Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
    • About Jim Connolly
    • FREE Marketing and Business Development Tips
    • Great blogs
    • Commenting Policy
    • Help for marketing professionals
    • Privacy Policy
    • Disclosure
    • How I use cookies
  • Marketing Tips
  • Let’s Work Together
    • Let’s Grow Your Business!
    • Pick my brain
    • Copywriting that attracts clients and customers

Revealed: Why email marketing doesn’t work

November 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

success doesn't care

A reader shared an interesting observation with me.

She told me she had “found out the hard way that email marketing doesn’t work”.

She asked me for my thoughts on why email is so ineffective. I said I’d share them here, as I’m sure some of you will find it useful.

Email marketing works. In fact, it works extremely well. It works predictably, too. Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. That’s because ineffective email marketing can’t work.

Here are just a few, very common examples of how small business owners get email marketing wrong.

  • A poorly written email won’t work. It will fail to motivate the reader to take action; to call you, email you, visit your website, whatever. And almost all small business marketing emails are DIY attempts.
  • A professionally written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a demand for your services.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a dull subject line, won’t work. That’s because no one will open it.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, offering a generic service, won’t work. No one wants to switch to a service that’s no better then their current service.

You get the idea.

In short, before you reject any form of marketing as being ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly.

Filed Under: Business Development, Copywriting, Email marketing & mail shots, General marketing, Social media marketing

Exposed: The biggest lie in business

October 16, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing blogs

Are you tired of prospective clients (or customers), who don’t get back to you when they say they will? If you are, here’s something you may find extremely useful.

Here’s the thing. When a prospective client tells you they didn’t have the time to meet you, return your call or consider your offer… they’re lying. They had the time.

They had the time to do all the urgent or important things. They also had time to do the stuff that interested them. And they had time to attend to the things that captured their attention. Its also safe to say they had enough time to check their social media accounts.

What they lacked wasn’t time.

What they really lacked was the motivation to do whatever you requested. As far as they were concerned, it wasn’t important or urgent enough. So, they didn’t consider it a priority. And that’s why it didn’t get done.

Okay Jim, how do I stop this from happening and massively improve my results?

Great question!

To motivate your prospective clients and customers to take action, you need to do the following.

  1. Make your offer as attractive as possible. Look at what you’re asking people to do and make it more captivating. More interesting. More compelling. Remember, motivation comes from the words Motive and Action. When the motive is powerful enough, the action follows. So, use all your creativity to make whatever you’re offering as compelling as possible.
  2. Then give them a deadline. Deadlines focus the mind. They create urgency. Here’s why marketing deadlines work.

Make no mistake, the most powerful way to motivate your prospective clients to take action, is to provide them with a highly compelling offer, which is attached to a deadline. Get those 2 steps right and you’ll find the marketplace will always have time for you. You’ll also enjoy a dramatic improvement in your sales and marketing results.

Filed Under: Copywriting, General marketing

I’m busy. You’re boring. And I’ve never heard of you

September 24, 2020 by Jim Connolly

The most successful marketing is built on strong foundations. And here’s one of them:

Before you market anything to anyone, there are 3 essential questions your prospective customers need you to answer.

They are:

  1. I’m really busy. And I get pestered with sales messages all day. Why should I give you my attention?
  2. Everyone promises an outstanding service. Most fail to deliver on that promise. What meaningful reasons are there for me to risk buying from you (or risk switching to you from my current provider)?
  3. I’ve never heard of you. I’ve never done business with you. Why on earth should I trust you?

The most successful brands answer those questions fully in their marketing. And they answer them with clarity. In doing so, they capture attention, create a compelling message and build the trust required for their marketing to succeed.

In comparison

Now, let’s compare that with the marketing we see every day from small and medium-sized businesses.

  1. Instead of capturing the attention of their prospective clients, they pester people with uninspiring, needy marketing messages.
  2. Instead of providing a compelling proposition, they offer very little motivation why anyone should switch to their brand.
  3. Instead of building trust, they become instantly forgettable.

Failing in any one of those areas is enough to ruin your results. That’s why it’s critical to be as strong as possible in all three areas. Here are a few pointers to help you get it right, if you’re a DIY marketer.

