There’s no doubt that these are worrying times.

There’s equally no doubt that this scenario is an incubator for opportunities to flourish.

Allow me to explain.

We’re looking at 2021 with no clear idea about what impact COVID-19 will have. None of us know when things will return to normal.

Perhaps just as worrying, is that things are almost certainly going to be very different from before, when they return to normal.

So even ‘normal’ will look different, whenever it arrives.

Here’s the thing: When faced with confusion, the tendency is to worry. To hunker down until things go back the way they were. That’s not going to happen. The past truly is the past.

This means that business owners waiting for the old, familiar ways to return before planning what to do, have no end point. No defining date to bounce back stronger. So they’ll drift, which is a lousy idea because you can’t drift your way to success or even survival.

Two points about this confusion and worry

Firstly, as business owners we need to learn to dance with the confusion. Move with the challenges. Live with the changing direction of our marketplace. This means planning for the super short-term as well as the medium and long-term. Checking the numbers once a month is like running blind. Keeping our finger on the pulse is essential.

Secondly, as business owners we have to be very aware that this same confusion and nervousness is impacting everyone else. Our clients and customers are confused. So are our prospective clients and customers. Their decision making is likely to be a lot less predictable than it used to be. We need to keep this in mind, as contracts come up for renewal. We also need to acknowledge that our marketing has to adjust (and adjust and adjust) to the evolving situation, or we’ll become irrelevant.

Flourishing

Every business challenge creates an incubator for opportunities to flourish. Before calling bullshit, take those two points I just mentioned.

• One business owner will see them as 100% negative.
• Another will identify (at least) a dozen opportunities to improve their business and own their competitors.

What makes this a perfect storm to flourish, is that the vast majority of business owners are focused on the gloom. This static majority wait and hope, leaving their marketplace wide open to the motivated and agile minority.

• Interestingly, both types of business owner are equally fearful.
• All that changes is the reaction they choose when faced with fear. Their response.

Fear either inspires us to respond with positive action, or causes us to respond by hunkering down and doing nothing. It’s where the phrase ‘scared stiff’ comes from.

The key here is that both responses are a choice we make. And our choice is a critically important factor in our results over the coming months and years.

In short, look for the opportunities. If you can’t see them, find someone who knows where to look. Adapt and adjust as required. If you don’t know how, find someone who does.

Almost every small business owner is wasting their time and money on the wrong kind of marketing.

Here’s why you’re probably making the same mistake, plus an example of what happens, when you switch to the right kind of marketing.

The wrong kind of marketing

I’m referring to the obvious stuff that small business owners think of, when they consider marketing.

This includes the things they do when business is quiet and they have to do SOMETHING. The things that look easy enough for them to try. The things they copy from their competitors. The predictable, uninspiring messages they put on their websites, newsletters and social media accounts. In short: the obvious things that small business owners dabble with.

That’s not how you grow a business. No. That’s running blind, hoping you’ll get lucky. And it’s why the majority of small businesses go broke.

The right kind of marketing

I’m referring to creative marketing. You already know what creative marketing looks like. It’s what 100% of successful businesses do; from the expanding small businesses in your marketplace, to the consultants who work from home yet service international brands and earn a fortune. It’s also what the world’s fastest-growing brands do and how they stay ahead.

Creative marketing is not only spectacularly effective, it’s rare among small (and medium-sized) businesses. Really rare. This is one of the reasons it’s so powerful, compared to the dabbling bullshit I mentioned earlier.

Here are just a handful of reasons why creative marketing is so powerful.

• It’s hard to copy, which means it carries on working.
• It requires little or zero money, so your competitors can’t out-spend you (think about that for a moment).
• It stands out, so you get noticed.
• It helps you differentiate your business, products or services, so you never have to sell based on prices / fees or work with low value clients.
• It inspires your prospective clients to take action.
• It gets shared. This increases the reach of your marketing.
• It’s memorable. Because small business marketing is useless, creative marketing finds it easy to make a positive, memorable impact.
• It touches people in a way that never happens with uncreative marketing.

Still not convinced?

I’d like to tell you about Sara.

