Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Beating the credit crunch!

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Whenever times are hard and the economy heads south, people (and businesses) have to think a lot harder before they spend their money.  This is something we have seen time and time again during past recessions.

However, the ‘credit crunch’ has given us a MUCH BIGGER problem, because our potential clients not only have less money than before – they are finding it hard or impossible to access credit too.  As a direct result, generating sales or winning business is set to become increasingly harder, with potential clients understandably extremely cautious about spending their money.  Perhaps more cautious than ever before.

One thing we know with total certainty, is that the marketplace for YOUR services is about to become more and more competitive.

This means your marketing has never been more important

You must be able to get the attention of your prospective clients and then totally convince them that you offer the best possible option for them.  Any business today, whose marketing is ‘average’, is going to find the coming two years (some say three) increasingly painful. The only solution is to improve the way they sell and market their services.

Why is marketing so much more important now?

During a normal or strong economy, people don’t have to think too hard about making a purchase and are measurably less choosy.  As a result, until recently, even poorly marketed companies were able to generate a level of sales; just by ‘being there’ or contacting prospects at the right time.

However, during a bad economic climate, people think far harder before they buy anything.  As a result, we are seeing people and businesses now shopping around for the best offer before they spend a penny.  Thus, they end up buying from the best marketed businesses, because these are the businesses who know how to grab their attention and make their offer sound the most attractive or compelling.

Today, good timing and hard work is no longer enough. You must learn how to out-market your competitors if you want to survive – let alone thrive!

Marketing provides an answer – Thankfully

Amid the doom and gloom, there’s always a ray of light.  You see, as well as receiving a massive number of emails from readers who are really struggling right now – I have also received a small number of emails from readers who are experiencing their best year EVER.

When you understand why some businesses are doing so well right now, you will have an opportunity to do the same.  But first, you need to know what ‘the average’ business does when faced with an economic slump.  This is really important.

Most businesses do nothing

The ‘average’ business today will continue to sell and market their services as if nothing was happening.  Sure, they will moan about the economy and their lack of trade; but they will just keep on doing the same ineffective marketing they always did.

They pin their hopes on things ‘just getting better’ before they run out of money.

In essence, they will stay inside their comfort zone and refuse to move, as if they were a 60 foot oak tree.

But some businesses take action!

Some businesses realise that there is a real opportunity here!  They know that when times are tough, prospective clients always look for value – and making your services look more valuable is all about GREAT marketing.  So, they decide to get serious about their marketing and thus they reap the rewards.  The rewards are far greater than you might imagine.

Marketing lessons from recessions

We know that during past economic recessions, the businesses that improved their marketing and marketed their services the most successfully, managed to gain a disproportionately large share of their marketplace.

Also, when the economy improved, they were in the perfect position to continue growing at a super-accelerated rate!  If you choose, you can turn the credit crunch into a springboard for your business. You can grow at the same time as your competitors shrink.  You can use the coming months to transform the future of your business and your life – but only if you take action and do the right things in the right way.

So – what next?

First of all – STOP!

If your business is currently finding it a struggle to generate the volume and quality of sales it needs – Stop whatever marketing you are doing immediately.

Because…

If you keep using the same kind of marketing, you will keep getting the same results.  Your sales, profits and turnover will not ‘just get better’.  In fact, as the credit crunch continues, your sales, turnover and profits will drop unless you improve things.

Five steps to beat the credit crunch

Step one

OK – as I mentioned above, the first step is to stop all marketing activities that are not making you money.  No matter how ‘comfortable’ you are with whatever you are doing, if it’s not working STOP doing it.  Either find a way to leverage better results from it or discontinue it completely.

Step two

Start getting tons of business through your website. It’s a fact; a fully-optimised website is both the most effective and the least expensive way to generate sales, leads and enquiries. Your website can (and should) generate leads and enquiries for you all day every day.

I know people in just about every industry who now get the vast majority of their leads and enquiries via their website.

