Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

This is marketing madness!

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Here’s a great example of how bad marketing can not only result in you making fewer sales – But actually LOSE you existing customers too!

As you read this post, the owner of a small web hosting business is wondering why so few people have responded to his latest marketing email.

In his marketing email, which was forwarded to me by a reader, he explains that over the Christmas holiday period, the load on his servers increases and this means people’s sites will load really slowly. To frighten his customers still further, he explains that the server speed could be too slow for their customers / clients / readers to bother with.  It could screw up their business and make them look bad. (Ouch!)

Sounds horrible right?  Well, the email goes on to paint a picture of increasing doom – Until he asks his customers to consider upgrading their hosting package, claiming that the new, more expensive package, will deliver a reliable service.

Marketing madness

Can you spot the problem here?  This guy has just sent all his customers an email, which tells them the servers he has placed their sites on are overloaded.  However, on the page of his website, which sells the package that he now says is unreliable, he says the total opposite.  In fact, he makes a number of very bold promises about the reliability of the servers he uses.  I have never heard of this hosting provider, his services might be great – but that’s not the point!

Not only has he just informed all his customers that he put their sites on overloaded servers, they now know they can’t trust his company’s marketing promises either!

In a shockingly bad effort to up-sell his clients onto a 400% more expensive package, he has actually massively damaged their opinion of the current service they receive from him.  They will now be worrying about the problems that he has forecast for December and some will be looking for a reliable alternative to him and his false promises!

It’s madness for someone to try and scare their customers into upgrading, by claiming that the service he previously sold them is not what he promised.  It’s also just plain stupid to tell lies to your customers.  This up-sell approach does nothing, other than damage the provider’s reputation and alert the customer to change provider.

Marketing an upgrade to your customers or clients

If you want to encourage existing customers to upgrade from one level of service to the next, you need to demonstrate huge, additional value in the upgraded service.  You create a vast difference between their current service and the upgrade, by massively increasing the value of the upgrade – NOT by telling them that what you already sold them is crap. You need to pump so much value into the upgrade, that they would be nuts not to use it.

This value focused approach makes the upgrade process less of a risk for the customer and enhances their experience of your business.  They get to see you as being able to grow to meet their demands.

Your turn

What do you think of the approach used by this hosting company?  Have you seen examples of it before and did it encourage you to spend more money with them?  What do you think when a provider bad mouths the quality of their own, entry level services?  Share your opinions with us.

Why bloggers post every day!

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Ever wondered why some bloggers write blog posts every day?  Well, I did too – So I tried a 14 day experiment, and I am going to share my results with you.

Usually, my blogging schedule is erratic; often just a handful of posts in a month.  However, as regular readers will have noticed, I have been updating this blog with fresh posts every day, for the past 2 weeks.

Why?

I wanted to measure for myself, just what the value to a blogger is, of updating their blog every day with new posts.  I assumed (rightly as it turned out) that 2 weeks would be a long enough period, for me to get some worthwhile data for you.  The results have been VERY interesting!

In brief, here’s what I have found:

RSS Subscribers

One of the biggest differences (in percentage points) has been the increase in new RSS subscribers to the blog.  New subscriber numbers are up an amazing 400% on the 2 weeks previous!  I was expecting to see some increase, but this was far, far higher than I imagined.

Blog Comments

The number of comments per post varies all the time, literally from post to post, making it very hard to measure over such a short period.  Equally, comments are often added to blog posts weeks, months and even years after a post is written.

Comments in total during the past 14 days are up by around 300%.  This is less impressive than it may sound, as there were many more posts for people to read and thus comment on than usual.  Also, regular readers have been visiting the blog more often and sharing posts with their friends more often, which increases comment numbers.

This leads me on to the biggest difference I have noticed with the comments, over the past 2 weeks.  The biggest (and most interesting development for me), has been the number of new people commenting here.  I have seen a lot of new commenters, many of whom have said that they have only just discovered the blog.

Blog traffic

The number of unique visitors here increased by just under 30% during the 2 weeks.  That’s a significant increase, especially as most of it came over the past 5 days.

Interestingly, the number of page views here increased massively.  This seems to be from new visitors having a look around and established readers visiting more often, in line with the number of new posts.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that daily blogging, even for a relatively short period of time, has significantly increased ‘traffic’ into the blog.

Conclusion

The biggest revelation for me has been how much fun I’ve had! I have REALLY enjoyed putting the posts together.  More than this, the increased activity on the blog from commenters and those discussing posts on Twitter, has been amazing.  The whole ‘atmosphere’ of the blog has been improved in every way.

