Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Avoid toilet paper web design

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Marketing is all about developing trust.  This is why I am always totally amazed, when I see an apparently legitimate company, using the exact same ‘toilet paper web design’ as used by online criminals, scammers and con artists!

What is a ‘toilet paper web design’?

I coined the phrase ‘toilet paper web design’ a year ago.  It refers to that ugly, hard-sell design style, where web pages are fairly narrow BUT REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LONG!  They just roll on and on like a long narrow roll of toilet paper (hence the name!)

Usually, these over-long pages use lots of different font colours and font sizes, plus pictures of expensive cars, piles of money or sometimes both!  There’s way too much use of underlined words and highlighted text – they look like a total mess!  Some even show fake copies of financial records and fake testimonials about whatever scam they are trying to fool you into signing up for.

They then end with a super, limited offer; for you to get a ‘bundle’ worth 299.99, for just 24.99!  The bundle is either membership of something or a photoshop image of a box, which looks like a 1970’s soap powder box!

Legitimate businesses should use legitimate marketing!

When someone visits a website, they immediately form their all-important first impression of that website and the person or business behind it! If they see you using the same online marketing style as a scammer, you are really in trouble!  Your image will be warning them NOT to go within a mile of you – that’s not good for your marketing!

Unbelievably, some of the most common users of toilet paper web design are legitimate business coaches, trainers and consultants! This con artist template is fine for con artists.  However, if you have a legitimate business with a legitimate product or service, it’s crazy to try and emulate what criminals do.

Whenever I have spoken to legitimate businesses, who use the toilet paper web design approach, they always say they did it after either reading some ebook or after seeing a site that claimed to be successful, using the same approach.

An ebook can be written and posted to the Internet in minutes and a scammer will never admit their site is not working!  They usually have dozens of sites and rely on each one finding enough vulnerable people to make a small profit!

If you know a legitimate business that’s using this approach – point them to this article and help them avoid being wrongly associated with Internet scumbags!

Is the mailshot dead?

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I have an interesting marketing question for you;
“if someone invented mailshots or ‘marketing letters’ today, would you or your business actually use them?”

Just imagine the sales pitch for a mailshot

“I’m Bob from the Post Office and I want to tell you all about this new invention – mailshots! You know how you can use email to get your marketing messages onto the desk of thousands of people, in minutes, for free? Well, mailshots are unreliable, take days to deliver, are expensive and massively labour intensive!”.

Mailshots are extremely expensive

My newsletter is written on my computer and then I press the send button – that’s it! The only real costs attached are the time it takes to write it, plus the cost of the emailing software; which was £200. To send that same newsletter out to my newsletter subscribers via a mailshot (at maximum bulk mailing discount) would cost me at least £4,000,000 or $8,000,000 a year!

Email marketing

I strongly suggest YOU consider using email to deliver YOUR marketing messages, rather than letters or ‘printed media’. In fact, I list email marketing as one of my essential “Top 10 Marketing Tips!”

You see, even if we forget the environmental impact of using all that paper and then sending it via road, rail and air – the time and money you will save is enormous.

Moreover, because email marketing is so effective, it has the power, when used correctly, to transform your sales results super-fast!

Email marketing & mailshots ‘head to head’

I know two small recruitment companies; one uses email marketing exclusively and the other uses mailshots. The company using mailshots can only send one mailing, to 1000 people each month – because of the cost attached to preparing and sending each mailshot is so great.

The company using email marketing sends a marketing mailing to their list of 5,000 people.  So, they reach five times the number of potential clients!  Also, they mail their list twice a month, because there’s no additional cost!  By mailing that list every fourteen days, the list stays up-to-date too; further increasing its value!  This means they reach five times as many people, twice as often AND it costs close to nothing!

Build your own email marketing database

The recruitment company using email marketing ONLY contact people who actually WANT to be contacted with information on their services.  How can they be so sure?  Because EVERYONE that they email has subscribed to them via a ‘sign-up box’ on their website – this is important.  It means that 100% of the people they email to have a confirmed interest in their business.

It also means their email marketing list didn’t cost them anything!  I recommend you always build your own email marketing list, you can read more about email marketing in my Top 10 Marketing Tips article.

If you own or run a small or medium sized business and you want to reach more people, faster and for a fraction of the cost – give email marketing a go!

Clear marketing sells

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In marketing, clarity is extremely important!  Your marketing messages need to clearly state what you do, what the benefits of your services are and why a potential client should do business with you or buy from you!

Clear marketing

Clear marketing messages command a potential client’s attention with laser-like precision!

Sadly, most small businesses use a foggy, conversational approach to their marketing and as a result, they lose stacks of business unnecessarily!

