Copywriting Archives - Page 18 of 52 - Jim Connolly Marketing

Success leaves clues

By Jim Connolly | January 13, 2017

When it comes to marketing, success leaves clues. By following these clues and learning from them, it’s possible to significantly improve your marketing. Allow me to explain.

Consider the following:

The last marketing email, which you were motivated to open because it had a powerful subject line.
The last marketing email you read, which persuaded you to take action. (To ask for information, pick up the phone, make a purchase, etc.)
The last blog post you read, which you were motivated to bookmark, save or share.
The last advertisement you saw or heard, which motivated you to make a purchase.
The last service you experienced, which impressed you so much that you wanted to tell your friends about it.
The last newsletter you received, which you forwarded to your contacts.

How to turn clues into results

Each of those marketing examples motivated you to take action. And they each contain a clue, as to why the marketing worked. To uncover the clue you need to answer this question:

What can I learn from this example of marketing success, which I can adapt and apply to my own marketing?

Next, write your answer down. This is really important, as you don’t want to risk losing your best ideas. Also, by writing your answers down, you’ll start to develop a gold mine of useful marketing notes.

Is this approach as effective as hiring a proven marketing professional? No. Not even close. But if you can’t afford expert help, it’s one way to make better marketing decisions.

P.S: To get you started, here are dozens of proven marketing ideas.

How to massively improve your email marketing results

By Jim Connolly | September 14, 2016

In 2016, email marketing is more powerful than ever before. This begs the question: Why do almost all small businesses get such uninspiring email marketing results?

I’m going to answer that question for you. I’m also going to explain what you need to do in order to massively improve the success of your email marketing.

Free and easy?

The cost of marketing has changed dramatically over the years.

For example, the cost of sending a traditional, paper-based mailshot to just 1000 prospective customers was considerable. There was the price of the stamp, the printing, the ink and the paper. Then, you paid someone to fold all the letters and stuff them into the envelopes.

Today, sending a marketing email to 1000 prospects (or 100,000 prospects) takes seconds. There’s no paper, no ink, no envelopes, no envelope stuffing and no stamps.

The cost of email marketing is close to zero. Except… it isn’t! You now risk paying a different, far higher price.

Allow me to explain.

Different prices and different thinking

In 1995, my London-based marketing business was paying around £1000 to reach 1000 prospective customers via traditional mail (mailshots). I used high quality stationery and printing. It was still quite an investment.

Before spending that kind of money, small business owners used to think long and hard.

They made sure they were contacting people with a potential need for their offering. They couldn’t afford to contact people with no requirement.
They checked that the contact name and address were correct. They couldn’t afford to send letters to the wrong people.
They used to work hard to optimize their copy or content. It needed to be just right. They couldn’t afford to get their message wrong.
They removed prospective customers from their list, if they failed to get a response after a set number of mailings. (Unlike now, where the person receiving spam email has to ask to be removed). They couldn’t afford to keep mailing someone who wasn’t interested.

Now think for a moment about the poorly targeted marketing emails that flood your inbox. It’s clear that way less thought goes into them. The vast majority are junk and totally irrelevant to you or your needs.

You regard those who send these unwanted emails as pests. Spammers. Assholes. This is where the cost comes in for email marketers in 2016! They build a lousy reputation and get equally lousy results.

Reputation points: The price you pay for average email marketing

Every time you send a poorly conceived email marketing message to someone, you pay a price.

However, unlike before, the cost to you isn’t only monetary. You pay with something even more valuable. You pay with your reputation. You pay using the currency of reputation points.

For example, when you decide to add someone’s name to your list without their consent, you lose reputation points. When you email people too often, you lose reputation points. When your message is pushy or needy, you lose reputation points. When your offer is irrelevant to the recipient, you lose reputation points.

Business owners who service a regional marketplace can soon find their name and reputation seriously damaged. They can only alienate their marketplace so many times, before people get sick of them.

Of course, when your marketing emails are like those I just mention, you pay a second price. You get crappy response rates. Too few sales. Too few new client enquiries. Too few leads.

The answer?