What creative marketing can do

Sara emailed me before the pandemic and invited me to lunch. She’s semi-retired now, but I mentored her a while ago and we’ve been great friends ever since. She now knows how to creatively build an extremely profitable business, in any sector or industry. She’d previously been a very good business consultant, but always struggled to get the flow of high quality clients she needed. Sara went on to build an amazing business and today invests in small and medium-sized businesses.

Why am I telling you this?

Over lunch, Sara told me that 2 and a half years ago she’d invested in a small, independent bakery. The bakery was already employing great people, already using premium quality ingredients and already making delicious food. BUT too few of the right kind of customers knew it was there, as they’d been using typical, small business marketing.

Sara spotted an opportunity and because she knew the owners, she offered them a price for their business. They eagerly accepted, especially as Sara promised she’d employ the same team to run it. (And they were going broke).

I asked Sara how the bakery was doing. She said she’s increased the turnover by almost 1100% and it’s massively more profitable, too.

One thousand, one hundred percent.

Massively higher profits.

Remember: She kept the same team, the same levels of quality, the same delicious food. Her only change was to switch from typical small business marketing, to creative marketing.

This probably goes without saying

But I’ll say it anyway.

If you’re currently dabbling with the usual type of ineffective, small business marketing, it’s time to switch.

Switch to a deliberate, creativity-driven approach. It’s what 100% of my work is based on, both with my clients and my own business.

Punch above your weight, by creatively gaining the attention, trust and patronage of your marketplace (ahead of your competitors). Look to the future with excitement, not apprehension, because your creativity-driven approach works perfectly in every economy, location and industry.

And it has never been more effective, than it is right now.

Today I want to make an important plea to you. I want you to focus like a laser on making your business absolutely thrive over the next 12-months.

Yes, I know it’s 2020.

Yes, I’m very aware of the challenges.

I am also aware of the importance of looking to your future with the overriding goal of absolutely thriving.

When the marketplace is in turmoil, business owners set one of the following two broad targets. They either choose to survive (the vast majority) or they choose to thrive (a tiny minority).

We must choose our target wisely.

• Choosing to survive means you may just make it, if you achieve the target.
• Choosing to thrive means you’ll have an exceptional year, if you achieve the target.
• If you fail the target of survival, even by 1%, by default you don’t survive.
• If you fail the target of thriving, even by 25%, you can still have a better-than-average or average year.

Your target determines your focus. It sets the stage for the plans you make and the decisions you take. It shapes the conversations you have. It guides the opportunities you attract (and those you repel).

Your target also determines how you feel and how you make others feel about you and your business. It builds or erodes confidence.

• Survival mode is a source of anxiety. When we speak with an anxious business owner, we sense their worry and stress. We feel apprehensive about them and apprehension turns prospective customers away.
• Thrive mode is a source of excitement. When we speak with an excited business owner, we sense their energy and motivation. We feel positive about them. This is commercial gold dust. Especially today.

Given this, we all have a decision to make.

We can’t change the duration of the pandemic, or the even longer duration of the economic carnage it leaves us with. But we can choose the target we focus on.

And as I have seen with my 2020 client intake, it is possible to absolutely thrive.

The iPhone 12 was announced by Apple yesterday.

With the launch, came an extremely valuable marketing lesson.

The lesson?

Apple knows that just a tiny percentage of people who buy the new iPhone, actually need a new iPhone. Their current phone works perfectly fine for everything they need.

The vast majority buy a new iPhone, because they want to feel better. And they hope that buying a new iPhone is the answer.

The world’s most valuable company knows that people make purchasing decisions based on feelings, not logic. However, most small business owners market their business based on logic, not feelings.

And that’s a really, really bad idea.

Instead…

As a business owner, you need to do everything possible to magnify the positive feelings associated with buying your products or services. You need to let people know how enjoyable it is working with you. You need to explain how happy they’ll feel, owning your (whatever). This means fewer statistics and graphs, but more emphasis on positive emotions.

So ease up on the logic. Focus way more on feelings.

Because emotion drives motion (action).

And people need to take action, to buy from you or hire you.