Most small business websites lack clarity

When you read the wording (or the copy) on the homepage of a typical small business website, it rarely gives you the core information you need!  Instead, you usually find a welcome message and some general ‘blurb’ about the company.  There’s nothing there to motivate the visitor / reader to click anything or do anything. As a result, most people quickly leave these sites and stacks of potential sales and enquiries are lost. This vague, generalised approach to marketing is a complete waste of time and money!

For example

I recently saw a website for a company that had the following headline across its homepage…

“Providing integrated business solutions to SME’s.”

Apart from mentioning that they work with SME’s (Small to medium-sized Enterprises), I have no idea whether they are; business advisers, software developers, accountants, recruitment specialists, hr consultants or anything else!

To make your marketing message stronger- try this!

Take a look at your existing marketing.  Read your website, your sales letters, marketing emails and brochures or flyers etc.  Make sure that each of your marketing messages explains clearly:
1. What you do.
2. How it will directly benefit the reader.
3. Why they absolutely need it (right now if possible).
4. Why they should buy ‘it’ from you (and not someone else).

This simple exercise can produce immediate, measurable results!

Get YOUR mailshot letters opened!

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This post is all about how to get YOUR marketing letters opened.

When a company sends out a mailshot, it does so in order to generate enquiries or sales.  Of course, in order for these marketing letters to work, they must first be opened and read!  After all, you can have the strongest, most compelling and motivating marketing letter imaginable inside that envelope, but in order for it to generate business for you, the envelope must be opened.

Amazingly, although there’s stacks of information ‘out there’ about writing a marketing letter, there’s very little written about how to get someone to actually open the envelope (what some trendy marketing people call ‘the carrier’!)

Get your marketing letters in the right pile!

I was reminded of how poorly most companies deliver their mail shots earlier today, when the post arrived at my home.  My wife Sharon divided the letters into two, unopened piles.  I asked her what the piles represented and she said;

“The letters in the left pile are junk mail – the letters in the right hand pile are going to be opened”

Now, my wife has no marketing experience, yet she was able to spot junk mail without even opening the envelopes, with 100% accuracy!

Get YOUR marketing letters opened!

If you want to make sure your mailshot letters get opened, here are a few simple guidelines:

  • Make sure the name and address of the person you are writing to is displayed clearly.
  • Use ‘window envelopes’ with the name and address of the recipient printed onto the enclosed letter.
  • Don’t address letters to a job title or ‘the occupier.’
  • Be extremely careful about printing any kind of message on the envelope.  If you really must have a message on the envelope, make sure it is written by a professional copy writer.  If in doubt, leave it!  Get the message even slightly wrong and you could find 100% of your letters remain unopened!
  • Don’t address the letter IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
  • Never, ever, ever use printed labels for the name and address.  These tend to be mainly used for mass-mailings, so people tend NOT to open them.
  • Don’t use highly decorated envelopes unless you want people to know that there’s a sales pitch inside that letter.

Finally, here’s a quick marketing tip: Take a look at the mail you receive, which you instinctively think is either junk mail or a sales pitch. Ask yourself what it was that made you feel that way, before even opening the envelope.  Then, make sure you avoid the same mistakes. Then, check out the letters that you DO OPEN and ask yourself, what it was that motivated you to open those particular letters.

The bottom line here, is that you need to make sure that recipients of YOUR mailings are not thinking negatively about what might be inside your envelopes!

Your marketing mix part 2 of 2

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I am going to show you how to make your marketing more successful and more reliable, with something called your marketing mix. I am also going to give you a list and explanation of some of the most popular types of marketing, used by small and medium sized businesses.  I strongly suggest you read part one of this before proceeding.

This is a BIG marketing guide, with lots of great ideas, so please share it on your favourite social network or social bookmarking site.

In part one of this guide I shared one of the most common errors small businesses make with their marketing. The error is that they rely on just one or two different marketing activities in order to generate their sales.

This is a REALLY bad idea!

Firstly, if you rely on just one or two different forms of marketing, you are missing out on STACKS of new business and opportunities! No matter how good you are at getting the full leverage from a couple of marketing activities, you will be placing a very low ceiling on your business’s potential, if you limit yourself in this way. The most successful small businesses all use at least four or five different kinds of marketing – often 8 or 10 or more!

Secondly, by relying on just one or two marketing activities, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable when one of them stops working! A business owner emailed me to say that she relied on an advertisement in a business publication for over 90% of her sales leads. One of her competitors started advertising in the same publication and her number of leads (and sales) dropped by 40% overnight – That hurts.

So, your marketing mix should combine at least four or five different marketing activities, which compound and create a regular supply of sales for you. Here are some of the marketing options you should consider adding to YOUR marketing mix.

Advertising

A targeted message delivered through a great ad, which is read, listened to or watched by your core target client group is REALLY powerful! For a free advertising guide, click here.

