Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Social media marketing – A more social approach

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Some people have asked me, why I place so much emphasis on building a community rather than a following.  Yesterday, within a 30 minute period, I received 2 emails from people enquiring about my services.  I believe the way these emails begin, (see excerpt below), demonstrates the marketing value of community.

Email 1:
“Dear Jim,
You don’t know me, but I feel I know you very well through reading your blog for some time now.”

Email 2:
“Hey Jim,
I read your marketing blog and although we have never met I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

Clearly, in both cases the person enquiring felt comfortable writing to me.  There was no barrier in the way – I was approachable.  Equally, in both cases, the writer said that they felt like they knew me.

This is REALLY important!

Why?

Because one of the reasons so many business owners and marketers fail to transfer their online networks and social media activity into bankable results, is that they place too much distance between themselves and the people they network with.  Even if they do try and build a community, it’s a community that has them positioned as the leader, rather than a host.

I’ve written about the host approach to social media before.  Here’s a brief overview.

Social media hosts

For the past few years, business owners and marketers have been told to build a following or tribe and then market to them.  I’ve always been uncomfortable with that.  So, I use a very different approach, which is based on the idea of a level playing field, where everyone is equal – No tribal leaders.

Think of the host at a really enjoyable party.  He or she greets guests when they arrive and spends the evening mixing with everyone and making sure that a great time is had by all.  The host of the party is not the leader, but rather an attendee; with a responsibility to ensure that everyone has the best experience possible.  They are eating, drinking and dancing alongside you.  They are talking with you and laughing with you.  When you leave the party, you leave with a great, positive feeling.  My approach to social media marketing, is based on that same host model.

The pay off?

The pay off for the kind of approach I advocate, was demonstrated in those 2 emails from yesterday.  By developing a network of people around your work, who feel that they know you and that you are approachable, you also build a deep and wide prospective client pool.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on the whole idea of social media rock stars.  Is it time for a more social approach to relationship building?

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

How to set sales targets and achieve them!

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hit sales targets, set sales targets, reach sales targets

I have a question for you today: Are you on track to reach your sales targets?

Don’t worry if you just answered “no” to that question, because I am going to give you some ideas and a stack of free resources, to help you hit your sales targets.

I’m also going to give you a simple 5 step guide, to show you how to set your sales targets in a way that’s easy to manage and achieve!

OK, there are 3 possible answers to my opening question:

  1. Yes.
  2. No.
  3. Sales targets?  What sales targets?

Sales targets: If you are on track

If you are currently on track to reach your sales targets, keep on moving forward.  Just make sure you don’t allow complacency to rob you of a great year’s results.  Examine what you have been doing and look for the most effective elements of your marketing, as well as any elements that have underperformed.

Seek to improve your weaker areas and refine your stronger areas.  Nothing happens in business by chance, so be sure to research where your successes have come from, so you can build on them in the 2nd half of the year.

Oh, and WELL DONE!

Sales targets: If you are off track

If you are currently off track, this is a fantastic time to review your marketing strategy and get yourself on track.  Make a list of every marketing activity you are using as part of your overall marketing strategy and examine how well or how poorly they have been performing for you.

If you are currently using certain types of marketing simply because you see others using it or because it feels comfortable, STOP!

You need to identify the correct marketing mix for you and your business, based on your sales targets, your resources and what you want to achieve. Here are 180 marketing and business development ideas to help you.

Here’s a list of 32 questions, to help you get your marketing and business development back on track.  Oh, and if you have not yet discovered the right marketing for you, here is a list of my top marketing tips.

Sales targets: What sales targets?

Most small business owners don’t have a process in place, to set and then track their sales targets.  It’s easy to see why, when you consider that the whole process seems so complicated.  This makes it hard to focus and to he honest, a little daunting too.  The good news is that it’s easy to set realistic, easy to follow sales targets.

The key, is for you to know how many sales you should be making each month or each week, in order to meet your annual turnover and profit goals.  By chunking the annual number down into monthly or weekly targets, it’s far easier and less daunting to keep on top of the figures.

Here’s a simple, easy to follow way to discover what your sales targets should be, in weekly or monthly chunks.

