Jim Connolly Marketing

This blog gets listed on the Adage Power 150!

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It’s always great to be recognised for your work isn’t it?

That’s why I was delighted, when I was emailed this morning by Advertising Age; telling me that this blog has just been listed in their Adage Power 150!

power150badge_blankAdvertising Age is a very popular and well respected weekly publication and online resource; for people interested in marketing, advertising and the media.  As one of their regular readers for many years, this recognition means a great deal to me.

It’s also humbling to listed along with the likes of Seth Godin, BrandRepublic and Mashable.

7 ways to get more sales leads and enquiries

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more sales leads, more sales enquiries, get sales, get leads

Here are 7 simple things you can do, to increase the number and the quality of your sales leads and enquiries. Take a look through this short list and see how many of them you are already doing.

1. Ask

Think of the contacts you have, who already have access to your ideal profile of customer or client.  Are you asking these contacts to introduce you? If not, it’s time to start!  To fully leverage this approach, you will need to motivate your contacts.

Remember, motivation comes from the fusion of two words: Motive and Action.  If you want your contacts to take action (to recommend you) you need to give them a strong enough motive (or reason) to do so.

2. Make it easy for people to contact you

If you want people to get in touch, you need to make it really easy.  Take this blog for example.  The link to my contact page appears in the menu, on every page. On the contact page, you will find an extremely simple contact form. Plus, I list my Twitter account, which is set to receive Direct Messages [DM’s] from anyone.

As a result, I regularly get messages, emails and Tweets from people asking about my services.

3. Just ask for their name and email address

This leads on nicely from the previous point. If your website or blog already has a contact form, how much information do you require from people, before they can send their request to you? All you really need, is their name and email address. Each additional ‘field’ (like their surname, company name, phone number etc), which you ask them to fill in, reduces the percentage of people who contact you.

In other words, you can increase the number of sales leads and enquiries you get, simply by removing these unnecessary barriers! Once someone has contacted you via the form, you can always request additional information if you need it.  It works.

4. Get your full contact details into the ‘signature’ of your emails

Your full contact details should also be visible on your emails.  This way, if someone forwards an email from you, to one of THEIR contacts, that contact will easily be able to get in touch with you, if they wish.  When you consider how many emails you write in a year, this could get your contact details in front of hundreds or thousands of new people.

5. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO

If you have a website or blog and you want more sales enquiries, the best way is to ensure that your site’s attracting lots of targeted prospective clients.  This is where Search Engine Optimisation or SEO comes in.  No, keyword stuffing is a terrible idea, as is 99% of the SEO you see advocated on common websites. That will drive traffic to your site, but when they arrive, the keyword-stuffed-bullshit that awaits them will ensure they leave as fast as they came. I cover this here in my main marketing tips page.

A true SEO expert (maybe 1 in 100 of those who claim to be experts) can help your site attract lots of people, who are searching for your exact product or service.  There’s some great SEO sites, which provide useful tips, but I very strongly recommend you get expert help, if you are serious about getting sales leads from your site.  If you want to know more about SEO, take a look at the excellent SEOmoz blog.

Of course, SEO is just 50% of the online lead generating equation!  You also need…

6. Professionally written copy

This is a no brainer, yet almost every small business website makes the mistake of writing their own wording or copy.  As a result, they get people visiting their site, but very few, if any, leads or enquiries.  This blog generates enquiries on an hourly basis, because it’s written by a professional.  If the copy on your site is not inspiring enough to compel people to click links, email, call or visit you – then why exactly do you have a site?

You can massively increase the number of enquiries you get, with this one simple improvement!

7. Network online

Networking has changed massively over the past few years.  The bottom line here is that today, via a number of extremely powerful online services, you can develop stacks of sales leads and enquiries and make some great contacts too.  I personally focus mainly on Twitter though LinkedIn can also be effective.

I hope you found those 7 ways to get more sales leads and enquiries useful. More importantly, I hope you do something with them.

A letter from Google

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I received a sales letter last week from Google. That’s right, one of the world’s leading email providers contacted me; not via an email, but via a letter.

Email marketing and Google

google email marketingGoogle already has my email address, because I am a user of a number of their services – including Gmail. So, it would have been very easy for them to have sent me the same sales message in an email. However, Google know that they will get a higher response rate from a targeted letter than from a sales email.

If the owners of Gmail are writing letters with sales offers, rather than sending sales emails, there’s a BIG marketing lesson here!