  1. You’ll already know if your marketing is capturing attention, by measuring your response rates. If too few people open your emails, read your newsletters, respond to your advertising etc, see what you can learn from the vendors, whose material YOU always open. What do they do, which you can adapt into your marketing?
  2. Crafting a compelling message is a skill that takes years to develop. This is an area where almost every business owner, who writes their own marketing, has real trouble. It’s a skill that eludes not only business owners, but many marketing providers! It’s why you see at least one marketing provider at every networking event, because their own marketing sucks, so they need to network for leads. So, if at all possible, get expert help with this from a proven professional.
  3. Building trust is something I covered in this post – How to add credibility to your marketing.

One of the big shifts in business over the past decade or so, is the speed at which great marketing can spread. A natural consequence of this, is that average marketing (the type that kind of worked in the past), is less and less effective. It becomes hidden under the marketing messages that get shared and talked about.

Yes, the advent of low-cost digital communications has opened up a world of opportunity. However, if you want to benefit from this amazing opportunity, it’s vital to create marketing that your prospective clients will embrace and share.

Filed Under: Copywriting, Email marketing & mail shots, General marketing

5 Tips to help you build a big, valuable newsletter list

September 22, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Here are 5 tips, to help you build a big and valuable newsletter readership or list.

Let’s go.

1. Go easy on the pitches

Make sure it’s a newsletter and not a badly disguised advertisement. Here’s the thing: People avoid advertising. We skip the commercials on TV. We pay developers to remove the ads from the free version of their apps. We see advertisements as unwelcome interruptions.

If your newsletter reads a little too much like a sales pitch, it will be largely ignored. This leads nicely into the next point.

2. Be useful

The more useful your newsletter is, the more your readers will value it and share it. Your ultimate goal is to build a large, targeted reader community, who become either clients, customers or advocates. None of that can be achieved with predictable, pedestrian content.

Useful content is what gives your newsletter legs. It’s what inspires people to subscribe, stay subscribed, share and make purchasing decisions. So, before you hit send on a newsletter, make sure it contains valuable, useful information. Provide answers to your reader’s problems. Share useful tips. Point your readers to helpful resources. You get the idea.

The more value you pack into each newsletter, the more your readers will value it… and the more they will value you. Think about that for a moment.

3. Get the design right

Even if your content is wonderful, people won’t take it seriously if the design looks poor. The first bite is with the eye.

If your newsletter provides valuable information, but the design looks amateurish or outdated, it’s like serving a delicious meal on a dirty plate.

So invest in the best design or newsletter template you can. Because whether your newsletter looks cheap or is presented professionally, it all reflects back on you.

4. Ask readers to share

Even if readers think your newsletter is great, it may not occur to them to share it. People are busy. Really busy. By reminding them, you plant the idea of sharing the newsletter in their mind. Moreover, you do this at the exact point, where they have just read it and enjoyed it. I used to have a section at the bottom of my newsletter, which said:

“If you have found this newsletter interesting, please share it with your friends”.

When I added that short message to my newsletter, the results were immediate and measurable. It’s amazing what a simple reminder can do.

5. Help it spread

Convert people who had your newsletter forwarded to them, into subscribers.

Imagine your friend had just forwarded a great newsletter to you. You’d want to get a regular copy, right? You don’t want to have to rely on your friend, remembering to forward each edition to you. So, I added the following sentence to the above message:

“If you have had this newsletter forwarded to you and would like a regular copy, click here.”

Never underestimate the power of a subtle, non-pushy reminder.

Make no mistake, newsletters can be an extremely powerful marketing asset. It’s why I make my blog available in newsletter format. And it’s why I ask you to take your newsletter seriously and invest in it accordingly. Give it the time and effort it needs.

Because the rewards for getting it right are huge. No. Bigger than that.

Filed Under: Business Development, Copywriting, Email marketing & mail shots

How to get massively more potential clients to say ‘yes’

September 3, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing tip

Here is one of the most effective, and shortest tips in marketing.

It’s based on one of the foundations of successful sales: A confused mind always says no!

In other words, when faced with a buying decision, a confused prospective client will not proceed. They’ll say ‘no’ or walk away, rather than risk making a bad decision. And you are the one who pays the price, for their lack of clarity.

So, how many different choices are your prospective clients or customers faced with?

Here’s why that question is so important and why you need to get the balance right.

  1. The more options you put in front of someone, the more choice they have.
  2. The more choice they have, the harder it is for them to decide.
  3. The harder their decision making process is, the less likely they are to hire you or buy from you.
  4. They move on.
  5. You lose a prospective client or a sale, to a less confusing competitor.

In short: Clarity sells.

Take time to go through your marketing and look for all unnecessary confusion. Some good places to start (depending on your industry) may include; the number of service levels you provide, your various pricing options, the number of bundles or packages you offer.

