Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

The customer is not always right

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marketing blog

That old saying, that the customer is always right, is bogus. Worse still, if you believe the customer or client is always right, it will damage your business.

Allow me to explain!

That saying still persists, because fearful service providers are scared that if they say the customer is wrong, they might take their custom elsewhere. So, generations of business owners have worked under the erroneous belief that they should simply agree with their clients all the time.

That’s a really bad idea 

It fails the client and it fails you. Here are a few examples.

  • Designers end up producing ugly work, because the client made terrible design demands. The client is left with low quality design, which won’t work for them. The designer will never get to work with that client again.
  • Copywriters end up writing junk, because the client demanded uninformed changes. So, instead of a professional piece, the client gets something amateurish that they could have written themselves. The copy fails to work. The client ends up unhappy. The copywriter is never hired again.
  • Coaches and mentors end up delivering a poor quality service, because the allow misguided clients to dictate what happens. The client then ends up hearing what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear in order to succeed. It fails the client. And the provider is never hired again.

No, I’m not suggesting you argue with your clients. That’s a terrible idea and extremely unprofessional.

I am suggesting you need to guide your clients.

As a professional, it’s your job to help clients make the right decisions, so they get the very best results. That means providing the client with your informed, expert guidance. It means steering them away from mistakes. It means responding with advice and ideas, which lead to a successful project and a delighted client.

In short, your clients deserve your very best work. Agreeing with a client, when you know they are making damaging mistakes, doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you. So give your clients your very best. That’s what they pay you for. That’s what they deserve.

And you cannot, on any level, afford to give them anything less.

How to overcome the apathy that stops people hiring you

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marketing apathy

I’d like to introduce you to your main competitor.

Oh, and it’s almost certainly not the competitor you’re thinking of. Whilst there are a few (very few) exceptions, your main competitor is not an alternative brand, vendor or service provider.

No.

Your main competitor is apathy: The decision by your prospective clients (or prospects) to avoid the risk, hassle and stress of switching to you, from their current provider.

Small business marketing almost always fails to address this effectively. It focuses on reasons to hire them or buy from them, without even addressing the huge leap of faith required by a new client. This is especially the case for service providers and those selling high ticket goods.

Your marketing needs to simultaneously build trust in you AND convince prospects that switching to you is easier, than enduring their current provider.

The smartest business owners ensure their marketing clearly demonstrates the following.

  • Why people can trust them. For example, by showcasing their “trust assets”. (I put some of my trust assets here).
  • Just how frictionless it is for prospectives to switch to them.
  • That they’ll handle the whole on-boarding process for the prospect.
  • All the promises and guarantees required, to give their prospects total peace of mind.
  • How prospects would be nuts, not to upgrade to their vastly superior service.

I recommend you do the same, and also introduce it into your sales conversations.

Another type of apathy

There’s a second apathy challenge you need to be aware of. It’s not about switching. It’s about hiring you, rather than doing (whatever) themselves.

For example, many business owners who hire me have never had expert marketing help before. So, they’re not switching to me from another provider. They hire me, rather than continue to dabble with ineffective, DIY marketing and suffer lousy results. They switch from apathy (with the status quo) to action.

And it’s still vitally important to make their switch from apathy as frictionless as possible. Otherwise, the fear, risk or doubt that’s held them back will carry on doing so.

Tip: Whenever I speak with a prospective client, I make sure they know that I look after them, personally, every step of the way. I call this partnering with my clients. It gives them great peace of mind. And that makes the decision to hire me massively easier for them.

You should do something very similar for your prospective clients or customers.

Moving forward

Never wait for a prospective client to tell you they have doubts, before you address the subject. By that point, a barrier to doing business with you will have already been created. And you’ll find yourself facing an unnecessary uphill challenge. Ouch!

Instead, take the initiative. Give them the peace of mind they need, in advance. Let them know there are no barriers to hiring you or buying from you. Get this right and you will have overcome your main competitor. Apathy.

Plus, you’ll have created a major marketing advantage over competing providers, who are failing to address apathy correctly with their marketing.

1 Essential word your marketing needs. Plus 1 you absolutely MUST avoid

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business growing, how to

Here’s a very quick tip, to help you improve the sales effectiveness of your marketing. It’s all about a word you use regularly, which is negatively impacting how people feel about your business.

That word is change!

