Jim Connolly Marketing

Marketing tip: Finish strong. Always!

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marketing delivery

My friends Colleen and Matt went for a meal recently. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Matt’s dessert arrived on a dirty plate. They told me that from that moment onward, their dining experience was ruined.

That restaurant could have the best chef. It could use the freshest ingredients and have the highest hygiene standards. Their staff could be top of the pile, too. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because they allowed food to be served to a diner on a dirty plate.

Imagine you decide to send flowers to a loved one. It doesn’t matter that the florist picked the most beautiful flowers and arranged them with amazing artistry… if they fail to deliver them with care and your loved one receives flowers that were damaged in transit.

The lesson here is simple: We can ruin a great deal of hard work and maybe lose customers, if we fail to pay close attention to the way we present the end product.

How to create a successful future for your business

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business development, marketing tips, marketing help

When you look to the months or years ahead for your business, what are the main things you focus on?

I ask you this question, because many small business owners can increase their results and reduce their stress, by making 1 simple adjustment to their thinking.

Here’s what you need to know.

Out of our control

There are some things in business that we can’t control. For example, the arrival of a super-smart competitor. The economy. The next trend.

When faced with these uncertainties, we have a couple of options. We can worry about the things we can’t control or we can focus on the things we can control.

  • Worry is both a waste of time and highly toxic. It’s bad for our health. It’s bad for our business. It leads us into making bad decisions. It damages our confidence too.
  • Conversely, focusing on things within our control is a highly effective, proven approach to business success.

Within our control

By focusing on what you can control, you place yourself in the driving seat. The destination of your business is under your direction. You can then put ideas and strategies in place, to make your business stronger.

You can set your sail for what you want to achieve, whatever the winds of change throw at you.

None of us know what the future holds for our industry, our marketplace or our economy. However, the world’s most successful business owners have shown time and time again, that so long as we focus on what we’re able to control, the future can be ours.

PS: Here are 21 habits behind highly successful business owners.

What you need to know about the stupid people who don’t hire you

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marketing tips, clarity, content

I heard a business owner earlier making an amazing statement. Here’s what he said, along with a massively valuable marketing lesson.

The business owner was being interviewed on local radio. They asked him how his business was doing. He replied that it was really struggling. When they asked him why, he replied:

“That’s simple. The marketplace is too stupid to understand how good my service is, so they hire cheaper providers”.

I guess that’s one way to look at things.

He was wrong. Very, very wrong!

Clearly, when prospective customers are failing to understand the value of the services you provide, it’s your job to build a better, clearer marketing message. Writing the marketplace off as being stupid is… well… stupid. It also shifts the focus away from the business owner [who can fix the issue] to the prospective customer [who can’t].

Some far more useful alternatives

If your prospective customers are failing to understand the value you bring, there are lots of things you can do. Here are just a few.

  • Make sure YOU are 100% clear on the value of your service. Check that you’re offering a compelling reason why prospective clients need what you provide. Demonstrate the extra [whatever] you offer, which they can’t get from a competitor. Note: If you can’t explain why they should use your service over a competitor’s service, you’re not ready to market your service yet.
  • Hire a professional marketing copywriter. This is the least expensive, fastest and most effective option. You pay a professional to style your hair, right? You pay a professional to look after your teeth too. So, pay a professional to create a compelling marketing message for your business.
    Tip: If you think your business isn’t worth hiring a professional for, get a job.
  • If you insist on creating your own marketing message, try being clearer. Cut the fluff from your message. Get to the point. Embrace brevity.
    Tip: Don’t write your web copy for Google. Really. Don’t!
  • Then test that new, clearer message on a selection of prospective customers. See if they have a clearer idea of the message you want to convey. If they understand it, others are likely to understand it too.
  • If they still don’t understand your message, try explaining things using more forms of media. So, if it was originally a written marketing message, add video, images, graphs or audio.

There are more customers and clients out there than you could ever need. Plus, it has never been easier to reach them. This means you never need to settle for a business that’s under performing.

It’s 100% within your control.

Let’s get engaged

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engaged observers

One of the most effective ways to grow a business, is to become an engaged observer. It’s a skill that anyone can learn and the results can be incredible [and fast].

Here’s an example of what I mean.

  • When a typical business owner finds a useful website, they’ll read it and bookmark it.
  • An engaged observer will do the same. However, they will also look deeper into the design and content of the website, to see what makes it so valuable. They’ll then consider if any of the lessons can be adapted into their own site.