Then consider whether you actually need to offer so much complexity, so much potential for confusion. And if not, reduce. Everything that needs to be there should remain. But nothing else.

Filed Under: Copywriting, General marketing, How to

Discover how the top companies keep getting the best referrals

September 1, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing slogan, strapline, tagline
Photo credit: Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you a powerful way to get more, great people talking about the services you provide. But that’s not all. I’m also going to explain how to overcome a major problem: how to get people to say the right things about you.

I’ll even throw in a world-class example of how it works.

Okay let’s go

The starting point, is to decide exactly what you want people to say. Otherwise, you’re relying on them making something up on the spot. And usually, when someone is asked if they can recommend a provider, it will be a generic, weak message.

For example, if you ask someone if they have an accountant they’d recommend, the reply is usually something like; “Sure. We’re happy with the (Whatever) Accountancy Firm”.

That’s nice.

But all it really says, is that this particular person is happy with the service they receive. It’s the bare minimum. It’s vague. It says nothing about the service this accountancy firm provides. And it’s certainly not compelling.

Here’s why this matters to you: It’s entirely possible you’re already being regularly referred or recommended to great prospective clients. But you’re unaware, because, as in the above example, the referral is totally ineffective. And an ineffective referral is close to worthless.

Let’s see how the fastest growing companies overcome this problem.

How to get this right

Okay, let’s look at that accountancy firm again.

Only this time, they were professionally marketed and had already incorporated a short, memorable strapline in their branding. Something like “building stronger businesses”. If used correctly, that 3 word phrase would become an automatic part of their referrals.

So, instead of; “Sure. We’re happy with the (Whatever) Accountancy Firm.”

You get; “Sure. We’re happy with the (Whatever) Accountancy Firm. They specialize in building stronger businesses.”

That second referral is massively more powerful with far greater impact.

Think about it. If someone is looking for a new accountant, they’re clearly not happy with their current one. If we assume their existing accountant isn’t really interested in their business, a trusted referral about an accountant that focuses on building stronger businesses is exactly what they want to hear. Such referrals could be 2X, 5X or maybe 10X more powerful at encouraging people to call the accountant, than a simple “we’re happy with them”.

Here’s the thing: Most businesses make it too hard for their clients, customers or friends to know what to say when referring them. And it loses them a fortune.

Make it easier. Correctly integrate an easy to remember 3 or 4 word strapline into your marketing, so people don’t have to make something up on the spot. When you get it right, that strapline becomes part of the conversations people have about you.

That example took me 30 seconds to come up with. Now let’s look at a proven, world-class example of how this works.

How good is their food?

The marketing team behind Kentucky Fried Chicken wanted to give their diners a simple way to describe how delicious the food was. So, they made it very simple. They placed a short, powerful strapline on all their packaging.

It described their food as, “finger lickin’ good”.

And the rest is history!

Those who ate and enjoyed their chicken, now knew exactly what to tell their friends. Moreover, they were delivering an amazingly powerful, professionally written marketing message. Aware of its impact, KFC announced last month that they would suspend the use of the finger lickin good message, during the remainder of the coronavirus pandemic. See the 30 second KFC video here. Coronavirus can be spread through contact between your hands and mouth, including finger licking.

Regardless of whether you happen to like fried chicken, the mental image created with that message is powerful. The idea of people enjoying their food so much that they licked their fingers, would surely motivate their hungry friends to give KFC a try. Plus, because people who eat at fast-food restaurants know other people who also enjoy fast-food, it was pure, marketing gold.

So, the message spread. Millions or billions of times. Worldwide.

Try this

Take some time to think about want you want people to say about your business or the service you provide. Then, spend as much time as necessary crafting a powerful, extremely short strapline. If you don’t have the time or expertise to get this right, find a professional who will do it for you.

Just don’t keep missing out on great word of mouth referrals or targeted sales leads, because people aren’t recommending you correctly.

Filed Under: Copywriting, General marketing, How to

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • …
  • 47
  • Next Page »
marketing advice, marketing help Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.

Featured by

marketing advice, marketing help

Categories

  • Blogging (400)
  • Business Development (1,331)
  • Copywriting (279)
  • Email marketing & mail shots (170)
  • General marketing (1,331)
  • How to (283)
  • Misfits (31)
  • Professional development (1,085)
  • Social media marketing (345)
  • Home
  • About
  • Marketing Tips
  • Let’s Work Together

Copyright © 2021 Jim's Marketing Blog