Copywriting Archives - Page 18 of 52 - Jim Connolly Marketing

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.

Here’s what to do, when they say you’re too expensive!

By Jim Connolly | July 7, 2016

If you are sick of talking to fee sensitive prospective clients, you are making 1 or more of 3 marketing mistakes, which I am going to share with you right now — along with the solution.

Let’s get started!

A quick look at value

I want to start by looking at the way your prospective clients think about value:

It’s always too expensive, when the price or fee is considerably greater than the value.
It’s always great value, when the price or fee is considerably lower than the value.

To get that price / value balance right, we have 2 options:

We can pump more value into the product or service.
We can lower the price.

The race to the bottom

Most small business owners focus on lowering prices or fees, in order to make themselves appear better value. This is why we often see competing businesses in that dreaded race to the bottom. The race to the bottom is where business owners race to out-discount one another. It’s a low leverage, low profit and totally unnecessary way to run a business.

Here’s the thing about slashing your prices: Your prospective customers will still be able to go to Google and find 20 lower priced alternatives to you, in minutes.

Note: The bargain-shopping clients who put “cheap” before everything else are the worst clients to work for. They’re the least profitable, plus they dump providers as soon as a cheaper alternative comes along.

Here’s the thing about increasing your value: High value providers are rare. Rare value comes at a premium, which the right clients are happy to pay for.

3 questions you need to answer

Firstly: Have you put so much value into your product or service, that the price or fee represents great value? As every quality brand will confirm, we can always sell a superb product or service for a great price. However, we are fooling ourselves if we expect prospective customers to pay a premium, for something that’s average or close to average.

Secondly: If you have created a product or service that represents outstanding value, is that value clear from your marketing? In other words, when a prospective customer reads your marketing or talks with you, can they easily see a clear reason why your services are of great value? Use the best copywriter you can afford, to make the value obvious, attractive and crystal clear. I find the vast majority of small business owners get this wrong and use DIY copywriting, thinking they are saving money. In reality, it’s losing them a fortune… every day!

Finally: Is your marketing attracting the right type of leads or enquiries? You can provide an amazing service, offered at a wonderful price, but if the people responding to your marketing can’t afford it, you’re wasting your time.

For example: A diamond ring that’s worth a million dollars, would be amazing value if offered for sale at $10,000. However, if you’re trying to sell it to someone, who knows the value, but is broke, they can’t buy it.

Getting your value balance right

Lowering a price is easy. It can be done in seconds. However, it locks you into a race to the bottom. It also acts like a magnet to fee sensitive clients and customers.

Instead, look for inconsistencies between what you charge, what you offer, how you market it and who you are marketing to.