Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

It’s easy. Really easy

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marketing easy

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It’s easy to have a rigid customer service policy. Easier than taking personal care of your clients and dedicating yourself to service excellence.

It’s easy to settle for less from your business. Easier than doing what’s actually required to build a thriving business.

It’s easy to do what’s expected of you. Easier than exceeding expectations and giving people a positive and memorable experience to share with their friends.

It’s easy to automate your social media accounts. Easier than using them to build connections and interact with people.

It’s easy to lower your fees. Easier than professionally marketing your business, so you attract the right clients.

Yes it’s easy. Really easy.

But I’m pretty sure ‘taking it easy’ and being instantly forgettable was never the goal of your business. Worth remembering, the next time you suspect you are doing what’s easy, rather than doing what’s required.

No, the customer is NOT always right

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marketing, client wrong

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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.

That’s because the customer is often wrong.

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.

Reduction: How to do less and achieve more

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marketing more less

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One of the best kept secrets in business, is something I call reduction. It’s a strategy I share with my clients and today, I’m going to share some of it with you.

Less can be more

Ineffective business owners strive to do more and more. They focus on productivity hacks, growth hacks, life hacks and short-cuts. As an unavoidable result, they become increasingly busy, increasingly stressed, increasingly frustrated and increasingly disappointed.

Thankfully, there’s a smarter way forward.

The most effective business owners use a very different approach. They’ve discovered that the biggest wins come from doing fewer things. Less is more.

For example:

  • Fewer unfinished projects, equals more clarity.
  • Fewer social media interruptions, equals more focus.
  • Fewer repeated errors, equals more progress.
  • Fewer dodged decisions, equals more respect.
  • Fewer missed deadlines, equals more trust.
  • Fewer hours wasted, equals more productivity.
  • Fewer angry words, equals more happiness.
  • Fewer broken promises, equals more belief.
  • And fewer excuses, equals more achievement.

If you find yourself stressed, working long hours and making too little progress, don’t add even more to your workload. All it will do is create additional stress.

Instead, focus on reduction. Because with the right strategy, less can be more. So much more.

12 Urgent and important things to focus on before the New Year

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marketing targets 2020, 2020 goals

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In no particular order.

  1. Have you considered firing your worst clients? The time wasted on bad clients can then be invested in delighting your best clients even more.
  2. Have you looked at opening your services up to a global audience? If not, now is a good time to consider it. That’s because proximity is no longer geographical for many service providers. For example, my 3 newest clients are based on 3 different continents. This will help.
  3. What are the biggest hurdles to your success right now, and how do you plan to remove them? A business problem can only persist with your consent… passive or active.
  4. What was your biggest setback in 2019 and what can you learn from it? Those who don’t learn from past mistakes tend to repeat them.
  5. How can you reduce or eliminate the feeling of risk that’s associated with hiring you or buying from you?
  6. What’s the biggest opportunity for your prospective clients in 2020 and how will you help them benefit from it?
  7. Is your marketing useful or does it read like a sales pitch? People hate being sold to. This will help.
  8. If 2019 was like a rerun of 2018, how long will you wait in 2020, before you make the improvements required?
  9. Have you considered offering a premium version of your services? There’s an extremely profitable segment of every marketplace, who are eager to pay more for ‘that certain extra’. This will help.
  10. If you stopped trading tomorrow, how tricky would it be for people to find a suitable replacement? Your task is to be as close to irreplaceable as possible.
  11. Does your marketing inspire people to hire you or buy from you? If not, you’re leaving money on the table. That’s unsustainable.
  12. Is your business providing you with the lifestyle you want? If not you will either need to lower your expectations or work on a plan to improve your financial situation. I recommend the latter. Rekindle that motivation you had when you started your business. And stop settling for less.

Exciting times ahead

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marketing finish

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Their targets are in place.

Their deadlines are set.

Their research is done.

And so they start doing the work.

Exciting times ahead!

Well, maybe

That’s because anyone can get started on a project. And pretty-much EVERYONE does! After all, it’s easy. However, despite so many business owners starting these inspiring projects, as we know, very few achieve meaningful success.

Of course, that’s because getting started is easy and success doesn’t come to those who start.

No.

Success comes to those who start… and then.

I regularly speak with business owners, who are excited about a great, new idea they have. I speak with them 6 months later and they’re still excited. Only this time it’s a different, new idea.

Their previous idea was dropped, as their initial excitement was replaced with the reality of the work required, to bring their idea to fruition. So now they’re excited about their new… new idea. And in 6 months time it will be their new, new, new idea that has their attention.

Here’s the thing: The clock is ticking. And because they never complete what they started, their butt is still on the start line. Years are passing by. With little meaningful progress.

What’s the lesson for us here?

Before you start a business project, I recommend you make a commitment. A commitment to do whatever is required to cross the finish line. A commitment to embrace the cold light of day, which comes after the initial hoopla has stopped.

Because ultimately my friend, our success is determined by the things we start, stick with and finish. Not the number of new things we start.

An extremely sad story, which every business owner needs to read

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marketing, lessons learning

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Today, I have an extremely sad story for you, which explains why we need to continuously seek to improve. It contains a powerful nugget of essential information, which all of us can benefit from.

I’d like to start with a question: What lessons have you learned from the past year, which you can invest in the year ahead?

This is a topic, which business owners really, REALLY struggle with. They start out in business keen to learn. They read the books. They take notes. They review their decision making, looking for ways to improve.

Then… after a few years they find they’ve become set in their ways. Sure, the occasional harsh lesson hits them just hard enough, to force them to re-evaluate. But they pretty-much go from year to year, getting a year older, but without gathering a year’s worth of experience.

They almost relive a version of the same old year, over and over again.

Here’s why this matters.

A powerful, extremely sad lesson

I recall speaking with 2 business owners last summer. One of them was in her early thirties and had been in business for 6 years. The other was in his sixties and had been in business for decades.

The business owner with the 6 year old business was thriving and hired me in order to help her reach her exciting growth plans. The other business owner was, in his own words, “too broke to retire” and needed help. After speaking with them, the young business owner clearly had 6 solid years of business experience. And the other had maybe 3 years of experience, with him admitting to making the same mistakes year after year, after year…

The guy who should have been extremely experienced, confessed to being “a creature of habit”. He had certain beliefs about business, which he refused to question. Many of which were fatally flawed. Here’s one of the examples I recall. If a prospective client didn’t immediately see the value of his service, he’d take it personally as a rejection, feel hurt and refuse to follow-up. As he approached retirement with just a year’s worth of living expenses to rely on, he was forced to “humble himself” and follow-up prospective clients, who’d failed to reply to his proposals.

He found around a third of them became clients. They just needed questions answered and concerns addressed. He estimates his previous attitude to following-up lost him millions of dollars. And he’s right.

Only after decades of wasted opportunity and an impending financial disaster, did this likeable guy start learning again. He’s making real progress now, but he’s struggling mightily with the knowledge of what he and his family have missed out on, needlessly.

When I speak with entrepreneurs about the importance of gaining experience and learning, I share the following with them.

Imagine a door, which has a combination lock. If you use the correct 10 number combination, the door will open for you. If I use the correct combination it will also open for me. That’s because the door doesn’t care. Press the correct numbers in the right order and you’re in!

Business success is the same. Because success doesn’t care.

You can read the full article here: Success Doesn’t Care.

In business, if you do the right combination of things correctly, you’ll succeed. Conversely, no matter how nice you are, how honest you are, how hard you toil, the wrong combination still can’t work.