People hate sales emails and spam

People have a VERY low tolerance for emails, which are just sales messages.  The letter from Google was exactly that – a sales message.  However, I did open the letter and read it.  Had Google sent me that same sales offer via email, it would have been deleted, unopened; as soon as I read the subject line (no matter how clever it was!)

The average person hates spam with a passion and many tend to consider all sales emails (no matter how well targeted) as spam. As a result, not only is a prospective customer or client unlikely to respond to a typical sales email, they are very likely to develop strong, negative feelings about the sender too.

Is email marketing dead

No, not at all! Email marketing, when handled correctly, is still extremely powerful and getting more powerful all the time.

If you re-read the above, you will see that I use the term ‘sales emails.’  Sales emails are extremely low leverage and increasingly ineffective.  These are emails that contain a sales message and are often sent to a ‘list’, which the sender has either bought, borrowed or built by harvesting email addresses from business cards / directories etc.

Unless the sender has a good relationship / rapport with the people on that list, the sales emails they send will be deleted before they are read.

Email marketing & sales emails

Email marketing could not be more different. For example, I write a very popular marketing newsletter, which contains a unique marketing article or some valuable marketing ideas / advice.  Most editions have zero advertising.  Occasionally, I will include a single, one paragraph piece to promote something I am involved in.  The response rates are fantastic, because my readers already know me and trust me.  Some of my readers even blog about how much they value my newsletter.

In fact, many of my readers tell me that they have ‘Jim Connolly’ marketing folders on their computers, where they file my newsletters, for future reading.  How many people keep spam email or sales emails on file? No one!

Mail shots, direct mail, marketing letters

The overuse of sales emails is creating a growing resistance to them within the marketplace.  Obviously, with so many businesses mass emailing sales offers to people, the amount of traditional marketing letters being sent has dropped enormously.  As a consequence, marketing professionals are seeing traditional marketing letters, (sometimes called direct mailings or mail shots,) achieve better and better results.

A well crafted marketing letter, with a hand written signature, sent to a small, targeted group, with a compelling offer and a ‘call to action,’ can be extremely effective right now.

Mail shots or email marketing?

This is a HUGE subject.  Here’s a very brief overview.

I suggest you try a professionally handled mail shot IF you provide a service, which is only offered to a relatively small geographical area.  Some examples might include; accountants, commercial lawyers, franchise operators, insurance brokers etc.  Let me be completely clear. I am not suggesting these types of service providers cease using email to market their services.  I am suggesting they STOP using sales emails, START using email marketing AND consider trying a professionally handled, direct mail campaign as an addition to their marketing mix.

Jim Connolly’s marketing

I offer a service, which is sold internationally.  As a direct result, 100% of my marketing is conducted online.  My marketing approach is all about giving away free marketing advice, information and tips, to as many small and medium sized business owners as possible.  Then, when they want someone to look after their marketing, they give me a call.

I don’t sell my services, people hire me instead.  For those of you who provide services or products across a big or unlimited geographical area, I suggest you do exactly the same.  Instead of sending sales emails; emails that just ‘push’ or attempt to sell your services – use email as a way to engage potential clients and provide massive value.  Also, make sure that every person you send your information to has proactively sign-up to receive it.  For example, don’t send newsletters or e-bulletins to people, just because you know them, are a member of the same network or you happen to have their business card.

Use email communication (and your website / blog / FaceBook / LinkedIn / Twitter) as a way to showcase your expertise and encourage potential clients to email you, call you, comment on your blog, follow your Twitter account etc, etc.

The results can be stunning!

Blog comments

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I have always been a keen reader of blogs, not only because of the actual blog posts – but because of the gold dust you can find in a blog’s comments section.

For example, no matter how knowledgeable a blogger is on his or her subject, there will usually be people reading a post, who can add important additional information.  These comments are often just as likely to provide you with the ideas and information you need, as the original blog post!

Blog comments offer targeted feedback

If you want to know what your target market thinks about something, take a look at what they are ‘saying’ in the comments section of relevant blogs.  This kind of snapshot can provide you with a useful way to spot trends.

It can also help you identify common problems that your potential customers have, which YOUR business could solve for them!

Your blog comments

An excellent way to develop a blog, is to take note of the comments people leave.  It’s a great way to ensure your messages are resonating with your readers and that you are giving people want they want.  Many of the changes here on this blog, have been made in response to comments people have made.

Thank you

I would finally like to say “THANK YOU” to everyone who comments here.  Your feedback is, as you can see, massively valuable to both my readers and myself.

Unsexy blog posts can be valuable too!

