Jim Connolly Marketing

3 Things to focus on if you want to quickly see amazing results

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How is business?

If you would like to attract more high quality clients or make more sales, here are 3 areas that can produce massive, immediate results. They are based on 3 of the areas I work on, when I start marketing a new clients business.

1: Why should someone hire you or buy from you, rather than one of your competitors?

Failing to answer that question correctly, is the most common mistake small business owners make, yet it’s the single most important element of your marketing.

Why? Because unless you can answer that question correctly, you’re wasting your time trying to market your business. Until you know what sets YOUR business apart from the others, you have no marketing message. There’s no compelling reason for someone to buy from you or hire you, rather than one of your competitors.

If you sound just like your competitors, the only way someone can judge your value, is to compare your fees or prices to your competitors. Remember, your competitors all promise a great service and they all have impressive testimonials. What sets you apart, needs to be something that not everyone else can claim.

This is the very first thing I would work on with you if you were my client, because it improves every element of your marketing. It also helps you attract the best clients and the most rewarding fees. Getting this right can be a game changing moment for you. This is especially the case, if you find people are fee sensitive when you speak with them or you find you attract too few word-of-mouth referrals. If this sounds familiar, fix it now.

2: How compelling is your written marketing or copy?

Maybe once a month I see a piece of small business marketing, which has been written correctly. The rest is clearly written by a keen amateur and is failing the business horribly. What’s the point of going to the time and expense of having a website, brochure, blog, email campaign or newsletter and then wasting the opportunity with ineffective marketing content? None!

If you want to motivate people to buy from you, hire you, visit you, email you or call you, your written content needs to compel people. It needs to inspire them. It needs to be so much more powerful than the average marketing message. I’d work with you on this at the very start, because it’s so extremely important. It’s almost certainly losing you business on a daily basis right now, as it stops people contacting you. You and I would review your marketing messages and work to make them perform massively better for you and your business.

When applied to your online marketing, the copy you and I produce could lead to great results very quickly – as all those readers, whose inquiries you are currently losing, feel compelled to take action and get in touch.

3: How effective is your website, at attracting new client inquiries or sales?

Within an hour of this post being published, I will start attracting inquiries from people who want to know how or when I can start helping them and their business. They will read this post, click on the link about how to hire me and then get in touch.

YOUR website or blog should be doing the same!

Your website should be a regular source of highly targeted business inquiries or sales. As mentioned above, it should be expertly written, so that when people find your website they are compelled to take action. It should inspire them to go from being a reader, (passive), to being someone who gets in touch with you, (active).

If your site is attracting people but they are not getting in touch with you, it’s failing on one or all of the above points. In other words, your lack of a compelling difference between you and your competitors and your lack of effectively written copy, is hurting your business. As a new client, I would show you how we can apply to your website, the same ideas that grew this site from zero, to one of the most popular marketing sites in the world.

Now what?

Those are just 3 of the things you and I would work on, if you were one of my clients.

If the opportunity to develop your business with the help of one of the world’s best known marketing professionals appeals to you, I currently have just 3 spaces 2 spaces ONE space available on my Marketing Mentor Program, where you and I work together for a whole year, on the development of your business. Here’s how it works. I recommend you get in touch as soon as possible, to avoid disappointment.

Stupidity?

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I heard a business owner earlier, saying his customers were too stupid to understand how great his offers are.

He was wrong

Here’s the thing: When a prospective customer does not understand a marketing message, the focus should be on building a better message. Writing people off as stupid is where the real stupidity comes in. It also shifts the focus away from the business owner (who can fix the issue) to the prospective customer (who can’t).

A more useful alternative

  • Try being clearer. Cut the fluff from your message. Get to the point. Embrace brevity.
  • Try testing a new message on a selection of prospective customers, before you go live with it. Get feedback on what they believe you are trying to say. If they get it, others are more likely too also.
  • Try explaining things using more forms of media. For example, if it was originally a written message, add video, images, graphs or audio.

Giving up and accusing people of being stupid, when it’s a message we created that’s causing the problem, fails the customer and fails us.

5 steps to increase the success of all your written marketing

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content marketing, blogging, newsletters, email

Today’s post will show you a way to massively improve the effectiveness of any important content you write. It will also show you how to avoid one of the most common and damaging copy writing errors.

Stop limiting your options

Most people will write their initial piece of content, call it their draft copy, then tweak it until it’s as good as they think they can make it.

The challenge with that approach is that you are working from the mindset that the initial draft is the best foundation for the content. This is almost never the case! You need to write from the best foundation possible, not simply the first draft you write down.

The most effective content comes from experimenting with ideas and one of the best ways to get new ideas, is to refuse to restrict yourself to working from one perspective.

In other words, instead of writing an initial draft and then building on it, you commit to writing your message in 5 or more different ways. By writing the content in a number of different ways you open up new possibilities, which often lead to breakthrough ideas that make your content massively more compelling.

Yes, it takes longer than writing from one perspective and hoping it will work, but the goal of your content writing is not to write as fast as you can – it’s to write the most commercially valuable content you can.

It works like this

  1. Write down exactly what you want to achieve from your content, so you know what your outcome is.
  2. Next, write down what kind of action you want the reader of your content to take. For example; email you, call you, visit your premises, fill in your survey, etc.
  3. Then, write 5 pieces of content, which address the previous 2 points as clearly as you can.
  4. Remember, you are not looking for 4 revisions of your initial piece of content, but 5 fresh perspectives to help you achieve the outcomes you listed in points 1 and 2.
  5. Finally, look for the most compelling of your 5 pieces of content, then build upon it.