  1. List your turnover / revenue targets for the next 12 months.  We need to know what this figure is, in order to know how many sales you should be making each year.
  2. Now, list how many “average” sales you would need to make over the next 12 months, in order to achieve the above figures.  Write this number down.
  3. To get an approximate idea what your “average” sale value is, list (for example) the value of your last 20 sales, and then divide that number by 20.  This is only an approximate figure, but it will give you something to work with and is usually pretty accurate.
  4. Now, divide the number you wrote down in step 2, by 12.  This will give you a monthly sales target.
  5. If you want to work on weekly targets, (this suits some business types better than others), simply divide the annual number of sales by 52.

The great news is that no matter how things are right now, you can improve your sales and not only reach your annual targets, but blow the lid off them!

Whatever you do, make sure that if you are off target and not enjoying the success your hard work deserves, that you make the changes required.  Things will not “just get better” by themselves.  For better results, you need to be making better marketing decisions.

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

Are you getting bankable results from your blog?

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Fact: Very few small business owners who blog, generate anything like the results they could.

Why?

This is the easiest question I have ever answered here! The reason so few bloggers attract the volume of sales, leads or enquiries they should, is that they copy what they see other bloggers doing.

Here’s what I see all day every day:  I see bloggers writing a valuable, correctly optimized blog post, before heading off to their preferred social networking sites to try and get the post noticed.  Sound familiar?  If it does, I hope it’s not because you are using that same approach.  If you are, you are missing the most important elements – those rare, additional steps that make all the difference and get people spending money with you!

I was explaining this to a new client of mine yesterday afternoon.  She’s intelligent, charismatic and a specialist in her profession.  However, like many specialists who use blogging as part of their marketing mix, she had been using the same approach that I outlined above – which failed her (which is why she hired me.)

An hour into our meeting, I showed her what’s possible when you use the right approach.  I quickly checked the email account, which gets all the enquiries generated from this blog.  In that hour alone, there had been 3 emails, including an enquiry for my services.  By the end of business yesterday, that enquiry became a confirmed, new client and I’m really looking forward to helping them achieve bankable results too.  I’m not telling you that to impress you, but to impress upon you just what’s possible, when you use the correct strategy.

Of course, there are 2 major problems with trying to achieve success, by copying what you see others doing.

  1. You might be copying what does not work.  It’s easy to see a blog with lots of comments or lots of retweets / facebook “likes” etc – and assume this means the blog is also commercially successful.  It doesn’t!All those measurements show you is that there are people who commented there or retweeted the post.It tells you zero about how commercially effective that blog is at generating new business for it’s owner.  Many of my clients come to me with large social networks and active blogs that they have worked really hard on, with nothing to show for it.  You know what?  People will have been copying THEIR approach too, because it looked successful from the outside!
  2. Not only may you be copying what does not work, but even if you found a blog that was doing things right, the untrained eye will miss it completely.That’s because the many differences between a blog that’s an income generating machine and one that’s not, are extremely subtle.For example, I don’t know much about golf, so when I see a golfer hitting a golf ball, that’s all I see.  When a professional golfer sees that same guy hitting that same ball, they can identify exactly what’s happening – what’s failing, what needs removing and what needs to be added to the golfer’s swing etc.

When it comes to marketing, a blog is like any other tool.  If used correctly, it can easily become your best source of new, targeted business.  However, just like every other marketing tool, only a tiny fraction of small business owners use blogs correctly, for what they want to achieve.

The rest just dabble and as a result, it costs them a fortune in lost business and YEARS in wasted time.

In short, if you want to enjoy better results you need a better strategy.  You need an effective strategy that’s been developed for; you, your business, your industry, your unique resources and what you want to achieve.  Whatever you elect to do, if you are not currently getting the regular stream of new business from your blog that you deserve, please change course.

As I have said here many times before; if you are rowing your boat in the wrong direction, no matter how hard you row, you will simply end up further and further away from where you want to be.  You deserve far better than that!

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

4 Secrets of the world’s most successful businesses!

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Thankfully, we don’t have to guess or wonder what it takes to be successful in business. The answers are in the stories behind every successful businessperson, who has been kind enough to share them.

Here are 4 things I have seen over and over again, in every successful businessperson I have ever studied:

1. Expert advice

Successful businesspeople invest in expert advice. As a result, they make better decisions and take the right actions, for what they need to achieve. Unsuccessful businesspeople do the opposite. They try and do too much themselves and immediately lose ground to their successfully guided competitors. They literally set themselves up to fail, under the misguided belief they are actually saving money.