You can reduce your annual marketing costs by 90% and increase your sales by 100’s% (or more) at the same time!  Almost all of all MY marketing is now done online.  However, before you start enjoying all those leads and enquiries from red-hot prospective clients, your website needs to tick two important boxes:

  • Firstly, it needs to look professional and have all the functions you need in order to collect enquiries, collect email addresses and make sales etc.  If you want to know why some businesses get leads from their websites on an hourly basis (or better), whilst most websites generate almost nothing, you need the second and most important element…
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  • Secondly, your website MUST MUST MUST be Search Engine Optimised.   The reason most small and medium sized business websites fail, is because no one can find them!  So, you will need to get an SEO expert to make your site the one that people find when looking for whatever type of services you offer.

This is the most important step, yet hardly any small business websites are professionally optimised.  Interestingly, 100% of all large company websites are optimised.

Getting a website optimised, is like picking up a shop, that’s located down an old dusty road with no passing trade – and placing it BANG in the centre of Oxford Street or 5th Avenue!

Step three

Read the sales and marketing posts and articles here on the blog.  Everything is written by me, based on what’s proven to work.  I put the blog together because most small and medium-sized businesses rely heavily on free marketing advice – and as a marketing professional, the marketing advice I found online was often pretty awful.  I found that much of it was either shockingly poor , or very out of date. Look at this.

Step four

Download and listen to this FREE audio program.  It will tell you how to get regular referrals, recommendations & leads.

Step five

There are some superb ideas waiting for you right now at TheIdeasBlog.com.  It has often been said that you are never more than one good idea away from achieving a massive breakthrough – so take a look.

The credit crunch is really hurting a lot of businesses right now.  If you have found this credit crunch marketing report useful, please forward it to as many people as possible.

Welcome!

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Welcome to my brand new marketing blog!

So, why a marketing blog Jim?

Unlike my website, when you read something HERE, you can share your thoughts, ideas and opinions with your fellow readers and myself.  Blogging is about communicating not broadcasting. It’s about 2-way or multi-way communication.  It’s about community and connecting with like-minded people.

When you see something here and want to get involved, your fellow readers and myself can respond to your comments and get a conversation going – something that’s just not possible via a traditional broadcast website.

As well as marketing tips and ideas, I will ALSO be using this blog to give you an insight into my day-to-day work.  The idea is to pass on anything I think you might find either useful, interesting or both!

So, why not say hello?

I would love to get as many of my website and newsletter readers as possible to leave a comment here in my ‘welcome post’, so please say hello.  Let us know your company name and where you are!

To leave a comment, just click the comment link below.

How to leverage a million in sales!

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I am going to show you a simple, high leverage way to generate stacks more sales super-fast; WITHOUT you having to invest a penny more on marketing! This is a step by step guide that anyone can follow, which can generate an almost unlimited amount of sales for you; with very little effort on your part.

Leverage leverage leverage…

When you study the the world’s most successful businesspeople and salespeople, you will see a word popping up again and again. That word is leverage.  Leverage, when referred to in marketing or business development terms, is all about getting the maximum return on everything you do.

I use leverage to get results in every area of my business and I want you to start doing the same from now on because the rewards are stunning!

Leverage an extra £500,000 in sales – for free!

Allow me to introduce you to a few people who can easily help you leverage your best sales, profits and turnover figures ever. These people have the attention of hundreds or thousands of new potential clients for your services – possibly even more!

You already know these people. . . they are your Accountant, Business Bank Manager and Company Solicitor.  How many local businesses does your Accountant work with 500 or 5,000?  And what about your Solicitor – another 1,000 or so?  Ok, what about your Company’s Bank Manager – 5,000 or 10,000 local businesses?

Of these thousands of local businesses, how many have a potential need for your services? If you are in a service industry; Recruitment, Insurance, Internet, IT or Training – there is potential for you to supply your services to almost ALL of these thousands of local businesses!  If you provide a product or a range of products, you will quickly know roughly what percentage of these local businesses are likely to have a need for your offering.  In either case, the potential here is massive!

