Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

New is getting old

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marketing risk, new, change, fear of change

When it comes to creating a powerful marketing message and attracting customers, the word ‘new‘ is overrated. New is a very loaded word and can destroy your marketing results.

There are 3 broad reasons for this.

  1. The newest product or service is always a riskier bet. At best, it’s a bigger gamble than the trusted incumbent. At worst, the customer feels like a paying guinea pig.
  2. The newest product or service is seldom the best. It lacks the improvements that come from years of feedback. It lacks the robustness that comes from stress-testing.
  3. New doesn’t last for long. This makes it a short-term marketing message. Anything that’s new is only new for now.

A dozen better alternatives

Given the challenges of using the word new, I recommend you replace it with something more compelling. More motivating. More attractive. To get you started, here are 12 alternatives.

  1. A faster way.
  2. A more enjoyable way.
  3. A cleaner way.
  4. A proven way.
  5. A stylish way.
  6. An profitable way.
  7. A premium quality way.
  8. An ethical way.
  9. An exciting way.
  10. A safer way.
  11. A more reliable way.
  12. A cost effective way.

What next?

Take a look through your marketing and search for opportunities to replace new with a better alternative. This is usually in situations where new is used as the only adjective. 

Also, you can apply this to your presentations, negotiations or meetings. For example, if you’re trying to sell a new product, service or idea to someone, they’re more likely to pay attention when you tell them about your ‘more profitable way’ of doing something, than your ‘new way’ of doing something. 

Finally, in situations where you need to use the word new, such as a press release or product launch, combine it with another word. For example, new and improved. 

Photo by Werner Du plessis

Stop using buzzwords in your marketing. Seriously. Stop it

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remove buzzwords, marketing copy, clarity sells

One thing in business is certain. There’s no shortage of buzzwords and phrases. Here are just some that I’ve seen in use recently.

  • Knowledge transfer.
  • Price point.
  • Intersection.
  • Deep dive.
  • Disrupt.
  • Ruckus.
  • Knowledge transfer.
  • Ideate.
  • Pragmatic.
  • Whiteboard it.
  • Paradigm.

Buzzwords are used by people, in an effort to appear informed or fashionable. Interestingly, using buzzwords has the total opposite effect.

Here’s how they work against us and our marketing.

  • Buzzwords make informed people cringe. Not only is this embarrassing, it’s a terrible idea if we want our peers to take us seriously or recommend us.
  • Buzzwords confuse the uninformed. And that’s the last thing we need, when we want people to understand our message.

In short, buzzwords not only add nothing positive to our marketing, they actively weaken it. And because they’re totally unnecessary, we can remove them with no negative impact.

Remember: One of the keys to effective marketing is to always aim for clarity.

Photo by Kim Gorga on Unsplash

Within seconds

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Marketing, first impressions, within seconds

One of the best-known sayings in business is, time is money. Business owners tend to say this when referring to the financial value of their time. And rightly so. However, there’s another reason why time is money for you as a business owner. Today, I’ll explain what it is and why it’s critically important to your sales and marketing results.

Let’s go.

Many important decisions your prospective client or customer will make, are well on their way to being made within seconds.

Think about it.

  • Open an email and within seconds, you’ll decide if it’s important or junk.
  • Enter any store and within seconds, you’ll get a feel for whether the place is likely to be expensive, bargain basement, successful, quiet, independent, local, national chain, aimed at a certain age-range and so on.
  • Read the title of an article or newsletter and within seconds, you’ll decide to read it or scroll past it.
  • Talk with a service provider and within seconds, you’ll start deciding if they’re professional or not.
  • Read the marketing messages of any company and within seconds, you’ll have a good idea if their product or service is suitable for you.
  • Return a faulty product to a store, and within seconds you’ll know how helpful or accommodating they’re likely to be.

In the same way that you and I start to form our opinions within seconds, so do your prospects. That’s why you need to create a strong first impression.

Here’s a useful way to get started

Take some time to consider what you want your prospects to feel about your business, in order for them to buy from you or hire you. Universally, you will need prospects to feel they can trust you and regard you as professional. Other feelings will vary depending on your industry, the type of prospects you seek to serve and the way you’ve positioned your business. For some of you that will be exciting, creative, cutting edge and dynamic. For others that will be safe, consistent, secure and established. Or anything in-between.