The stock reply whenever I speak with someone, who refuses to pay for specialist help, is that they can’t afford it. The belief here, is that every small business, other than theirs, has access to a stack of money. The reality is very, very different.

It’s about priorities!

I spoke with a guy recently, who “can’t afford” a professionally designed logo – yet he “can afford” $4 a day (over $1,200 a year) on a “grande” cappuccino.

I’ve discussed this bizarre approach to business with scores of people over the years and the general consensus, is that this is what happens when someone without a business mindset, decides to start a business. These guys focus on loss, so they lose. Successful people focus on achievement, so they achieve.

2. Comfort zones

All business owners will tell you that they work hard, and most of them do (really hard.) However, hard work is not the key to success. If it were, our grandparents would have been millionaires!

Here’s where the difference is: Successful businesspeople work hard doing what needs to be done, whilst their less successful counterparts work hard doing what’s most comfortable. Successful business owners love what they do, but realise that they often need to break out of their comfort zones if they want their business to grow.

Less successful business owners only really leave their comfort zones, when pushed by external factors – like the loss of a major client or another problem that forces them to s-t-r-e-t-c-h. As a result of this unwillingness to grow, their business reaches a certain point and stays there, spinning it’s wheels; until they retire, go broke or learn how to take action!

3. Association

As human beings, we are all of equal value. However, in business, we each have a value; based on what we bring to the marketplace. This is why some hard working people earn minimum wage and others work the same number of hours and earn 7 figures every year.

Here’s what we know about people who are commercially successful. We know that they associate with other, commercially successful people. This is because they understand the  massive power of association. As my friend Michael told me, when I was starting out in marketing, 25 years ago:

Jim, hang around with enough people who are going nowhere and one day, everything they have will be yours!

You should always be aware of the impact your associates are having on you and your happiness / success. Why? Because everything we come into contact with has an impact on us, either positive or negative. When it comes to our associates, especially those with whom we habitually associate, it pays to ask ourselves some questions about the impact they are having on us. For example:

  • What have they got you reading?
  • What have they got you saying?
  • What have they got watching and which other voices do they have you listening to?
  • What have they got you believing?

Even well intentioned associates can knock us off course, without meaning to. It’s up to us, to filter out the negative influences and spend more time around those who help us be happier and more successful.

4. Learning

The most successful businesspeople I know, are lifelong learners. I don’t mean they just read books, buy programs or attend seminars / training events. I mean they learn from life. They know that if they try something and it doesn’t work, they need to learn from it and move forward. They see a bad result simply as valuable feedback. This attitude means they become better decision makers and action takers, because their “mistakes” are of value to them.

Now, compare that approach, to the approach used by people whose businesses spin their wheels. These guys keep repeating the same errors. It’s why they make so little progress.

Remember: If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!

A common example I see in my profession, is when business owners waste years, trying to improve their marketing by doing it themselves. They grab information from the Internet / newsletters etc – NONE of which has been developed for them, their business or their skills or resources. This actually costs them massively more in both time and money, BUT it’s comfortable and as said in the previous section, they love being comfortable above everything else.

So, you want more enquiries from your blog?

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If you want more sales leads or enquiries from your blog, the following tips may be just what you are looking for!  What I am about to share with you, is based on years worth of testing and measuring feedback. (I’m too good to you!)

Many business bloggers find that they put a great deal of time and energy into writing great blog posts, but they get very few sales leads or enquiries for all that work.  I get email enquiries all day, every day of the year via this blog and would like to share some of my secrets with you.

So, here they are!

Stop placing so many barriers in the way

Most sites use some kind of a form, in order for people to contact them.  Although many people like putting these forms on their blogs or websites, I’ve tested and measured the impact of forms, as opposed to just offering my email address and the results show (every time) that forms reduce the number of enquiries I get.

Why?

Forms generate a number of additional barriers, between you and your readers.  We know, for example, that people do not like giving too much personal information away on sites.  Some worry that their details will be sold on or shared with marketers.  They also know that those forms are used by people who sell data, because forms collects people’s data in a format that’s database friendly – ready for selling.

Then, to make prospective customers even less likely to contact them, many bloggers insist that the person using their form includes; their full name, email address, company name, phone number, location etc, etc.  If you really must use a form on your site, just ask for their email address and name.  Each additional piece of data you insist on, makes them less likely to contact you.