Getting referrals and recommendations!

Speak with any group of businesspeople or salespeople and you will quickly learn that one of their most pressing marketing problems is winning new, high quality clients or customers on a regular basis.

Despite this, very few of them have actually held a meeting with their Accountant, Solicitor or Bank Manager to specifically request leads from their massive client base!

Business owners and entrepreneurs usually make the costly mistake of assuming that their Accountant, Solicitor and Bank Manager will ‘automatically’ recommend them and their services to their masses of clients and contacts. This is seldom, if ever, the case!  Accountants, Lawyers and Bank Managers are extremely busy professional people and unless there is some motivation for them to proactively pass leads to you – they won’t!

Leverage in action

What you need is a strategy that leverages the motivation of these professionals; making it easier for them to provide you with referrals than NOT to – and here it is!  These three great questions should be asked, preferably face-to-face, in the exact order they are given:

Question 1: How many clients do you have?
Question 2: How many of them do you think use (whatever you offer)?
Question 3: So, how many leads do you think you can pass to me over the next 30 days?

What these three questions do is extremely clever. Here’s the science behind each one:

Question 1: How many clients do you have?

This is what I refer to as the ‘foundation’ question. It forms the foundation upon which the rest of the questions stack.  People are proud of the size of their client base and are only too eager to show you just how hard they work and how successful their bank or practice is.

Question 2: How many of your clients do you think use (whatever kind of service/product you provide)?

This is what I refer to as the ‘focus’ question.  It causes the listener to focus on the profile of his or her client base and the nature of your product or service, before joining the two together. They know that you will have a very good idea of how many businesses, on average, have a requirement for your services or products – so their answer to you has to be realistic.

Question 3: So, how many leads do you think you can pass to me over the next 30 days?

This is what I refer to as the leverage question.  It causes the listener to review the two answers they have just given you and then give you a number.  It also sets up a time-scale and as the old saying goes; “what gets measured gets done!”

At this point you have just leveraged their motivation – making it far easier to pass you leads and far harder not to. Even if they fail to give you a definitive number, it is no longer easy for them NOT to provide you with regular introductions, referrals or leads. Now that there is a time-scale for when you will be expecting to have received some leads, they will find it easier to help you than ignore you.

Your Bank Manager, Accountant and Solicitor are trusted professionals and their recommendation is extremely valuable.  They will also know all about you and your business and they will know that you offer a great product or service – so there’s no barrier to them recommending you.

Each of these hard working professionals will be keen to help their other clients, and if they believe that your service will benefit their other clients, it’s only natural that they would introduce your services to them!

If you find it a little ‘awkward’ asking these questions, ask them in a playful way!

Amazingly, even if you ask these questions with a big smile on your face, as I always do, the impact is exactly the same!

Some numbers you will find interesting

If only one business in ten, on average, has a need for your type of product or service, it’s likely that your; Bank Manager, Company Solicitor and Accountant combined will have access RIGHT NOW to A THOUSAND new clients for you and your business.

If you only sold £500 worth of goods to these people each year, that’s a half a million pounds a year increase in YOUR turnover!

A quick million

If you work in any of the industries I have already mentioned in this free guide; that figure will be closer to a million pounds a year in new business for you and your business!

The great networking lie!

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In my opinion, when it comes to winning business, ‘chamber of commerce style’ networking events offer extremely poor value.  Small businesses lose a fortune each year attending these networking events – when they could be getting far better results, for a fraction of the time and money they wasted on networking!

Business owners and salespeople regularly tell me that they get little (if anything) tangible from these dead-end events; often believing they are at fault because they are doing something wrong. Many then waste even more time learning ‘how to work the room’ – then finally realise, after being screwed out of their money, that it’s the actual networking events that are the problem – NOT them!

I have run a successful marketing business for over 14 years and have clients all over the world.  In my experience, I can think of no business gathering where you are LESS likely to make a sale or win some business than a typical ‘chamber of commerce style’ networking event.