Then think of all the places where your prospects are likely to encounter you or your business. The places where initial opinions are formed within seconds. For example; on your website, at your premises, on your social media accounts, at a networking group, through an advertisement, on a webinar, at a conference or event, etc. Make a list. Write it down.

At this point you know how you want your prospects to feel, and the places where they’re likely to encounter you.

It’s now time to check out how consistent your business/brand is with those feelings, in those places. Anything that’s inconsistent needs to be removed, or replaced with a consistent alternative. As you go through this process in each of the relevant places, you’ll make it easier and easier for prospects to choose your business. 

And remember, your prospects are already forming their initial impressions of you and your business, regardless. So take control. Help them to feel that you’re exactly what they’re looking for. The best fit. The obvious choice.

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

Small adjustments. Low risk. Amazing sales results

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From a sales and marketing perspective, which of the following do you think gets the best results?

  • A sign on your customer entrance that says “We’re open”, or a sign that says “Come in”?
  • A message in your marketing, which gives your “opening hours”, or a message in your marketing that gives your “drop-in hours”?

The second option in both those examples always performs better (sometimes by factors of hundred’s of percent) in tests.

There are 3 important points from that short exercise.

1. Small adjustments can produce massive improvements

Minor adjustments to your sales or marketing can create breakthrough results.

In the above examples, tiny changes to the text were made. However, by increasing the number of prospective clients (or customers) who take action, those changes can result in a very tangible, positive impact.

For instance, a client of mine made a change I suggested, live on our first Zoom meeting. He was able to see a clear, measurable improvement with a tiny textual change to a call-to-action button on his website that same day. He then rolled it out to all his relevant pages the following day, with equally outstanding results, but this time across his entire range of services. We tested, measured and adjusted until he squeezed out close to a 175% increase in the click-through rate from those pages, to his sales pages.

Test, measure and adjust?

Yes.

If you’ve followed my work for any period of time, you’ll know that every marketing adjustment you make needs to be tested and measured.

  • Tested: Put into play in a real world setting.
  • Measured: Results compared against past performance. If it improves things, you keep it and then seek to further improve it with your next adjustment.

That process is then repeated until you see no further measurable improvement. Then, you move on to the next marketing element to adjust and improve.

2. Low risk

The type of subtle adjustments I’m referring to here, either cost nothing or very little for you to put into play. This means they can be deployed quickly.

So, you now have the freedom to make adjustments to each part of your sales and marketing. In fact, that’s exactly what EVERY professionally marketed business already does.

3. One size does not fit all

Different marketing adjustments, tactics and strategies work differently in different industries. And even within the same industry, there are dozens and dozens of things that will determine how effective any change to your marketing will be, for your specific business.

Some of the most common factors include.

  • The profile of client you sell your products or services to.
  • Your pricing; whether it is higher, lower or around average for your industry.
  • How well, or poorly, any changes you make, work alongside your current branding.
  • Your location.

Small, low risk adjustments that are specific to you

You don’t need to make major changes.

You don’t need to spend major money, it usually takes just a little of your time.

But you do need to find out what works best for you and your business.

You can waste a massive amount of time focusing on the wrong things to adjust. You can waste even more time, making the wrong adjustments. And in both cases, you’ll be leaving a potential fortune on the table.

This is one of those areas of marketing where it makes no sense to dabble with it yourself, unless you absolutely have to. So, if you can afford to invest in expert marketing help, do.
Note: I explain why in more detail here.

When done correctly, this strategy will give you a huge spread of improvements that will combine to increase your sales. It’s a proven, low risk, highly effective and exceptionally robust way to grow your business in any economy.

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

Selling simplified: Get your prospects to say ‘yes’

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marketing, pick you, choose you

Here is a very quick marketing tip. It works online and also when you’re giving a presentation to a prospective client or customer. It’s based on one of the foundations of successful selling:

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, the business owner, are the one who pays the price for that lack of clarity.

Clarity sells

With this in mind, I’d like you to think for a moment about all the different options or choices your prospective clients are faced with.

Here’s why it’s critically important for you to get the balance just right.

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

We don’t want that to happen to you.

The marketing power of clarity

I’d like you to take some time to go through all your marketing materials, especially your website. Then review the content of your sales presentation; what you say when pitching to a prospect.