Without knowing it, many business owners are engaged in a dangerous race to the bottom. In today’s post, I explain why this is almost always a terrible strategy for business owners. I also share some proven advice on how to avoid it happening to you.

Let’s go.

Race to the bottom: What does it mean?

In marketing, we tend to use the term to refer to making sales or winning new clients, based on being the cheapest option. This is most common among commodity businesses. However, the current economy is seeing a massive surge in price cutting and fee reductions. The ‘winner’ of the race to the bottom is the business that’s the cheapest / lowest priced at that time.

Some big businesses use their financial muscle to work successfully with low prices (or fees). Their buying power means that they have deals available to them, which smaller businesses simply can’t access. This allows larger businesses to compete in your marketplace, profitably, with extremely low prices.

However, small and medium-sized business owners tend to just lower their prices, as a way to make more sales or attract more clients. They then find their competitors do the same.

And the race to the bottom begins.

The prize?

The winner gets, wait for it… the privilege of building a business on a dangerous foundation of customers, who will leave them the moment a cheaper provider comes along.

It’s a high risk, low return strategy. It requires you to constantly look for ways to lower your overhead, cut corners and speed things up. All this, in an effort to attract the least loyal profile of customers in the world: Those who switch from provider to provider, looking for the lowest prices.

Why is such a high risk, low return strategy so popular with small business owners?

Simple.

They see it as an easy way to attract more customers or make more sales. However, a look at the medium and longer term picture shows why this usually goes horribly wrong.

Here’s what I’ve seen small business owners do over and over again.

Bob’s race to the bottom

Let’s take Bob the business owner as an example.

• Bob decides to lower his prices by 10%. He soon notices a slightly better sales conversion rate.
• So, he lowers prices by another 5%. And it improves sales even more.
• Some of Bob’s competitors decide to do the same.
• The race to the bottom is now on!
• Bob then needs to lower his prices by another (whatever)%, because his competitors are charging the same low prices as him. Bob’s prices are now rock bottom or very close to rock bottom.
• Bob continues to make some sales, BUT with very, very little profit.
• At this point, it’s a case of waiting for one of the following common scenarios.
• Scenario one: A well-funded competitor decides to sell at a loss for 6 / 12 months (to gain market share), Bob then has to try and survive on fewer and fewer low-profit sales. This is HUGE right now, as financially strong small business owners seek to crush their competitors during the pandemic.
• Scenario two: Bob’s overhead increases unexpectedly and he is forced to start increasing his prices, all those price sensitive customers he raced to win will now look for the NEW, cheapest provider.

It’s easy to attract customers by reducing your prices. However, it’s unsustainable. So, if this is something you are considering, please think again my friend. Consider the medium and longer-term consequences of winning the race to the bottom.

The marketplace we serve has changed.

What is very clear now, is that the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed how our clients, customers and marketplace think. And we need to adapt our services and marketing accordingly, or slowly cease to be relevant to their new wants and needs.

Here are some of the most common changes.

• It’s changing their personal life. People are worried about elderly relatives, children, their jobs and their futures. They’re also unable to meet family and friends face-to-face. Some have unexpected, serious financial concerns. Others are dealing with unprecedented levels of stress.
• It’s changing their work life. Many people (and entire departments) now work from home. Others are unable to, and have the added worry of increased exposure to the virus. The whole dynamic of work has changed.
• It’s changing their company budgets. Some areas are no longer being invested in, whilst others are getting bumper investment.
• It’s changing their outlook. Things that people used to take for granted are now exceptionally important. And many of the things they thought were important aren’t important at all.
• It’s changing their comfort levels. Many who were previously of a generally happy persuasion, are now eagerly seeking comfort. And many who were previously assured, are now seeking assurance.

Everyone in business needs to factor these enormous changes into their planning. We need to review our products or services and either make them relevant to the landscape or replace them with relevant alternatives. With most economists now expecting things to remain volatile for at least the next 6 months, it’s not viable to just wait until our pre-pandemic plans are relevant again.

It’s also really important to review our marketing messages. What motivated our prospects this time last year, could have the opposite impact today. If it speaks to a carefree time, where your prospective customers were relatively confident about what the future held for them, it will be massively less effective today and possibly, fully ineffective soon.