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A blogger recently told me how his analytics software was unavailable for several days.

He went on to say how much more he enjoyed blogging and social networking his business during that period; without the pressure of checking ‘the numbers’ after everything he did.

Freedom to blog and connect

He kept saying how he enjoyed the freedom to really connect with his readers and those in his network; without the worry of whether his last blog post, tweet or facebook entry was driving visitors to his blog or not.

Although (like me) this blogger sells a service via his blog and not a product or advertising, he says he is obsessive about checking his statistics. It guides everything he does.

Like many service providers, I monetize jimsmarketingblog.com by attracting enquiries from people who read my work and then contact me, when they want someone to help them market their small business or boost their profits.

As a result, I only write posts if I believe people will find them useful, but I base the decision on what to write exclusively on whether I feel the post has value – NOT it’s potential to go viral or attract hits!

Because of this, you will see posts here like this one, which I know in advance will only get a small number of comments, next to the previous post, which currently has over 70 comments. You will see other posts here with over 250 comments, next to posts with 20 or so.  The reason this happens, is that if I believe a post like this one, is offering a valuable message, I will write it – even though it’s not a sexy marketing topic.

Give everything you believe your readers need

I believe that it’s important for everyone, but for service providers especially, to write posts based on what we believe to be valuable to our readers; even if it’s not always going to be a viral post or get hundreds of comments.  The irony, is that this approach has helped this blog grow from it’s launch a few months ago, to a couple of thousand unique visitors a day (often far more.)

The numbers are important for every commercial blog, but they should not be the only driver of what we decide to say!  After all, some of your least populist output, can be the most interesting to a section of your blog’s community.

Link love, Google and spammers

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The results are in and I can now let you know what’s happened since I started this exciting marketing experiment!

As many of you already know, jimsmarketingblog.com offers everyone who comments here a special reward; something called a do-follow link.  This is great for my readers, as it means when you comment here, your link actually tells Google to visit your website or blog; which can help boost your Search Engine Optimization.

link love google spam internet marketingSadly, over 99% of blogs and almost every well-read blog, offers the exact opposite – they offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google NOT to follow the link to your website or blog.

The 2 main reasons people give for not offering do-follow links are as follows:

1. Google ‘penalise’ sites like mine, which offer them, by lowering our page rank.
2. Blogs offering do-follow links are more likely to be targeted by spammers, because links from do-follow blogs are so much more valuable to them.

So, what REALLY happens when you offer do-follow links?

I have seen no drop in traffic from Google. This blog’s only a few months old and it gets around 50 – 60 unique visitors each day via Google. When I started the experiment, I was getting around 40 a day. There are lots of reasons why this number has gone up – but for a very new blog that only posts a few times a week, that’s an ‘ok’ response from Google. I can’t see that I am being punished for offering the links; not yet anyway!

Spam? Well, 99.9% of the spam here is the kind of automated spam that every blog gets and it goes straight into the blog’s spam filter.  There has been no increase in this kind of spam at all.

Spam from people using my comments section to pimp their website/blog has increased very slightly – but mainly because spammers know how well read this blog is. They see posts with over 200 comments and that’s like a magnet for comment spammers.

Thus, I can say with a high degree of certainty that the blog has suffered no ill effects from Google or from spammers, because of my use of do-follow links!

So, I am going to keep offering them to you – every time you comment here!

Benefits of offering do-follow links?

There are a lot of very compelling reasons to offer do-follow links. If you look at the kind of comments I got here when I announced what I was doing, you will see how warmly it was welcomed by the online community.

This blog is all about developing a community, based around our mutual interest in marketing and social media. So, what better way to show my commitment to our community, than to reach out and help promote everyone who comments here?

I have also seen a massive surge in visitor numbers, RSS subscribers and in the number of people who contact me via jimsmarketingblog.com. I believe a big reason for this, is that people really embrace the concept of a blog that actually gives them something tangible every time they comment.

We live in an age where marketing and social media guru’s keep on talking about how important it is to connect and share – yet they do so behind blogs that deliberately tell Google NOT to visit YOUR website or blog!

I really like the phrase that’s used to describe do-follow links.  They call it Link Love. As we approach what is sure to be a very challenging year for small businesses in 2009, I hope more people reach-out to THEIR readers with links that are actually worth having.

Over to you!

So, what do you think about ‘Link Love?’  Do you find yourself more likely to comment on blogs that show they value your comments?  Do you offer link love to your readers already – if so, what has your experience been? Whatever your thoughts are, share them here (and get some Link Love too!!)