Here’s another example.

  • A typical business owner will look through their mail and email, decide what’s worth opening and discard the rest.
  • An engaged observer will do the same. However, they will also spend a little time identifying what made some of those messages look valuable enough to open. They’ll then consider if any of the lessons can be adapted into their own marketing letters and emails.

Engaged observers look beyond the obvious. They’re always studying what works. It’s not about copying. It’s about learning from the success of others and adapting it, so that it works for you.

Make it more attractive. Not more irritating!

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One of the most common questions I get from small business owners, is how can they make their marketing more effective.

That’s a good question. Maybe a great question. However, it only addresses 50% of their actual need. And that’s what today’s brief post is all about.

When it comes to spreading awareness with their prospective clients, business owners have 2 options.

  1. They can pester people with marketing messages, to try and get the word out about an average service [or product].
  2. They can develop a remarkable service, which people talk about.

And as you can tell from the endless spam, cold calls, dull advertisements and social networking pitches you see, most opt for that first option. Instead of making their service more attractive, they make themselves more irritating. And in doing so, they make things unnecessarily difficult for themselves.

A better way

A better way forward is to stop trying to make a dull service sound interesting and create something worthy of people’s attention. Then, the service becomes its own marketing. People hear about it, talk about it and purchase it.

It looks like this: When your message is about a genuinely interesting service, the first 10 people who hear about it will tell another 10. That 10 will do the same… rinse repeat. This is how every successful product or service spreads.

How do I know if my service isn’t interesting enough?

There are a few signs, which tell us that the marketplace isn’t interested in what we’re offering. These include the following.

  • If we need to ask people to spread the word about us.
  • If our clients are not recommending us.
  • If we attend a networking group or think we need to attend one.
  • If we need to “chase up”people we connect with, because once they learn about what we do, they go cold.
  • If we attract fee sensitive or cost conscious enquiries.
  • If we find it hard to get noticed amongst the others in our industry.

Assuming you have reached an initial 10, highly targeted prospective clients with your message, none of the above points should be happening. Your marketing should be creating a wave of interest in you and your business, because it’s sharing something interesting. It’s sharing what you do. And if what you do is interesting or remarkable enough, you win and you keep on winning.

How to win and keep on winning

With most small business owners, I start by looking at the service they provide. In just about every case, my first task with them is to make their service more interesting, compelling and remarkable. Not with snazzy words or marketing tricks, but by working with clients to actually pump more value into what they do. THEN, we work on crafting an attractive marketing strategy.

In short: When you’re finding it hard to attract the clients or customers you need, make your service more attractive. It’s far more rewarding than irritating your marketplace, with something they’re not interested in.

How to build a great business, with outstanding Customer Service

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marketing tips, marketing advice

As I’ve said previously, everything a business does is marketing. The customer service we provide is a prime example of this. It’s the core of our whole business. It’s what determines whether we lose clients or retain clients who recommend us.

The root cause of bad customer service

This begs the question: When customer service is this important, why do we regularly experience such poor service?

The answer is simple. Bad service, like good service, is a reflection of a company’s culture.

A company’s culture is what nurtures the kind of service their customers receive. It attracts and rewards incompetence or it attracts and rewards excellence.

For example.

  • An employee will not get away with offering poor service for long, if their company is serious about great customer service. Their poor quality service will quickly stand out. It will not be tolerated. They will then either be trained or fired. Period.
  • Conversely, an employee who believes in great customer service will find it hard to work for a company with no real commitment to customer service. The employee will either leave or be slowly beaten down into offering the same low quality service as their colleagues.

In both examples, employees find out what is expected of them. They then know what they need to do, to comply with the company culture. They know how low or how high the bar has been set.

Customer service and marketing

As business owners, we create the customer service culture of our businesses. Whether we are a solopreneur or have a team, we determine what’s expected.

This means we can choose to shoot for service excellence. And service excellence is the culture that attracts the best employees and the best customers. Plus, we’ll retain our customers for longer and they will become passionate advocates — recommending us to their friends.

That’s why customer service excellence is a foundational part of effective marketing. That commitment to excellence is also an outstanding way to build a business.

Here are 2 posts with examples and ideas, to help you improve your customer service experience:

There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.

Are you building an exceptional customer experience.