Our world has changed. Our lives have changed. Our marketplace has changed. Our planning needs to reflect this.

Why do we start a business?

• It provides us with interesting puzzles to solve, which we find extremely compelling.
• We’re very well rewarded financially, allowing us to enjoy the lifestyle we want.
• We get to spend every day, working with wonderful clients or customers.
• Our working environment is a hive of creativity, fun and productivity.
• And it goes without saying that our plans for the future energize us.

Well, that’s how it should be

When we decide to start a business, we give ourselves a blank canvas. We get to choose the kind of work we do, the prices we charge, the place we work from and the clients we work with. In short, we construct every single element of our business, from the ground up.

Presented with this stunning opportunity, it’s a fact that most business owners end up seriously off-course.

This happens for a reason. Business owners are not stupid!

None of them set out to struggle or spin their wheels. Instead, they very slowly drift off course. It’s subtle. Little by little. Day by day. Until after a number of years, the business is not what its owner wants it to be.

That’s why it’s worth reminding yourself that your business can be whatever you decide you want it to be.

Those aren’t just words!

You can choose to work on rewarding projects, for great customers who value you. Or you can choose not to. You can choose to create compelling, motivating plans for your business, which energize you. Or you can choose not to.

So, how do you turn things around?

And what must you do, to finally own the business you’ve always wanted?

It starts with belief… and then a decision

You need to believe (on an intellectual and emotional level) that you deserve a better business, free from whatever limitations you now face. That’s because after a while, many business owners find themselves settling for less than they deserve. Most commonly, I find they lower their lifestyle goals, to accommodate the limitations of their business. You need to believe that by doing the right things correctly, you can transform your business into a spectacularly rewarding enterprise, on every level.

Then you need to decide.

You need to decide to do what’s required.

It means deciding to move from your current comfort zone, and make yourself comfortable in a kinder zone. A zone that’s more rewarding. A zone that provides for your needs and your wants. A zone that’s REALLY comfortable.

Is it worth it? Yes. Absolutely. One hundred percent!

How can I be so certain?

Simple.

I work every day with business owners who have the belief and made the decision. They decide where they want their business to be. We then look at their current position, and work together to make it happen. And the improvement, not only within their businesses, but their lives as a whole, is breathtaking.

You deserve the same, my friend.

Being there is extremely important. That’s because it says something remarkable about you. And as such, it has a huge impact on the way people feel about you.

Being there is especially important:

• When people are relying on you to be there.
• When people need your help, your understanding or your support.
• When people know it would be easier for you not to be there.
• When people can see you’re going the extra mile.
• When people are in need of your leadership. This has never been more important, than in 2020.
• And when you not only show up, but show up on time and with the right attitude.

It’s easy to make promises. It’s easy to agree deadlines. It’s easy to tell people that they can rely on you.

Ultimately, it’s what you do that matters.

By being there when people are relying on you and when they need you, you tell them a great deal, without saying a word:

• You give clients (or customers) confirmation that they were right to trust you.
• You show clients and prospective clients what they can expect from you in the future.
• You earn and re-earn a reputation for reliability.
• You make yourself and your business, super-easy for people to recommend to their friends.
• You build deeper, stronger commercial relationships and an outstanding reputation.

It’s hard to overstate just how massive an impact this can have on your business. Especially when so many business owners are scaling back on the human touch, and automating everything they can.

Be there when people need you. Because they have never needed you more than they do, right now.

In today’s post, I’m going to share a proven idea with you that can massively increase your revenues and profits. It’s something I’ve done successfully for countless clients over the years. And it’s based on a wonderfully effective business model, too.

I’d like to start by asking you to consider the following. I want you to imagine for a moment, that your clients paid you significantly more than they do now. Maybe 300% or 500% more.

Now hold that thought.

If they were paying you that rate:

• You could give them considerably more of your individual attention.
• You could provide them with a dramatically better level of service.
• Your clients would value you more. So, they’d keep returning, delighted with the service they receive from you.
• Your clients would also recommend you to their friends, many of whom would then become clients. Remember, birds of a feather flock together. People who value premium services and can afford them, have lots of contacts with the same mindset and resources.
• And these new clients would be just as delighted… so they would recommend you to their friends.
• Repeat.