Now, look closely 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 different bundles or packages you offer.
  • Any over-long feature lists.
  • The amount of information you require on your enquiry / contact forms.

You get the idea.

Now 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 if it doesn’t need to be there, remove it. Cut the confusion. And make more sales.

Photo: Shutterstock.

Finish strong: Attract more sales

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Finish strong

Finish strong. That’s solid advice for most things. But when writing persuasive marketing copy, the advice becomes explosive.

Most written marketing makes a powerful point, or a number of powerful points, but then fizzles out. The prospect is inspired to read past the powerful points. But when they reach the, fizzling-out copy, the impact on them is weakened. They go from hot to cold.

The key is to finish strong.

As Roy Peter Clark said: Shakespeare did not write “The Queen is dead, my lord”. He wrote “The Queen, my lord, is dead”.

By placing the emphatic word at the end of the sentence, the power of the overall message is greatly increased. It ends with a bang. That’s exactly what your marketing needs, in order to motivate your prospect, and compel them to take the next step; buy from you, call you, visit your store, make an enquiry, subscribe, etc.

Not just sentences

Finishing strong applies not only to your sentences. It equally applies to finishing the overall written marketing piece strong. This means making the last sentence in each paragraph as emphatic as possible, and the last paragraph itself, as emphatic as possible.

Think of it like this: You’re aiming for your words to build a crescendo of motivation, which inspires your prospect to take the next step.

What next?

Take a look at your written marketing and see if it finishes strong. Check the sentences, the paragraphs and the overall piece. If it doesn’t create a growing wave of desire, fix it. Otherwise you’ll continue to miss out on new sales or new clients. And none of us can afford that.

It’s a love thing

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benefits features, marketing, people buy benefits

It’s your business and quite rightly, you love it. You love your products or services, too. This partly explains a very common problem with small business marketing. It’s a mistake that’s a twist on the old benefits and features idea, and even some marketing providers make it.

Allow me to explain

When you love your business, it feels right to focus on the amazing things your specific product or service does. After all, you put a huge amount of time and effort into building your product or developing your service.

The challenge here, is that those details, points and features are not what convert your prospects into customers. Your prospects are motivated by the value your business, products or services will give them. They’re inspired to buy based on the benefits and amazing value you’re offering them. And you almost certainly already knew that.

You see, whilst every business owner knows that people buy based on benefits, not features, many of them still make the mistake of marketing based on features.

Why?

Because they don’t know they’re doing it!

It’s a ‘love thing’.

They’re so passionate about their product or service that they just have to tell you what it is, how it works and how proud they are of it. For example, they may have spent years of their life and invested a fortune financially, to develop (a training course, software package, consultancy or whatever). They want you to know how clever, amazing or comprehensive it is.

Often, they do that and completely forget to tell you how it will directly benefit you. Or leave it too late to tell you, so you’ve lost interest and moved on.

Take another look at your marketing. And seek out every opportunity to shift the primary focus away from features and onto the benefits of hiring you or buying your product.

By sharing these compelling benefits, so your prospect can clearly see and feel the value you’re offering, you massively increase the likelihood of them buying from you.

10 Marketing ideas and oodles of useful resources

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how create, new high profitable service

Here are some marketing ideas, along with links to useful resources.

But first, I have a little surprise for you.

If you need immediate marketing results this post has you covered. It’s one of the most popular ever published on my blog and has tons of ideas, many of which can be deployed in minutes. And as you’d expect from me, none of them require you spending a penny on ads.

Now for those 10 ideas.

  1. Do you already know the most influential people in your industry? If not, discover who they are and introduce yourself to them. The better connected you are, the easier it is for you to succeed.
  2. How can you make it feel less risky for people to buy from you? The lower the risk, the greater their motivation will be.
  3. Is your marketing useful or does it read like a sales pitch? Remember, people hate being sold to.
  4. Does your marketing create enough urgency? You need people to take immediate action; to hire you, buy from you, make an enquiry, fill in your contact form, subscribe, etc., while they’re engaged with your marketing material. This post will help you. It’s a long read, with stacks of tips.
  5. What was the last piece of marketing, which inspired you to take action? Review it and look for ways to adapt its powerful message into your own marketing.
  6. Who already has the attention and trust of your prospective customers? Consider a Joint Venture or Endorsed Relationship with them. This post will help you.
  7. What is the biggest barrier that blocks prospects from hiring you or buying from you? Figure out how to remove it. Then, let them know. Tip: There’s always, always a way to remove the barrier.
  8. How tricky would your clients find it, if they needed to replace your services? You need to be as irreplaceable as possible. This post will help you.
  9. Have you considered offering a premium version of your services, for high-value prospective clients who are eager to pay more, for the ‘extra’? This post will help you.
  10. Is your business providing you with the quality of life you want? If not, don’t lower your expectations. Raise your revenues and profits instead.