People are hard-wired to fear change.

We know that change, good or bad, is a source of stress. Even something as positive as the change that comes from getting married, buying a new home or setting off for a week in the sun, is a cause of stress. In short, change is a trigger word, which places the prospective client or customer in a suboptimal state.

Because of the negative way people feel when confronted with change, it makes sense to remove the word from your marketing. Don’t worry, I am going to give you a massively more powerful, motivating alternative!

Improve, rather than change

Whenever possible, use the word improve, rather than change. Improve, is a positive word. It’s an attractive word too, because we are always looking for something better.

For example, look how the phrase below becomes far more powerful, when change is replaced with improve.

“This copywriting tip will change your marketing results.” (It could make them worse)

“This copywriting tip will improve your marketing results.” (It will make them better)

Your prospective clients or customers fear change, but want things to improve. So, stop offering them what they fear and give them what they want.

21 Tips to massively improve your business results

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marketing busy, marketing noise

Photo: Shutterstock.

In no particular order.

  1. People buy what they want. Not what they need. It’s why people renew their phones every 12/24 months, even though their ‘old’ phone works fine. They want a new phone. They treat themselves to a new phone. But they don’t need it. Once you understand the difference, you can massively improve your marketing.
  2. Avoid using buzzwords. Those who don’t understand them will be confused. Those who do understand them, will cringe. And buzzwords get old, really quick.
  3. When you want to generate high quality cash flow fast, find new products for your existing customers. It’s far quicker and more profitable, than finding new customers for your existing products. I’ve helped hundreds of business owners enjoy windfall profits this way. Yes, windfall profits. It’s that easy.
  4. Stop waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Make it happen. Create it.
  5. Embrace brevity. Shorter messages are more powerful. Most marketing I see is 75% too long.
  6. Keeping your promises is a proven way to build a great reputation. (Read more).
  7. You don’t have any clients, customers or subscribers. They’re not yours. You simply borrow them. This means there’s no room for complacency. You need to earn and then re-earn their custom, attention and trust.
  8. Learn how to make your marketplace curious. Why do prospective clients call you or email you? It’s because they need to know something and their curiosity motivates them to get in touch. So, you get a sales lead or client enquiry. And a chance to convert them into a new client or customer. As I said a few days ago, don’t explain everything in your marketing, unless you want very few enquiries. (Read more).
  9. If you want your marketplace to talk enthusiastically about your business, do something worth talking about. If it’s remarkable enough, they’ll remark on it!
  10. A confused mind always says no. Keep your marketing as brief and clear as possible. Fewer options. Fewer words. Less fluff.
  11. The most successful business owners decide who their ideal clients are, then market exclusively to this super-valuable group. You should do the same. The average business owner relies on DIY marketing and takes whatever comes along.
  12. People buy for their reasons. Not yours.
  13. Include deadlines in your marketing messages. They’re an exceptionally powerful way to motivate people to take action. (Read more).
  14. Everything your business does, is marketing. The way you answer the phone, your payment terms, the way you reply to emails, your location, the way you write, the design of your website, your prices, your social network activity… it’s all marketing. This means it needs to be intentional and consistent.
  15. Don’t rely on Facebook, Linkedin or any third party for your communication channel. It’s like building a house on rented land. Instead, attract people via third party platforms. And then encourage them to subscribe to your email list.
  16. Building an email list is a massively better option than buying a list. The people on paid-for lists don’t want to hear from you. These so called opt-in lists are mainly just lists of people, who completed a form on a website once, without reading the small print.
  17. Businesses with a fixed marketing budget never achieve much. It shows they regard marketing as a cost, rather than an investment. This is then reflected in their results.
  18. The most powerful marketing is permission based. When people subscribe to your list, your message is treated very differently, than an unsolicited email from a needy stranger.
  19. The more your services or products resemble what your competitors offer, the less visible your business is.
  20. Tell the truth. It’s the easiest, least stressful way to build a great business and your marketplace will respect you.
  21. If your business isn’t attracting regular sales leads or client enquiries, your marketing is broken. This means the very thing that feeds your business isn’t working. It’s losing you a fortune. Needlessly. Why are you allowing this to happen? Think about that for a moment.

Taste your words before you spit them out

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what meaning, taste words spit out, does it mean

Photo: Shutterstock.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received, was taste your words before you spit them out. The idea is that we should pause and think before we say something to someone, especially if we don’t know them well. It’s easy to be misunderstood otherwise.