It starts by accepting that email marketing isn’t free. There is a hefty price to pay for a casual approach, both in reputation damage and lost opportunities. Remember, a casual approach to business causes casualties. Treat each email you send as if you were paying to send it. Because in a very real sense, you are.

So, get permission to email people. Then send them targeted, expertly written, relevant information. Do this only as frequently as required.

It works. And it works extremely well.

Here’s how I helped Irene make over $32,000 in 9 days, with email marketing. That was 2 years ago. Today, the results are even better, for those of you serious enough to take email marketing seriously.

So, are you building a tribe or writing drive-by content?

By Jim Connolly | August 15, 2016

Why do the vast majority of small business owners see such poor results from their content marketing? Why isn’t it attracting sales or new client enquiries every day?

The answer is that almost every small business is making the same mistake. And this mistake makes it impossible for them to succeed.

Here’s what you need to know, in order to get the best possible results.

Content marketing and leaky buckets

The problem with trying to fill a bucket, which has a big hole in the bottom, is that the water flows out just as fast as it flows in. It’s a never ending task, unless you get a new bucket or fix the hole.

Most content marketing advice, including that written by many so-called experts, is based around the idea of treating your content marketing, like a bucket with a hole.

It’s about attracting drive-by readers with ‘killer’ headlines.
It’s about churning stuff out, rather than publishing useful information.
It’s about using a cookie-cutter approach, like hundreds of thousands of others, which makes you and your content invisible.
It’s about SEOing your thoughts, rather than expressing your thoughts.

Seth Godin said it extremely well:

“The copywriter/editor who trades in meaning for lists, using calculated SEO keyword loading and sensationalism designed to attract the drive-by audience, earns the privilege of doing it again and again, forever.”

It’s like trying to fill that broken bucket. It’s also the total opposite of growing a tribe.

They drive by

The thing about drive-by readers, is that they drive by. They are attracted to hyped up headlines and quickly go from one, “The growing trend that will scare the crap out of business owners everywhere”, article to the next.

If your content marketing is based around chasing them, you’re making life way too hard for yourself.

Grow a valuable reader community

To grow a great community or tribe around your work, you need to attract the right people, retain their attention and earn their trust.

This means showing up regularly with useful information, rather than sensationalist, predictable content for the drive-by crowd.

It means avoiding so-called content marketing systems or anything, which claims to be a one-size-fits-all “solution“. All that junk will do is make your content marketing invisible. It will leave your content camouflaged, amongst the hundreds of thousands of others using the same cookie-cutter approach.

Instead, focus on building deeper connections with people who will value your work, share your work, call you, email you, hire you or buy from you.

Anything less is a waste of your time and will stop you benefiting from the amazing opportunity, which could be yours if you use content marketing correctly.

Stop using buzzwords in your marketing. Seriously. Stop it

By Jim Connolly | July 11, 2016

There is no shortage of buzzwords or people who feel the need to use them.

Intersection.

Growth-hacking.

Ruckus.

Pragmatic.

Disrupt.

Paradigm.

… these buzzwords and many others, are used by people in an effort to appear informed or relevant. Interestingly, buzzwords do neither. They have the exact opposite effect when people read them or hear them.

Here’s how buzzwords work against you.

They make informed people cringe. Not a great idea, if you want your peers to take you seriously or recommend you.
They confuse the uninformed. A bad choice, if you want people to understand your message. And you do. Right?

In either case, buzzwords work against you. When it comes to marketing, write your copy in a way that your ideal client will find easy to understand.

Always aim for clarity.

Why?

Because clarity sells.

7 tips to turn your blog into a lead generating machine

By Jim Connolly | July 8, 2016

Here are 7 tips to help you get massively more sales leads from your business blog.

Blog Tip 1: Have something to say that’s worth reading

People have never been busier than they are today. Equally, there has never been so much choice regarding what they can read. For a blog to attract readers and then retain those readers, it needs to offer something, which is meaningfully different. The majority of blogs don’t do this. They are predictable. They have no distinct voice. They simply add to the noise.

The key is to tell us what you think. Give us your opinion. Not an echo of what everyone else is saying. Allow your personality to shine through your words. Only by embracing your unique perspective can you hope to stand out, grab people’s attention and then inspire them to keep coming back.