I hope you found this useful.

Stop explaining everything. Really. Stop it!

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Jim Connolly marketing, Curious

One of the most common marketing challenges facing business owners is also one of the most serious. I’m referring to a lack of regular client enquiries or sales leads.

Today, I’m going to show you a key reason why this happens, and how you can overcome it.

I need to start by asking you something: Why do prospective clients call you, email you or ask you questions?

The answer can be summed up in just one word. Curiosity.

It’s their curiosity that motivates them to get in touch with you. This means it’s their curiosity that provides you with business enquiries. So, if you want more enquiries, your task is to make them more curious.

Hold that thought for a moment.

Now, do a quick review of your marketing materials and just look at how many questions you answer about the services you provide. This is really, really important.

Why?

Because with each question answered, you reduce a prospective client’s curiosity. You make them less likely, then unlikely, to contact you with an enquiry. You proactively lose yourself the super-valuable sales leads your business needs.

The balance you want to strike, is to give them ‘just enough’ information to make them curious. Just enough information to motivate them to contact you for answers or advice.

Just enough information, so you get all those sales leads or client enquiries that you’re currently missing out on.

The marketing power of ‘Style Over Substance’

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marketing style

The following statement will sound counter-intuitive. That’s because you’ve been lied to for years. Okay. Here goes.

In marketing, there’s a case for style over substance.

It’s a strong case, too.

Just think about this for a moment.

  • The top political commentators get paid a ton of money, to deliver their take on the news for major networks.
  • The also-ran commentators get paid peanuts, to deliver their take on the news, for small, local networks.

Here’s the thing. In both cases, the news (substance) they comment on is the same. Here’s why one of them is earning 10 times or 50 times more than the other. It’s their style. The style with which they work.

For example:

  • Their courage, when choosing to take, or avoid, a controversial stance.
  • Their ability to communicate with confidence.
  • Their vocabulary.
  • Their energy.
  • Their effectiveness when injecting their personality (style) into their work, so that it’s truly theirs.

Here’s my point: When it comes to business, the substance should be there by default. Every qualified consultant, coach, lawyer, adviser, etc., knows what their service (substance) is and how it works. It’s their style that sets them apart from the crowd.

Style over substance in marketing

The newsletters, blogs, Facebook groups, YouTube channels, Social media accounts and podcasts, which people take notice of, all have their own style.

And the ones that fail to grow, fail to get noticed, fail to make an impact… well… they don’t.

Instead, they follow the cookie-cutter approach to marketing. They bought into the lie. The lie that says; ‘Just market your stuff this way, like everyone else, and it works. Follow the steps. 1-2-3’.

That’s bullcrap.

You can certainly learn substance that way. However, your style, the very thing that gets you noticed, by default, can’t possibly be learned from a marketing seminar, a course, a book or any other generalized form of information.

Why?

Because your style is all about you.

Where are you right now?

Okay, you obviously understand the services you provide extremely well. So the substance is there. You know what you’re doing. You’ve got the substance part covered.

But what about the style?

When it comes to your marketing, when it comes to the story behind your service, are you telling it from your perspective? Are you sharing the substance of your knowledge, using your voice, your perspectives and your experiences? Because these help form your style and your style is what people connect with.

  • It’s your style that sets you apart.
  • It’s your style that makes you approachable.
  • It’s your style that inspires people to share your message.
  • It’s your style that gives value to your substance.
  • It’s your style that motivates people to want to hire you or buy from you specifically.

And none of that can be copied from a book, seminar or course. Because it’s you.

In fact, with so many competitors trying to get the attention of your prospective clients, your style is the most powerful tool in your arsenal.

Photo: Shutterstock.