The same idea applies to the information we share via the written word. And I’m going to share 2 quick examples with you. One was embarrassing and the other expensive.

He didn’t taste his words before he spit them out, when he said ‘after you’

Very recently on Twitter, a service provider was forced to rethink the snappy, 2 word profile he created. The profile simply read: After you!

  • His intention with those words, was to suggest that he’s the kind of person who puts others first.
  • He then figured out that people were misunderstanding it to mean he was after them… in pursuit of them or pestering them. That’s not a good look.

There was no real harm done as he had just started the account and had very few followers. So, he switched the profile to something clearer and laughed about it as he told me.

Crushing defeat?

The second example is regarding a seminar that had to be cancelled, largely because of the seminar’s title. The crushing defeat seminar was all about how to crush defeat and come out winning. It seems when people saw marketing for the seminar, the title was misunderstood to mean the event was all about defeat that crushes you.

A place to feel sorry for yourself. Obviously, that was the exact opposite of the desired impact.

In both of those examples, had this person tasted their words before they spat them out, the problems could have been completely avoided. The first example didn’t cause any real issues. But the second example had been advertised for a week, before he figured out what was happening. Even if the trainer had shown the seminar’s title to some people and asked what it said to them, he’d have been aware of the problem.

Taste your words with some outside perspective

Those examples may seem obvious. But sometimes the errors we make are more subtle and harder for us to spot. That’s why if you’re not an experienced marketer or copywriter, it’s important to think hard and also get some feedback, before you publish a title (The crushing defeat seminar) or strap-line (After you). The same is true of the calls to action you use, the wording on the buttons or tabs on your website, your newsletter title and the name you give to your services, etc.

A great place to start is with marketing you have, which isn’t generating the response rates you need. Sometimes a better name, title or strap-line can make a massive improvement to your results!

Marketing 101: Stop selling to yourself

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marketing, selling to yourself

Photo: Shutterstock.

Are you selling to yourself?

That may seem like an odd question, yet it’s one of the most important questions in marketing.

Why?

Because small business owners almost always market their services, as if they were selling to themselves. Or selling to someone in their own industry, to be more precise.

Sounds weird, right?

Well, here are a couple of industry examples. Though it applies to literally (not figuratively) every industry.

Read the marketing of most web designers and it’s filled with jargon and buzzwords. They talk about things like; HTML5, CSS and standards compliance. These are things designers know are important. However, those terms mean nothing to their prospective clients. Their prospective clients want a professional looking site. They want to know how a new website will help them make more sales and attract more enquiries. They want to know they can trust the designer to do a great job. And they want it explained with clarity.

Read the marketing of most accountants and you will find graphs, statistics and logos from the bodies they’re a member of. This is what accountants think is important, but it’s not what their prospective clients are looking for. The prospective client wants to know why they should hire this accountant (and not an equally qualified competitor). They want the story behind the numbers in their business. They want to know how the accountant will help them build a better business. And they want it explained with clarity.

Every business owner using that self-selling approach is leaving money on the table every day. Don’t let it happen to you.

What next?

Take a look at your marketing messages from your prospective client’s vantage point.

  • Make sure you’re using their language and not yours.
  • Lose as many industry terms and buzzwords as possible.
  • Focus on the results your product or service delivers.

And remember to highlight why they’d be nuts not to hire you or buy from you.

When the vision pulls you, you don’t have to be pushed

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when vision pulls, don't need pushed, Steve Jobs vision

One of the most common questions people ask me, is in relation to blogging. Specifically, they want to know how I manage to push myself, to write and publish content as often as I do.

Here’s the answer.

Push or pull?

This quote from the late Steve Jobs answers that question beautifully:

If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.

– Steve Jobs.

If your vision of blogging is that it’s a necessary evil, you will fail on every metric.

  • You will fail to write as well as you can, because when you work through gritted teeth, it shows.
  • You will fail to show up with new information, often enough.
  • You will fail to engage people.

My blogging vision was different

I saw it as a professional and personal development opportunity. I knew that in order for me to share useful information regularly, I needed to feed my mind with useful information regularly. I quickly found another massive benefit to blogging, which is that writing regularly makes you a better communicator. That’s a huge asset for anyone.