However, it is very clear from the significant increases across the board, why so many bloggers post fresh content every day.  Daily blogging has improved literally every metric I have measured – not just those mentioned in this brief post.  It’s also improved areas that are far harder to measure, like making the blog a lot more ‘alive’ and vivid.  These things are harder to plot on a chart than RSS subscribers or traffic, but they are massively valuable to anyone who genuinely cares about their blog and it’s community of readers.

My dilemma

I strongly believe that the only time to write a blog post is when the writer has something VALUABLE to say, which is worth sharing.  I don’t believe in having a blogging schedule. As a professional writer, I have found it relatively easy to publish fresh content each day – but what about the quality of that content?

I see zero point in posting dross occasionally, just so that I don’t miss a day!  That material will live on the Internet forever, with my name attached to it. My 4 year old son will see it when he’s older – I don’t want him thinking his daddy writes pedestrian, generic bullshit occasionally, because I’m a slave to some self-imposed, daily blogging schedule.

I occasionally read posts by people considered to be GREAT bloggers, which seem ‘pretty average’ at best.  The thing is, these guys are NOT average writers; they are the top of the blogging pile.  I always wonder if the reason I find those posts average, is just that the subject is not of interest to me, or if it’s because the blogger wrote an average post, just to maintain his or her daily blogging schedule.

The bottom line for me, is that by blogging here each day, the value of this blog has improved in every way.  So, I’ve decided to aim for blogging here on a more regular basis than before, but only when I have something I believe is worth sharing with you.  If that’s daily, then fine. If not, then I assure you, you will be missing nothing worth reading.

What do you think?

Did you find any of that data useful or interesting?  What has your experience been?

Photo credit: UnSung

Your 5 step marketing make-over!

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This post is all about how to improve your marketing and it contains links to stacks of great, free marketing advice!

I wrote this today, because I know that many of my readers work really hard and yet fail to get the sales or profits that their hard work deserves.  In the majority of cases, their products and services are great – But they are being let down by ineffective marketing.  So, in this post I am going to give you a quick marketing exercise, designed to get you on the right track.

Here’s a simple 5 step process, for improving the effectiveness of your marketing:

  1. Make a list of every marketing activity you currently invest time and / or money in.
  2. Write down the results you are getting from each marketing activity. If the results can’t be measured for any activity, stop it immediately!
  3. If any activity is on that list purely because it’s something you are COMFORTABLE with or it’s there just because YOU HAVE ALWAYS done it, that’s not a good enough reason. (This is where I find a lot of people are wasting valuable time and money!)
  4. Next, grab your beverage of choice and read the 3 posts linked to below. They will show you some of the most popular and effective forms of small business marketing.
  5. Finally, select the marketing activities that you feel are most suited to what you want to achieve.  Then, spend some time studying how to do THOSE activities correctly and add them to your marketing mix.

Below are the posts I recommended earlier.  The first is a 2 parter, which contains a number of different marketing activities and explains what they are.  The final link will take you to the most popular page on this blog; a list of my top 10 marketing tips for small businesses.

Designing your marketing mix (part 1)

Designing your marketing mix (part 2)

Top 10 Marketing Tips

This is intended as a launchpad, to get you focusing on more effective ways to market your services.  If you want to know more about any of the activities mentioned, remember to use the search box on the right hand side of this blog.

If you found this information and the links useful, please take a moment to share this post with your friends.

How to have zero competition for YOUR business!

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This post is all about how to market your business, without ever having to worry about the threat of competition.

I decided to write this after receiving an email from a reader, Elizabeth, who asked me a great question.  Elizabeth wanted to know why I promote the websites and blogs of fellow marketing professionals.  She went on to say that this seemed, “an unusual way to treat the competition!”

Apparently, Elizabeth was specifically referring to the fact that I often link to other marketing sites and ReTweet interesting posts and articles from other marketing professionals.

In a way, I can understand what Elizabeth’s saying.  It probably seems counter instinctive to most people, when they see me use my network to promote someone, who could be a direct competitor.

However, I see things in a different way!

Marketing and competition

When it comes to growing my business, I don’t operate from the mindset of having competitors.  I operate from a creative mindset.  I focus on making what I do so uniquely valuable, that there isn’t anyone else offering that set of unique skills to the small business marketplace.  You know what? It works really well too! There are some great marketing people out there, but none that compete with me.  They do their thing and I do mine.  Operating from a creative mindset allows me to work without limitations.  For example, I actually market the services of a number of great marketing and marketing-related businesses. Isn’t that brilliant?

I genuinely believe that if any business tries hard enough, it can make its services uniquely valuable enough to never have to ‘worry’ about the competition again.  The challenge, is that most businesses, large and small, look just too similar to the other providers in their industry. As a direct result, they are constantly worried that prospective customers will see the ‘competition’ and then use them.

If they were uniquely valuable enough, they would never have to worry about that.

Marketing your business

Here’s my suggestion for you – something for you to consider.

