Copywriting Archives | Jim's Marketing Blog

How to protect your business from damaging advice

January 8, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

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 attend networking groups because their own marketing doesn’t work.
The business guru who claims to be in high demand, yet offers free consultations.
The copywriter whose content is poorly-written and lacks impact.
The leadership expert who’s just like all the other leadership experts. (Think about that for a moment).

Others are trickier to spot

The social media guru, who used tricks to attract half a million 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 coach 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 find 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, 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 we, as business owners, need to look deeper. Because the cost of hiring a bad business provider is far, far higher than their fee.

Content Marketing: Use short sentences. Here’s why!

January 2, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Here’s a quick copywriting tip, to help you improve your content marketing results.

Your prospective clients prefer to read short sentences. This is especially true when explaining detailed information. For example, how your service works.

I’m not suggesting you use fewer words than required. Far from it! Use as many words per sentence as you need. Don’t remove a single, necessary word. Just don’t use more words than you need.

Why is that Jim? Because from a marketing perspective, long sentences lack impact and clarity. Those are essential components of effective marketing.

Tip: One way to shorten content, without losing anything important, is to remove extraneous words. Look at the 2 examples below.

People should exercise on a daily basis.
People should exercise daily.
We have no news at this point in time.
We have no news currently.

A whole story in just 6 words!

It’s amazing what can be achieved using fewer words. Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story in just 6 words. It’s a powerful story, too.

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn”.

Inspired by Hemingway’s brevity, look for opportunities to keep your sentences as short as required. Aim for clarity. Remove the fluff. And keep sentences confined to one thought.

It’s not as simple as it sounds. But your prospective clients (and your business), will appreciate the additional effort.

7 Hard truths about marketing your business

December 31, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Embrace brevity. Your marketing content is almost certainly 50% to 75% too long. Fix it. Your prospective clients are being bombarded with emails, texts, social media updates, phone calls. Their time (and attention) has never been under so much pressure. This will become an increasingly bigger issue in 2020. So get to the point. And fast.
Be cautious of anyone offering tricks or short cuts to marketing success. Short cuts to success are seldom short cuts and they never lead to success.
Avoid general marketing advice. Why? Because it’s extremely risky. Your marketing problem is specific to you and your unique situation; your industry, budget, location, size of business, competition, mindset, assets, etc. And your specific situation requires a specific strategy.
In business, everything you do is marketing. Yes, everything. From the way you answer the phone, reply to emails and the design of your website… to your ability to meet deadlines, the customer service you offer and your opening hours. It’s all saying something about you. Either positive or negative. Nothing is neutral. It’s making you money or it’s losing you money.
Don’t expect professional marketing results from amateur marketing. Marketing is the life-blood of your business. So stop treating it like some DIY project or you’ll run out of money, time (or both).
If you need to attend networking events, to try and get people talking about your business, you have a major problem. Ask yourself “why”? Why aren’t people automatically talking about your service? Spend more time fixing the problem. Spend zero time pestering strangers at networking events for leads.
You will never be one Facebook Live ‘event’ or online course away from marketing success. Ever.

No, the customer is NOT always right

December 28, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

That old saying, that the customer is always right, is bogus. Worse still, if you believe the customer or client is always right, it will damage your business.

That’s because the customer is often wrong.

Allow me to explain!

That saying still persists, because fearful service providers are scared that if they say the customer is wrong, they might take their custom elsewhere. So, generations of business owners have worked under the erroneous belief that they should simply agree with their clients all the time.

That’s a really bad idea

It fails the client and it fails you. Here are a few examples.

Designers end up producing ugly work, because the client made terrible design demands. The client is left with low quality design, which won’t work for them. The designer will never get to work with that client again.
Copywriters end up writing junk, because the client demanded uninformed changes. So, instead of a professional piece, the client gets something amateurish that they could have written themselves. The copy fails to work. The client ends up unhappy. The copywriter is never hired again.
Coaches and mentors end up delivering a poor quality service, because the allow misguided clients to dictate what happens. The client then ends up hearing what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear in order to succeed. It fails the client. And the provider is never hired again.