So, even if I failed to attract a commercially valuable reader community, I’d still benefit. Firstly, I’d become far more informed. Secondly, I’d be better able to communicate my ideas than I would have been, had I not written all that content. This made it impossible for me to fail.

If you’re struggling to publish content regularly enough, don’t carry on working through gritted teeth. Change your vision. And then let that vision pull you.

Thankfully, Jobs’ concept works in every area of your life and isn’t limited to content creation.

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

Agility is the new growth

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marketing, agile growth

Photo: Shutterstock.

Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve written a lot about the need for business owners to adopt agile thinking. So it may come as a surprise that the title of today’s post is taken from Matthieu Pellerin, the founder and head of Google’s Growth Lab.

Pellerin wrote a very interesting post yesterday, Inside Google Marketing: Agility is the new growth. In it, he generously shares what he’s seeing, regarding changes required when marketing during the coronavirus pandemic. I found the following quote especially interesting:

“Our raison d’être continues to be driving responsible and sustainable growth, but we’re now operating under a new mantra of ‘organisational agility’.”

Whilst his post focuses on what his team at Google are doing, there’s clearly a core message we can all benefit from.

The needs, wants and situation of your clients and prospective clients is changing rapidly. In some cases, daily. Your marketing messaging needs to be just as agile, if you want to be as useful, valuable and relevant to them as possible. This includes your email marketing, website content, blog posts, social networking updates and vlogging, etc.

You simply cannot expect a pre-pandemic marketing message to strike the correct tone. Pellerin gives an example of just how important he believes it is, to get agile and move fast:

“We readjust these plans regularly and continue to switch resources as needed. Our key product priorities are shifting at lightning speed”.

Next steps

If, like many people reading this, you’re getting fewer sales or new client enquiries, check the messaging you’re using. If it fails to address the new and evolving priorities of your marketplace, it will also fail to deliver the results you need.

Whenever possible, hire a professional marketing copywriter to create compelling, relevant content for you. If that’s not within your budget, do something yourself. And in either case, review the message at least every 7 days. Sooner if it isn’t generating the results you need.

Yes, this means spending more time on your marketing. However, an agile situation demands an equally agile response.

7 Hard truths about marketing your business

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marketing tips

Photo: Shutterstock.

  1. Embrace brevity. Your marketing content is almost certainly 50% to 75% too long. Fix it. Your prospective clients are being bombarded with emails, texts, social media updates, phone calls. Their time (and attention) has never been under so much pressure. This will become an increasingly bigger issue in 2020. So get to the point. And fast.
  2. Be cautious of anyone offering tricks or short cuts to marketing success. Short cuts to success are seldom short cuts and they never lead to success.
  3. Avoid general marketing advice. Why? Because it’s extremely risky. Your marketing problem is specific to you and your unique situation; your industry, budget, location, size of business, competition, mindset, assets, etc. And your specific situation requires a specific strategy.
  4. In business, everything you do is marketing. Yes, everything. From the way you answer the phone, reply to emails and the design of your website… to your ability to meet deadlines, the customer service you offer and your opening hours. It’s all saying something about you. Either positive or negative. Nothing is neutral. It’s making you money or it’s losing you money.
  5. Don’t expect professional marketing results from amateur marketing. Marketing is the life-blood of your business. So stop treating it like some DIY project or you’ll run out of money, time (or both).
  6. If you need to attend networking events, to try and get people talking about your business, you have a major problem. Ask yourself “why”? Why aren’t people automatically talking about your service? Spend more time fixing the problem. Spend zero time pestering strangers at networking events for leads.
  7. You will never be one Facebook Live ‘event’ or online course away from marketing success. Ever.
  8. Always over deliver. Take time to focus on being of as much value as you can be. You can’t do this if you spend too much of your time, producing content for your newsletter, Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube and a podcast. Choose one or two channels. And put your time and energy into being useful or helpful in those areas.

Words matter

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Ogilvy marketing quote

They matter because your prospective clients aren’t mind readers. And they’re in a hurry. So, they need you to get to the point.

Think about it. There’s a world of difference, between measurable outcomes and superb results. Wasting 50 grand of your client’s money is a very measurable outcome – but it’s not a superb result! However, we see vague nonsense like that in marketing messages every day.

The key is to aim for clarity and impact. And only use as many words as necessary. (I used fewer than 90 words here).