Online networking or ‘social networks’

Online networking has great marketing potential. The key is to join a network that is best suited to your needs and to be selective with whom you network! Focus on the quality of people in your network and NOT just the quantity. If you develop a network of 30 well-connected, motivated, professional people and I develop a network of 3000 people who ‘just wanted to join my network’ – your network will be massively more valuable then mine.

A couple of the more popular business networks are www.ecademy.com and www.linkedin.com.  Other’s now use Facebook exclusively as a business networking tool.  I personally use Twitter and have found, like many others, that it is perhaps the most powerful of all.  Whatever network you choose, you are likely to see FAR BETTER results than through wasting your time at traditional ‘networking events’ (Click here to see why traditionasl networking is a waste of your time!)

Exhibitions

As an exhibitor at, (or visitor to), a well-attended exhibition aimed at your target client base – you can easily get to meet people face-to-face, who are almost impossible to reach using other forms of marketing. Depending on your industry or profession and the average lifetime value to your business of a client, you could find exhibiting at well-attended exhibitions an extremely valuable part of your marketing mix. I know companies who win most of their high quality work via exhibitions.

Email marketing

It’s a fact; email marketing is extremely cost effective and certainly one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses. It works incredibly well – and costs little or nothing.

Here are a few things to consider before adding email marketing to your marketing mix. I recommend you build your own email database (mailing list) rather than buy one from a list broker. The best way to get started is to ask your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address and if it’s ok for you to email them occasionally with news or special offers.

You also need to get people joining your email list from your website! To do this, make it as easy as possible, and offer something of value as an incentive for them to join your mailing list, like a free ebook. Also, only ask for their email address – not their life history, and let them know that you will never, ever pass on their details to ANYONE!

ONLY send people valuable information (like this free guide) or a genuinely special offer. I also strongly recommend that you don’t bombard people with email; just one message every week or 14 days is more than enough. I send my Newsletter out once every seven to 14 days, because people hate being bombarded with information; even great information! As a result, very few people ask to be removed from my subscriber list.

Finally, to grow your list, ask readers to forward your emails on. Obviously, making sure all the while, that you abide by the rules governing email marketing in your country.

Telephone marketing – Tele sales

Telephone marketing works – but it’s less effective than it used to be. Not that long ago, you could call someone’s direct ‘phone line and know that if they were in, they would pick up the phone. Today, people from even the smallest of companies screen all their inbound calls with voice mail; to eliminate unwanted interruptions and sales calls. This means you now need to make massively more calls to reach a smaller number of people!

I used to tell the owners of small businesses to learn how to make telemarketing calls and then set some time aside and make those calls! Today, I suggest you outsource the whole process to a proven telephone marketing company. Doing it yourself is now a low-leverage marketing activity, because it requires so much time.

Outsourced telephone marketing is still a high leverage activity, because you will usually only pay per lead or sale.

Traditional networking

Traditional networking is a total waste of your time – avoid it!

Your website

It’s not enough to simply ‘have a website’! Your website needs to work for your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; generating leads, making sales or collecting the email addresses of potential clients. If your website is simply an online brochure, it’s costing you a fortune in lost sales, lost profits and lost opportunities!

When your website is supported by a newsletter and some Internet marketing, the results can be transformational. Still not convinced? Without spending a penny on advertising, my Internet marketing often reaches over 2 million people in a week! I will be writing separate guides all about forum marketing, article marketing, pay-per-click and blogging shortly.

Joint ventures

Sometimes known as a J.V, a ‘Joint Venture’ is where you and another business or person get together to (usually) cross-market your services. The key to JV success, is to find someone credible, who offers a non-conflicting product or service to the exact same profile of person or business as you do.

So, if you sell recruitment services to the hospitality industry and they sell employee benefits packages to the hospitality industry – BINGO! They can include one of your flyers or letters in one of their mailings and you can do the same for them; everybody wins. Avoid doing a JV with ANYONE you contacts you via email – unless you know them or can check them out. If in doubt – leave it.

Endorsed relationships

An ‘Endorsed Relationship’ is similar to a Joint Venture – BUT with one BIG and POWERFUL difference! The person you do the venture with actually gives you their professional or personal endorsement. This is marketing gold dust.

For example: Rather than just slipping one of YOUR marketing flyers in with one of THEIR client mailings (as they would in a Joint Venture), they actually write to their clients and give you their full endorsement. This is easily the single most powerful form of referral and one of the most powerful marketing tools on the planet.

I have seen endorsed mailings return a 90% positive response rate!

Conclusion

Obviously, the above list does not cover every marketing option open to you, but I hope it gives you a few ideas.

No matter how good your service is, your future success will be determined by how good you are at winning and retaining good quality clients. As Robert Kiyosaki says, lots of people can make a better hamburger than McDonalds; but very few can sell hamburgers more successfully. In today’s super-competitive economy, your marketing is more important than ever before, so make sure you give it the time and investment it needs!