Blog Tip 2: Show up regularly

We can’t expect people to return to a blog, even a well-written blog, if there’s seldom any new content for them to read.

If you want people to visit your blog regularly, publish new content regularly. Keep your blog fresh. The more often you publish useful content, the faster your readership will grow.

Bonus: When a new reader arrives on a blog, which has been regularly updated over a period of months or years, they get a powerful message. They can see that the blogger can be relied upon to stick with a project. Before a new client speaks to me, they already know I can be relied upon. This helps build trust. It makes the decision to hire me a great deal easier. Think about that for a moment.

Blog Tip 3: Create a powerful initial impression

It has never been easier or less expensive to have a professional looking blog. Despite this, many small business owners use ugly, outdated blog themes. As a result they look amateurish. People tend not to treat information on amateur looking blogs very seriously. We expect professionals to look professional.

Publishing useful ideas on an ugly looking blog, is like a restaurant serving you a delicious meal… on a dirty plate.

Think about it: There are only 2 reasons why a business would operate behind an amateur looking blog:

They think it’s OK to allow poor quality work (design) to represent them and their values.
They can’t afford a professional looking blog.

Neither of those options reflect well on the blog owner.

If your blog looks tired or dated, invest in a new blog theme. One that creates a powerful, positive impression. This sets a professional tone for what your visitors are about to read.

This leads on nicely to the next point.

Blog Tip 4: Be visible on mobile devices

An increasing number of people view the internet using their phones or tablets. If a site is hard to read on their mobile device, they leave. Despite this, an alarming number of business blogs are still not mobile friendly. In other words, they are hard to read or navigate when using a mobile device.

Almost all modern blog themes are mobile ready. However, if your theme is more than a few years old, it’s worth checking how it looks on phones and tablets.

If your blog doesn’t perform well on mobile devices, you will lose visitors before they even start reading what you have to say. Depending on your industry, you could be offering a bad user experience to 80% or more (and growing), of your potential readers!

Blog Tip 5: Stop selling

Most small business bloggers turn almost every post into a sales pitch. Instead of being interesting and offering useful information, these posts read like a series of thinly-disguised advertisements. The challenge with that approach is that people are not interested in reading ads, linking to ads or sharing ads with their friends.

Instead, focus on contribution. Be generous. Provide answers.

Remember that the process of giving and receiving, starts with the giving part. Offer valuable information, which people will want to read, link to and share. Then, when they need to hire an expert, they already know who you are. They’re also massively more likely to hire you, because they’re familiar with you and your expertise, via your blog posts.

You’re a safe bet.

A reliable option.

So, hiring you becomes an easy decision!

I place a call to action below each post, welcoming readers to get in touch if they’d like me to help them. However, selling my service is never the subject of the post. It’s all about offering useful information to the reader. Always.

Blog Tip 6: Make blogging a high priority business activity

Most business bloggers regard blogging as a low-level marketing activity. So they starve their blog of the resources it needs, in order for it to be a lead generating machine for their business.

They’ll happily spend time every day using Facebook or Linkedin, yet they invest very little time building their blog. As a result, their blog never gets the momentum it needs.

In addition, business owners will often place their blog on a cheap hosting account. This can lead to lots of down-time. Cheap hosting usually causes blogs to run slower too. People won’t hang around for a blog to load. So get the best hosting you can afford.

Treat your blog as a high priority business asset. Invest in it correctly and you’ll end up with a powerful marketing asset. One that grows in value all the time.

Blog Tip 7: Play the long game

A key reason why so many potentially great blogs fail, is that the owner quits too soon. Their expectations are unrealistic and it’s not always their fault.

The internet is packed with content marketing gurus, spreading bullshit. They say that if you use their “system” or buy their latest piece of junk, you can turn your blog into a goldmine in weeks. It’s snake oil… snake oil designed to exploit people, who don’t know better.

Even if you are doing everything correctly, it takes time for you to attract (and keep re-earning), the attention of a sizeable, growing readership. Business blogging is not an overnight success proposition, so play the long game.

I hope you found these tips and ideas useful. More importantly, I hope they inspire you to get the most from business blogging.

Tip: You can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.