Why?

  1. Firstly, very few people attend networking events to buy!  Just like you, EVERYONE in that room is there to SELL.
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  2. Secondly, because networking events are regarded as a sales and marketing activity, companies send their SALESPEOPLE along and not their BUYERS!  This is why all those dreadful “how to work a room” books and seminars are sold exclusively to salespeople and delivered by sales trainers.

In other words, you will be speaking to salespeople and not buyers at these events; people with not only no interest in buying from you BUT with no authority to buy from you either!

If you enjoy meeting people and want to find new potential suppliers, a traditional networking event’s worth considering. However, as a marketing activity I genuinely believe there are man, many better alternatives.

Marketing doesn’t work!

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Marketing has no favourites! If you market your business correctly you will thrive and if you market that same business ineffectively you will struggle.  That’s because marketing is based on cause and effect.

I received an email yesterday from one of my readers. He explained that he had been trying to generate meetings with prospective clients – but that his marketing had let him down.

I later received an email from a reader of my free marketing newsletter, who told me, point-blank that; “advertising doesn’t work!”

Stop blaming your tools

In both of these examples, the suggestion was that the failure of these people to generate business was not THEIR fault, but simply that marketing and advertising ‘don’t work.‘  Their problem was not, as they suggested, that marketing only works for some people – Their problem was simply that they were doing it wrong!  For example, a poorly written advertisement, placed in the wrong publication, is unlikely to generate a stack of enquiries or sales!  This does NOT mean that advertising doesn’t work!
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A pile of wood and some nails

Give my friend Tom a pile of wood and some tools and he will turn it into a beautiful piece of furniture.

Give that same equipment to me and I would end up with splinters and a couple of bruised thumbs!  That’s because Tom

is a master furniture maker, with over 40 years worth of experience and I’m a marketing professional with no furniture making experience or skills. However, when it comes to SELLING that beautiful furniture….

Some marketing advice worth taking

Most small and medium-sized businesses rely heavily on free marketing tips and advice from the Internet; at least in the early years of their business.  If you are going to market your business without specialist, expert marketing assistance, please make sure that:

  1. You only take marketing advice from proven, trusted sources.
  2. Take time to study marketing and make sure you don’t start until you understand each step you need to take.

Your marketing mix part 2 of 2

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I am going to show you how to make your marketing more successful and more reliable, with something called your marketing mix. I am also going to give you a list and explanation of some of the most popular types of marketing, used by small and medium sized businesses.  I strongly suggest you read part one of this before proceeding.

This is a BIG marketing guide, with lots of great ideas, so please share it on your favourite social network or social bookmarking site.

In part one of this guide I shared one of the most common errors small businesses make with their marketing. The error is that they rely on just one or two different marketing activities in order to generate their sales.

This is a REALLY bad idea!

Firstly, if you rely on just one or two different forms of marketing, you are missing out on STACKS of new business and opportunities! No matter how good you are at getting the full leverage from a couple of marketing activities, you will be placing a very low ceiling on your business’s potential, if you limit yourself in this way. The most successful small businesses all use at least four or five different kinds of marketing – often 8 or 10 or more!

Secondly, by relying on just one or two marketing activities, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable when one of them stops working! A business owner emailed me to say that she relied on an advertisement in a business publication for over 90% of her sales leads. One of her competitors started advertising in the same publication and her number of leads (and sales) dropped by 40% overnight – That hurts.

So, your marketing mix should combine at least four or five different marketing activities, which compound and create a regular supply of sales for you. Here are some of the marketing options you should consider adding to YOUR marketing mix.

Advertising

A targeted message delivered through a great ad, which is read, listened to or watched by your core target client group is REALLY powerful! For a free advertising guide, click here.

Online networking or ‘social networks’

Online networking has great marketing potential. The key is to join a network that is best suited to your needs and to be selective with whom you network! Focus on the quality of people in your network and NOT just the quantity. If you develop a network of 30 well-connected, motivated, professional people and I develop a network of 3000 people who ‘just wanted to join my network’ – your network will be massively more valuable then mine.