No, I’m not suggesting you argue with your clients. That’s a terrible idea and extremely unprofessional.

I am suggesting you need to guide your clients.

As a professional, it’s your job to help clients make the right decisions, so they get the very best results. That means providing the client with your informed, expert guidance. It means steering them away from mistakes. It means responding with advice and ideas, which lead to a successful project and a delighted client.

In short, your clients deserve your very best work. Agreeing with a client, when you know they are making damaging mistakes, doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you. So give your clients your very best. That’s what they pay you for. That’s what they deserve.

And you cannot, on any level, afford to give them anything less.

1 Word that can destroy your marketing, plus 12 better alternatives

December 13, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

When it comes to creating successful marketing, the word ‘new’ is overrated. Moreover, it can critically damage the effectiveness of your marketing, losing you sales or client enquiries in the process.

There are 2 main reasons this happens.

A new product or service is always seen as a risky bet. Untested. Less robust. At best, it’s a bigger gamble than the existing solution. At worst, the customer feels like a paying guinea pig. Ouch!
A new product or service is seldom, if ever, the best. It lacks the improvements that come from years of customer feedback.

Yes, when you have an announcement to make, (like moving to new premises), people expect to see ‘new’ and they understand the context.

The challenge comes, when a key part of your marketing message is that you offer a new way to do something. Even some big brands struggle to sell ‘new’ to people, despite multi-million dollar marketing campaigns.

Thankfully, you can totally avoid this problem.

Use better alternatives

Instead of relying on ‘new’, offer your marketplace something more compelling. More secure. More attractive. More motivating.

For example, rather than offering them a ‘new’ way, look at the core benefit of your product or service. Then, market that benefit to them instead.

So, instead of a ‘new’ way, you could offer them one or more of the following 12 alternatives.

A faster way.
A secure way.
An enjoyable way.
A greener way.
A stylish way.
A stress-free way.
An original way.
A premium quality way.
A proven way.
An ethical way.
A guaranteed way.
A cost effective way.

So, use words that paint better mental pictures. Pictures that build trust and inspire people to take action.

For almost 25 years, I’ve helped business owners worldwide to achieve their best results ever. Today, I’m offering you the same opportunity, on my Marketing Mentor Program. Read this. It’s the most popular and the most valuable service I’ve ever offered.

7 Things that will grab the attention of your marketplace (and how to use them)

December 10, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I’ve talked a lot lately, about the importance of being useful with your marketing. A number of you have asked me, if I can give you some specific topics you can use, which your prospective clients (or customers) will be attracted to.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done for you today.

So, for Ashley, Hasan, Thomas, Noah, JJ, Padraig, Ben, Melissa, Calvin and Georgia (and you, dear reader), here are some almost-universally useful topics. Each one represents something, which your clients and future clients are attracted to or extremely attracted to.

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following topics and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing or general marketing messages. Each topic ends with a question, to help you focus on how it applies to your business.

People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: What are you doing, to connect them with useful contacts? The Wall Street Journal wrote about how I achieved this, for one of my clients – 4 Marketing Strategies That Paid Off For Small Companies
Everyone is trying to succeed at something: What are you doing, to help people achieve their targets, goals or dreams?
We all need security: What are you doing, to help people reduce risk or feel secure and safe?
We also share a common need for a sense of belonging: What are you doing, to create a community?
Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: What are you doing, to help people maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks, faster?
People want to improve and expand their knowledge: What are you doing, to share useful information with them. This is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.
Everyone wants to avoid unnecessary stress: What are you doing, to help people feel more relaxed and assured?

Are any of those topics missing from your marketing messages or content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Whatever industry you’re in, you should be able to benefit from all 7 topics. And if your business doesn’t do anything to address one or more of these needs, look for a way to add it to your services.