Look at what your competitors do and re-design your raft of services, your promises and guarantees, to make your offering massively more uniquely valuable.  Market your unique value and show the marketplace how brilliant you are.  Get this right and will OWN your very own hyper-valuable niche. Become the only show in town, for someone looking for YOUR kind of service.

What do you think?

Don’t treat people like numbers!

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Many businesses seem to forget that people are people and numbers are numbers.  As a result, they lose touch with the ‘people‘ side of their business.

Here’s why this is a REALLY bad idea:
It’s People who work for us, buy from us, recommend us and help us – not numbers!

When a business starts regarding people simply as ‘numbers’ on a spreadsheet, customer base or mailing list – it becomes disconnected from those people.  This is madness!

Each client, customer, potential client, reader, follower and contact you have is unique.  These people have feelings. They have good days and bad days. They have ups and downs. They have days where they want to cry with joy and days where they cry with sorrow.  These unique, immeasurably valuable individuals are many things to many people, but they are NOT numbers.

Always focus on the people behind ‘the numbers’ that you use in your business and whenever possible, try to connect with them.  Sometimes, something as simple as a sincere offer of help, a quick phone call or even a smile, can turn someone’s day around.

Will this help you grow your business? Quite possibly.

Will it transform the way you FEEL about your business and the way others FEEL about you? Definitely!

Opportunity knocks, even if you can’t hear it!

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Last week, for only the 5th time in 4 years, I offered readers of my marketing newsletter a very special free marketing opportunity.

I told them that simply by sending me their contact details, that 10 of them would randomly be selected to have a free, 1 hour telephone based consultation with me.  The response was amazing.  After all, the newsletter is read by thousands of people, spanning over 100 countries.

I’m writing this post, after calling the first 3 winners to inform them and set up a date for their call.

Winner number 1 was over the moon. He’s been reading my newsletter for 3 years and can’t wait for the call.  He’s entered every time I have made this offer and said that right now, his business could really do with some free, specialist marketing help.

Winner number 2 is another long term reader, who is also a student of my motivation master class.  She told me how she was really looking forward to our call next week.  She is busy getting a stack of questions ready for me, and I am really looking forward to speaking with her.

Winner number 3 had no idea why I was calling her.  She then remembered that her son had entered her details, because she needed marketing help.  She was downright rude to me and to be honest, the vast majority of people would simply have hung up on her.  What she didn’t know, apparently, was that (literally) thousands of people have entered to be chosen for the opportunity, which I had just gifted to her. When she realised the value to her business of that call, her tone changed completely and she was extremely polite.

You know what though?

In 99.9% of cases, this lady would have already blown it with her rudeness and missed the opportunity of working with me, for free, on the development of her business.

There are opportunities around us, all day long.

However, I wonder how many people repel them because of their attitudes?

Who is influencing your decisions and why?

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As a marketing professional, I’m a keen student of human behaviour. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me, is when I see intelligent businesspeople looking for answers in all the wrong places.

For example, I hear of business owners asking their web designer to write the marketing copy for their new website; even though the designer is not a copy writer.  I hear of people asking their accountant for legal advice; even though she has no legal training whatsoever.

I was inspired to write this post, after my first marketing session with a brand new client yesterday.  This guy used the complete opposite approach. When he first called me to find out what I do, I asked him what motivated him to get in touch with me.

He said; “I got in touch Jim, because I want my prospective clients to think and feel the same way about me and my business, as I think and feel about Jim Connolly and his business. The best person to show me how to achieve that has to be you – right?”

Business success comes from making good decisions and backing them up with action.  Most businesspeople are hard workers, but find they are working hard doing the wrong things or doing the correct things – In the wrong way.  As a result, they don’t really own a business – they have simply bought themselves a really stressful job.

You deserve better than that!

Thankfully, you can improve any area of your business, simply by acting on better advice.

Are you fishing for time wasters?

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Have you ever wondered why you have to deal with so many time wasters?  I was thinking about this question earlier, after hearing the owner of a small business complaining that all he seems to get these days, are enquiries from people who are wasting his time.

Marketing and fishing

The thing is, marketing is a bit like fishing.  When an angler wants to catch a certain type of fish, she knows she needs to do 2 things.

  • First off, she needs to find the correct spot (where that particular kind of fish is.)
  • Then, she needs to use the correct bait.

If she’s in the right place, with the right bait, she stands a good chance of catching the fish she wants. However, if she uses the wrong bait for that type of fish or she uses the correct bait, but is fishing in the wrong place, she is going to attract either the wrong kind of fish or no fish at all!

If you find yourself dealing with a lot of time wasters, it’s probable that you are using the wrong marketing message (bait) or that you are using the correct message, but delivering it to the wrong people. Yes, there are many other possibilities, but I would always check those 2 first.