Before you know it, you could have a premium quality client base, growing organically.

Premium quality clients. Growing organically. Surely that’s worth considering?

Maybe it’s time you considered offering a premium version of your services. Your marketplace already has a highly profitable subset, who value quality and will very happily pay more for it. In fact, they eagerly seek it out.

And that’s not all.

The premium quality corner of your marketplace is not only the most profitable. It’s also, by far, the least competitive. It’s the middle ground, which is always stuffed full of competing providers, forcing fees down.

Just think how your business would thrive, with higher fees, higher profits, happier clients and less competition.

Average is easy. But it’s overcrowded and overrated.

 

Image: Charles Deluvio

A lot of service providers offer free initial consultations as a way to attract new clients. However, it’s one of the most dangerous things they can do.

Here are just 3 of the major problems caused by free consultations.

1. Free consultations make you look desperate

By giving your time away for free, you give the impression that you’re sat in a quiet office, with no clients. And nothing to do.

You’re literally (not figuratively) placing zero value on your time. That’s a very negative image to create in the mind of your prospective clients.

It paints all the wrong pictures. It damages your reputation, because looking desperate isn’t a good look! As such, it totally devalues your services. It also acts as a warning sign to genuine prospective clients, who will not hire what looks like a failing service provider.

It’s a toxic soup. Pure poison.

2. Free consultations attract time wasters like a magnet

Whilst high quality prospective clients are put off by needy looking service providers, free consultations are super-attractive to freebie hunters. These never-to-be clients flock to them.

Freebie hunters are time wasters who refuse to pay for professional help. Instead, they sign up for everything they can get for free, then try and do it themselves.

It looks something like this:

• The freebie hunter searches the internet for service providers who offer free consultations.
• They then contact the provider and request a free consultation, pretending to be a prospective client.
• They know the service provider will try and impress them with their knowledge.
• So, they ask for advice on their specific problems.

Don’t become a target for freebie hunters. Just don’t. Seriously.

3. Free consultations trap you in a dangerous cycle

Giving your time away for free to strangers can’t solve your marketing problems. It will simply guarantee that you stay stuck. That’s because it locks you inside a negative cycle.

The cycle looks something like this:

1. You need more, paying clients.
2. So, you offer free initial consultations, placing zero value on your time.
3. This makes you look needy (at best).
4. Any genuine prospective clients who see this are presented with a desperate looking image, which damages your reputation.
5. This obviously repels the exact clients you want (and need) to attract.
6. And this is on top of whatever your previous marketing problem was, which led you to giving your time away.
7. You remain stuck.
8. So, it’s back to step 1 again.

Thankfully, there are proven ways to make your business succeed. Strategies that attract the right clients or customers. Strategies that are perfect for you and what you want to achieve. This is where you need to focus. Anything else is unsustainable, totally avoidable and less than you deserve.

Today’s post is all about attracting more, high quality enquiries from eager prospective clients.

There are 2 important questions, which very few business owners ask of themselves. However, they contain the seeds of a massively valuable marketing insight. And by asking and answering them, you’ll avoid an extremely common and damaging mistake.

Here are the questions.

1. What does my ideal client (or customer) look like?
2. What am I doing, to make sure my marketing is exclusively, directly relevant to this super-valuable niche?

Here’s why these questions, and your answers, are so important.

Something for everyone?

One of the most common marketing mistakes, especially with small and medium-sized businesses, is to try and appeal to the widest possible range of people.

On one level, it seems to make sense. The thinking looks like this: The more people you try and appeal to, the more prospective clients you’ll have.

However, that’s not how it works. Not even close. In reality, using that approach guarantees you will actually attract far fewer clients or sales. And there’s a very good reason why.

It’s simply this. To motivate someone to switch brands or switch providers, your marketing needs to motivate them to take action. And in order to motivate them, it has to be directly relevant to them. It has to talk to their wants. Their needs. Their values.