If you do that, you give yourself a greater chance of writing your content from your best foundation – not just the one you thought of first.

Yes, sometimes that initial version will be the best, but every time it isn’t, you will have improved the quality and effectiveness of your writing.

Stop writing for Google. Really. Stop it.

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google, seo, content marketing, keywords

As a passionate advocate for small business owners, I want to make a plea to you: Stop writing your blog posts and web copy primarily for Google.

Earlier today, I spoke with a business owner who wanted to know why the ‘traffic’ to her website and blog was not converting into business or sales leads. According to her analytics software, around 400 visitors arrive on her sites each day, then leave again without making a purchase, making an inquiry or subscribing.

She wanted to know what was wrong.

As her problem is extremely common, I thought I would share what I found with you, along with how to avoid falling into the same trap.

Keyword stuffed nonsense doesn’t convert people into customers

Within seconds of seeing the sites concerned, it was clear why they were so ineffective, why they had not attracted a single sales inquiry in 9 months. It’s simply this: They were primarily written for Google and not for people. Her content was keyword stuffed – here’s Google’s definition of keyword stuffing.

Her content was over ‘optimized’ for SEO and not written to appeal to prospective customers. For example, her website had the same 3 word phrase repeated 41 times on the home page alone! The services page on her blog has the name of her service repeated 39 times in just 350 words. It read horribly. It reflected poorly on her and her business. It was toxic and she has been paying the price.

In her eagerness to get ‘traffic’, she forgot about customers, prospective customers and what they would find when they actually arrived on her sites.

Effective SEO should be based around making great content easier for search engines to find and read. It should not be about producing keyword stuffed junk, which people can’t understand or connect with.

Writing for people

It’s hard enough to write compelling content, which will motivate people to buy from you, call you, email you, visit you, link to you or share your work. If your content reads poorly because it’s stuffed with keywords and key-phrases, you stand no chance.

You may get fewer visitors from search engines then those who stuff their content with keywords, but you will engage your readers. That’s what attracts customers, generates sales leads and (ironically) motivates people to link to and share your work – which massively improves your search engine rankings, anyway.

Clear?

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Einstein famously said: ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’

Of course, even when we fully understand something, we need to be able to explain it with clarity in order to avoid confusion. That’s what this brief post is all about.

As a business owner, it pays to embrace clarity

Many small business owners use buzz words, industry slang and management speak – creating unnecessary confusion. This is the exact opposite of what we need, if we want people to buy from us, hire us or recommend us.

In marketing, one of the golden rules is, a confused mind always says ‘no!’ When a prospective client or customer is confused and you ask them to make a decision, they will typically say no or avoid the decision.

Here’s the thing: Everything you do, which clarifies your message, will simultaneously increase it’s marketing effectiveness.

Communicate without confusion

Simplify your message.

Aim for clarity.

Embrace brevity.

Remove doubt.

7 Benefits of business blogging

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marketing tips, content marketing

Here are 7 benefits of writing a business blog. Some of them may surprise you!

1. Blogging is a great tool for building a tribe

Blogging is the best tool I’ve ever known, for building a community or tribe. Blogging allows you to show your leadership, rather than claim it. By being brave enough to write YOUR point of view, you demonstrate your ability to lead – rather than follow.

This is, of course, a double-edged sword. Most bloggers simply amplify what the most popular opinion is on their subject. However, for those who genuinely are prepared to show their leadership to people, via the work and words they share on their blog, it represents an amazing opportunity.

2. Blogging and relationship building

Blogging allows people to get to know you, before they call you, email you or hire you. I get calls and emails daily from people I don’t know, who tell me they feel like they already know me. This has massive commercial value and leads into the next point…

3. Blogging helps you attract new clients and sales inquiries

Blogging is a great way to attract highly targeted inquiries from potential clients and customers. By blogging regularly about your core areas of commercial interest, you position yourself in the mind of your readers as an authority in your field. Then, when they need expert help they can trust, you become a very attractive option – far more attractive than going to Google and looking for a stranger or taking a chance on someone they don’t know, who’s recommended to them.

4. Blogging helps you communicate

When you write a blog post, you really need to think about what you are going to publish. You need to question the information you are about to share, for value, accuracy and clarity. I’ve found that by writing regularly for small business owners, it has massively improved my copy writing, when writing any commercial communication.

In short: Blogging is a superb communications training asset.

5. Blogging gives you an enormous reach

Blogging allows you to share ideas with an almost unlimited number of people. Your blog gives you the potential to build your own media asset – your own publication, with as large a readership as you are capable of building. This is an opportunity that was unthinkable for small business owners even a decade ago.

This alone makes blogging a wonderful business investment.

6. Blogging is amazingly powerful for market research

Blogging is a fantastic market research tool. You learn the topics your readership is most interested in, very quickly. Thanks to inexpensive or free analytics tools, you can see which of your posts are read the most and shared the most. You also see the posts which generate the most emails from your readers. By learning what your readership is most interested in, you can develop new products and services or adapt existing ones.

You can also improve the effectiveness of your marketing messages, knowing what your readers are most interested in.

7. Blogging allows you to prove your reliability

By showing up on your blog regularly with useful information, you are doing more than showcasing your knowledge. You are also showing prospective clients or customers that you can be relied upon to turn up.

It takes commitment, durability and a great work ethic, to regularly update a blog. Once you have been blogging for a few years or more, you also have a body of work that shows your longevity. We live in an age where people often set up a website and some social networking accounts, with no track record – and claim to be experienced professionals. Many of my clients told me that the fact they could see years worth of my work on Jim’s Marketing Blog, made them a lot more confident that I was an experienced professional.