Will 2010 be a New Year for you or the same frustrating year all over again?

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income and time chartFor most small business owners, the first day of January 2010 will NOT be the start of a New Year!  It will simply be another chance for them to relive the same frustrating year over again.

Sure, they will complain about their lack of results, but they will continue to make the same basic marketing errors that they made this year and last year and the year before. For them, it’s just too attractive to stay as they are, rather than STOP making the same mistakes and move forward based on an effective, proven strategy.

For those of you, who are serious about growing your business and finally making the income you deserve, you need to do something that very few people have the guts to do. You need to change your approach to marketing and making money. You need to move away from what you feel comfortable with and embrace what works.  You need to throw your current approach to making money and generating sales into the bin and replace it with something that is finally going to work for you.

When people start working with me for the first time, I begin by doing a fact-finding session with them. During this session, I find out all about what they want to achieve from their business. Then, I put a plan together with them, which we work on together for a whole year! The reason they get such great results, is that the plan we work on throughout the year is developed and refined by me; a marketing professional.

My clients are; accountants, designers, IT companies, trainers, consultants, lawyers, recruitment companies, insurance providers etc – NOT marketing experts.  In today’s super-competitive marketplace, they know they need specialist marketing support if they want to thrive and grow their business.  They know the clock is ticking.  They know that businesses without specialist marketing support always reach a plateau, where no matter how hard they work, they can’t seem to move on to the next level.

Whatever you plan to do with your marketing in 2010, I strongly recommend that you change your marketing strategy if you want better results.  As Einstein once said; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Only when you use a better strategy will you see better results.  Working hard doing the wrong things is fruitless and stressful.  If you are rowing your boat in the wrong direction again in 2010, no matter how hard you row, you will never get where you want to be.

Those of you, who are genuinely interested in massively improving your business results in 2010, should read this and then get in touch with me.  HOWEVER: This is only open to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

What is FREE advice costing you?

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If you run a small business, you and your business need to guard against the damage caused by Internet freebie hunters. These people see the Internet as a 100% free resource; a place where the normal rules of business simply don’t apply; a place where your time and your knowledge is theirs by right!

The best way to think of their mindset, is that they would eat free cheese samples at a deli counter – even if they hated the taste of cheese – JUST because it was free.

If you have been online for any length of time, you will have encountered these freebie hunters yourself.  They are the ones, who email you asking for free advice on complex problems they are having.  They are the ones, who see the comment section of a blog as a place to get free advertising for their business.  They are the ones, who go to forums to tout for business, rather than contribute to the conversation. They are the ones, who send you DM spam on Twitter (it’s free advertising in their mind.)

Most importantly, they are the ones, who will send you out of business, if you let too many of them suck your resources dry!

What makes these serial freebie hunters so dangerous, is that they sometimes disguise themselves as prospective clients / customers.  However, they are a totally different breed of person.  They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They will devour your time, energy and resources, knowing from the very start that they have no intention whatsoever of repaying you for your help.  They leech advice from experts, then try and deploy what they have been told themselves. Of course, it seldom works, but it’s free and that’s their primary focus – FREE!

It’s often hard to spot these people upfront, but there is a common characteristic I see in the ones that target me: Their business is almost always in really bad shape!

This is true even if they have been in business for years.  Their business reaches a plateau and stays there until they go broke or change their attitude.  Somehow, they don’t seem to realise it’s impossible to develop a successful business, based on leeching free advice from people.

The only effective way to protect yourself from the damage they can cause, is to set some limits on the level of free help and advice you give to people.  You need to set your limits based around your unique situation, but here’s how I do it.

General advice is free BUT specific advice isn’t.

I give a lot of valuable, free marketing advice away to people every day here on the blog.  Now, this has to be general marketing information, which is designed to provide as much value as possible to as many small business owners as possible.

However, if someone wants me to work with them on specific, targeted answers to the problems ruining their marketing and hurting their sales, they pay me.

Yes, there are people I connect with online, who I have never met, who I call and help for free.  But these are people, who have connected with me and whom I have offered my help to.  They didn’t ask – I offered.  They are often not in a position to pay for professional help and I’m in a financial position where I can afford to help them for free.

You know what?  I LOVE helping them too!

You know what else?  They value my time and that is worth a lot to me.

Your time is not money

Your time is not money – it’s far, far more valuable than that. Money can be replaced, time can not.  Unless you put some kind of structure in place, even a simple one like I mentioned above, your business is at risk of being bled dry by the Internet freebie hunters.

Now, this is where you come in: I want you to either share your experiences of Internet freebie hunters (don’t name them please), or share your tips for dealing with them.  Your feedback here will be of great value to my readers and myself, so please share your experiences.