, it took a lot of courage, however, not only is every client now massively more profitable to her, she has never been busier with new clients.

So, why did a 300% increase in her fees result in more clients, rather than fewer clients?

My client is highly experienced and provides an excellent service. However, her fees used to be around the average for her industry.

In other words, she was claiming to offer a top quality service for what sounded like a bargain basement fee. She was giving people a mixed message. Mixed messages create doubt. And doubt destroys marketing.

The kind of people who seek out excellent service and are willing to pay for it, would have ignored my clients former marketing. They would see the service being offered, compare it to her cheapo fee… and get suspicious. They’d assume she was another bargain basement provider making claims she couldn’t back up.

Of course, those looking for a cheap provider were not attracted to her either, as they shop around for the lowest fee and hers were close to average.

So, my client had previously failed to attract the best clients and the worst clients. She was left with the overcrowded middle of the market, where it’s exceptionally competitive, low profit, and very hard to stand out.

A lesson. A challenge and an opportunity

The lesson: If you genuinely provide an excellent service and want to attract lots of great clients, you need to make sure that your prices match your promises. Remember, people are told from childhood to avoid offers that sound too good to be true.

The challenge: You need to market this correctly. Simply increasing your fees is unlikely to achieve anything much. The value needs to be clear. The marketing needs to be compelling. It needs to inspire prospective clients to trust you and motivate them to hire you.

The opportunity: As my client discovered, if you get the marketing right the rewards can be huge.

Stop trying to build a great business, with low quality clients!

By Jim Connolly | January 12, 2018

marketing scale

You can’t cook an delicious meal with low quality ingredients.

You can’t construct a high quality building with low quality materials.

And you absolutely can not create a successful business, with low quality clients.

Work exclusively with the best clients

The definition of a truly great client will differ somewhat, depending on your industry. However, in general, the best clients are those who give you the freedom to do your best work. They pay you what you’re worth and they pay you on time. They are professionals themselves, so they value your professionalism.

Whilst every human being is created equal, their value to you as a client varies massively. Some are outstanding. Others are not just of zero commercial value… they’re of sub-zero value to your business. In other words, your business is worse off because of them. This includes clients who are late payers, insulting to you or your team, over-demanding, unreliable or dishonest.

This is why you have to be highly selective who you choose to work with. When I share this advice with young business owners, I often get the same reply.

“I hear what you’re saying Jim, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

I remind them that they’re not beggars. They’re business owners. I explain that if they think they can’t afford to turn low value clients away, it’s only because they haven’t seen the huge cost of working for low value clients.

No one sets out to attract low quality clients. It’s simply what happens, when a business isn’t using an effective, focused marketing strategy. Instead of regularly attracting high quality, targeted enquiries from their ideal profile of client, they get sporadic enquiries from a mixed bag of clients.

In short, their ineffective marketing leaves them feeling forced into accepting low quality clients. And that cycle continues, until they choose to take the marketing of their business seriously.

Make 2018 the year you refuse to settle for less than you deserve. Take your marketing seriously. And give yourself the freedom to work exclusively with great clients.

How to avoid low value clients. And you must avoid them. Seriously!

By Jim Connolly | January 5, 2018

Debbie is a freelance trainer. She emailed me with a great question. I said I’d answer it here, as I know many of you will find it useful.

Debbie wanted to know what to do, when someone enquires about her services… then says they don’t have a budget or almost no budget.

Here’s why it happens and how to totally overcome it.

Costs and investments

If a business owner tells you they have no marketing budget, or just a small marketing budget, there’s a reason.

It’s simply this: They believe the service / product you provide is a cost and not an investment.

Think about it.

When a business owner encounters a worthwhile investment, they invest.
When a business owner encounters a cost, they limit or avoid expenditure.

When I explain this to young entrepreneurs, I put it like this:

If Bob says, “I’d invest more in my marketing, if only my business was doing better”, we know Bob’s got things the wrong way around. Nothing in the world works like that. The world works through cause and effect… not effect and cause.

That same guy wouldn’t go to the gym and tell the fitness trainer, “If you transform my body, weight, fitness and health today, I promise I’ll come here regularly for the next 12 months and work really hard”.

So what’s behind this bizarre mindset?

Knowing and accepting are 2 different things

Every business owner knows the difference between an investment and a cost, on an intellectual level. However, many haven’t accepted it on an emotional level. And it’s a long, frustrating, usually fruitless task to try and convince them, when they just don’t get it.

If you have a lot of spare time and a great amount of patience, you could try and change their mindset. I don’t recommend it, though.

You see, even if you manage to change their world-view. Even if you manage to get them to pay you. You’ll almost certainly end up regretting it. In my experience, the end result will be a fear-focused client, who’s a complete pain to work with.

There’s a better solution

Much better in fact. The solution is to attract so many high quality enquiries, that you don’t have to waste time dealing with people who are not willing, ready or seriously interested in what you offer.

So, focus exclusively on marketing to your ideal profile of client. Do this correctly and you’ll build a great business, doing your best work for wonderful people.

In short: If you want to stop attracting low quality clients, you need to stop using low quality marketing.