Narrow and deep

Every time you decide to widen the appeal of your marketing, beyond your ideal client, you weaken its effectiveness. Your marketing shifts from being:

• Directly relevant (powerful and compelling).
• To vaguely relevant (feeble and weak).

If you haven’t already, I recommend you get intentional about exactly who you want to do business with. Then focus all your marketing, so that it speaks exclusively to that high value group.

Go narrow and deep. Not wide and shallow.

Get it right my friend, and it’s a game changer.

Today’s post offers you a wide-open opportunity for your business to thrive in the months ahead.

Yes, you read that correctly.

No, it’s not a play on words.

Allow me to explain

As we all know, these are very uncertain times. Yet there are some really important things we can have a high degree of certainty about. Here are just a few of them.

• We’re looking at a period of months (or longer), before the world population can safely return to a pre pandemic way of life.
• It will take years for world economies to recover.
• Previous periods of long-term economic crisis have simultaneously seen some businesses thrive, whilst others vanish.

By focusing on the things we can be almost certain of, we give ourselves a much steadier foundation from which to make our decisions. Acknowledging the long-term nature of the situation also helps us avoid going broke, as we can see it isn’t viable to wait for things to return to normal again.

Your wide-open opportunity

Back in March and April I offered a ‘Thrive” service, exclusively to help my former clients not just survive the pandemic, but thrive. I mentioned it at the time 1, 2 and 3. In every case, by focusing on the things they can be almost certain of, my clients were able to do spectacularly well.

We found that they had almost no competition. That’s because the vast majority of their competitors were scared stiff. Frozen with fear. Waiting for things to return to normal. Doing zero or minimal marketing. I found that my former clients had uncontested access to the marketplace, which made our marketing more effective than ever. And they have even less competition now, than they did back then, as their competitors now have even fewer financial resources and are even more scared. The competition have left the doors wide-open for my clients.

As I write this, that same wide-open opportunity to thrive is available to you.

That’s to say, your competition will largely be operating from a mindset of fear and doing the absolute minimum. To thrive you’ll need to be willing to do what your competitors won’t do. This includes things like focusing on what you want rather than what you fear. It means adapting your business to the new needs of your marketplace. It also means looking for opportunities to grow and having a commitment to being agile.

With 24/7 news coverage pumping fear and uncertainty at us, it’s way too easy to focus on the confusion and fear, which uncertainty brings. That’s a wholly ineffective mindset for any business owner.

Focus on the things that are under your control. Shift from a survive mindset to a thrive mindset. Do everything you can, with everything you have.

It beats the alternative and allows you to be justifiably excited about your future.

Today’s post is about two service providers. In the same industry. In the same country. Serving a very similar marketplace. With all the same coronavirus / economic hurdles as each other.

I was prompted to write this, after an email I received from a reader. He thanked me for the post I’d just written, then explained how tough things were for his business.

He said he was going to “keep his head down” and wait for the coronavirus to pass and the economy to pick up. He went on to explain that you can’t make money in his industry right now, “because no one is spending”.

Here’s why his email stood out

I’m currently working with someone in the same country as him, in the same industry as him. My client’s business is flourishing. And this is largely because her focus is 180 degrees different to his.

For example.

• She’s focused on growing. While he’s focused on surviving.
• She’s focused on moving. While he’s focused on waiting.
• She’s focused on opportunities. While he’s focused on losses.

Interestingly, she started off just as worried about the future as he is. What made all the difference is how she responds when she’s worried.

I remember vividly how fearful she was on our initial session, in March. She told me that her strategy for dealing with fear is to use it, to motivate her to look for answers. In this case, she found my service when looking for a way to navigate the changing economy caused by coronavirus.

She told me that taking positive action gives her a sense of control and keeps her focused on what she wants, rather than what she fears. This fills her with energy and justified confidence for the future.

Move forward with justified confidence

By choosing to focus on thriving, you drastically improve the scenario.

You get to spend your days working on successfully growing your business. Your shift of focus also enables you to see opportunities, which fear-focused business owners will miss. You transition from a feeling of apprehension, to one of excitement.

And it improves literally everything for you and your business.