Also, make sure that you CLEARLY state that you will not share or sell their details to anyone.

By the way – Almost everyone who emails me after visiting this blog, includes their full contact details, as part of their email signature file or simply to show they are serious about connecting with me.

If you want people to approach you, be approachable

Some bloggers are very smart and really know their subject, but they come across as distant or hard to approach.  Some are confrontational in their posts and in their comments.  Others write in a way, which distances them from their readers.

In my experience, the best bloggers are like a host at a party.  They mix with (and look after) everyone.  They want people to have a good time and so they work hard to create a great experience.  The party host approach is what I aspire to.  Friendly, professional and approachable.  In my opinion, you should try to make people feel as comfortable about contacting you as possible.  Aim to make them feel like they already know you.

Ask people to get in touch, but only at the right time

If you want people to get in touch, remember to ask – but ask at the right time.  For example, if you look at the bottom of this post, you will see a box that asks people, who found this post useful, to think how much better their marketing results would be, if I was working with them.  If they click the link, it takes them to this page, which makes it super-easy to find out what I do AND get in touch with me.

By putting that box right at the bottom of every post, I get my marketing message in front of people at the exact time, when they are thinking how useful my information is.

This is exactly when you should give a call to action – when people are ready!

Build trust.  Don’t hide behind an email address

Too many legitimate business bloggers, lose the trust of their readers by failing to give their full contact details.  They hide behind an email address.  We’ve all heard people say that they liked the look of a provider, but felt it odd that they worked behind an email address, rather than a “real” address.  This is why I believe it’s a good idea to show people you are totally open.

If you look at my contact page, it has everything you need to get in touch with me, from my full postal address and office phone number, to my email address and Twitter account.  This shows people I am out there, in the open, nothing to hide, a “real” business.

Content marketing: What is it and how does it work?

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This is a quick post about content marketing and how to get great results from it.

Content marketing

Millions of small business owners (including me) use content marketing as a way to market their services.  They produce content for; newsletters, blog posts, articles, audio, video, social media sites etc.  The idea is that their content will engage prospective clients or customers and generate enquiries sales and also position them as an expert in their field.  Make no mistake, content marketing is extremely powerful when used correctly.

However, as many small business owners discover, there’s an enormous difference between producing content and producing content that actually helps them grow their business.

In marketing, we know that the messages that resonate with us most powerfully are those that make us think or capture our imagination in some way.  Generic messages do the exact opposite.  They pass us by, undetected.  They wash over us, because they’re predictable.  Yet these generic messages are the stock-in-trade of most of the content marketing pieces we see each day from small businesses.

Why?

I believe one of the reasons, is that it feels a lot “safer” to toe the line, follow what the crowd are saying and just blend into the background.  It takes courage for a blogger, for example, to offer their unique perspective on a topic or allow their personality to shine through their work.  After all, what if they are wrong?  What if their point of view generates negative comments?  It would surely be the end of their world as they know it!  So, rather than risk ruffling too many feathers, they opt to rehash generic ideas, which feel safer, because most people seem to agree with them.

Here’s the problem with that approach: It acts like camouflage and stops you getting the visibility you need!

To be visible, we first need to have something to say, which is worth listening to and sharing.  People only pass on content to their friends or network, if they find it useful or interesting and believe that others will too.  In short, people share the good stuff!  The most successful content marketers never seek a full consensus.  They just try hard and deliver content, which will be as valuable as possible to their target market.

Some important content marketing questions

  1. Who am I writing to? You need to know your target audience and focus your content exclusively on what they will find value in.
  2. Why am I writing to them? You need to know your desired outcome or outcomes, so that you can check if you are on course or not.  You can’t manage, what you can’t measure.
  3. Does my content showcase my expertise? Give genuinely useful information to your readers for free (and do it with a smile)!  Don’t send a watered-down version of your expertise into the marketplace.  Why?  Because how on earth are your readers supposed to know that you are any good, if all they see is a half-assed, diluted version of how great you are?I give away tons of free information on this blog, which encourages my readers to share my work with their friends.  As a result, I get business enquiries every day, from people who want to work with me.  This post, for example, gives links to over 140 marketing tips and ideas.

So, what are your content marketing tips or experiences?

Whether you are new to content marketing or a seasoned campaigner, it would be great to hear your feedback.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!