A couple of the more popular business networks are www.ecademy.com and www.linkedin.com.  Other’s now use Facebook exclusively as a business networking tool.  I personally use Twitter and have found, like many others, that it is perhaps the most powerful of all.  Whatever network you choose, you are likely to see FAR BETTER results than through wasting your time at traditional ‘networking events’ (Click here to see why traditionasl networking is a waste of your time!)

Exhibitions

As an exhibitor at, (or visitor to), a well-attended exhibition aimed at your target client base – you can easily get to meet people face-to-face, who are almost impossible to reach using other forms of marketing. Depending on your industry or profession and the average lifetime value to your business of a client, you could find exhibiting at well-attended exhibitions an extremely valuable part of your marketing mix. I know companies who win most of their high quality work via exhibitions.

Email marketing

It’s a fact; email marketing is extremely cost effective and certainly one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses. It works incredibly well – and costs little or nothing.

Here are a few things to consider before adding email marketing to your marketing mix. I recommend you build your own email database (mailing list) rather than buy one from a list broker. The best way to get started is to ask your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address and if it’s ok for you to email them occasionally with news or special offers.

You also need to get people joining your email list from your website! To do this, make it as easy as possible, and offer something of value as an incentive for them to join your mailing list, like a free ebook. Also, only ask for their email address – not their life history, and let them know that you will never, ever pass on their details to ANYONE!

ONLY send people valuable information (like this free guide) or a genuinely special offer. I also strongly recommend that you don’t bombard people with email; just one message every week or 14 days is more than enough. I send my Newsletter out once every seven to 14 days, because people hate being bombarded with information; even great information! As a result, very few people ask to be removed from my subscriber list.

Finally, to grow your list, ask readers to forward your emails on. Obviously, making sure all the while, that you abide by the rules governing email marketing in your country.

Telephone marketing – Tele sales

Telephone marketing works – but it’s less effective than it used to be. Not that long ago, you could call someone’s direct ‘phone line and know that if they were in, they would pick up the phone. Today, people from even the smallest of companies screen all their inbound calls with voice mail; to eliminate unwanted interruptions and sales calls. This means you now need to make massively more calls to reach a smaller number of people!

I used to tell the owners of small businesses to learn how to make telemarketing calls and then set some time aside and make those calls! Today, I suggest you outsource the whole process to a proven telephone marketing company. Doing it yourself is now a low-leverage marketing activity, because it requires so much time.

Outsourced telephone marketing is still a high leverage activity, because you will usually only pay per lead or sale.

Traditional networking

Traditional networking is a total waste of your time – avoid it!

Your website

It’s not enough to simply ‘have a website’! Your website needs to work for your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; generating leads, making sales or collecting the email addresses of potential clients. If your website is simply an online brochure, it’s costing you a fortune in lost sales, lost profits and lost opportunities!

When your website is supported by a newsletter and some Internet marketing, the results can be transformational. Still not convinced? Without spending a penny on advertising, my Internet marketing often reaches over 2 million people in a week! I will be writing separate guides all about forum marketing, article marketing, pay-per-click and blogging shortly.

Joint ventures

Sometimes known as a J.V, a ‘Joint Venture’ is where you and another business or person get together to (usually) cross-market your services. The key to JV success, is to find someone credible, who offers a non-conflicting product or service to the exact same profile of person or business as you do.

So, if you sell recruitment services to the hospitality industry and they sell employee benefits packages to the hospitality industry – BINGO! They can include one of your flyers or letters in one of their mailings and you can do the same for them; everybody wins. Avoid doing a JV with ANYONE you contacts you via email – unless you know them or can check them out. If in doubt – leave it.

Endorsed relationships

An ‘Endorsed Relationship’ is similar to a Joint Venture – BUT with one BIG and POWERFUL difference! The person you do the venture with actually gives you their professional or personal endorsement. This is marketing gold dust.

For example: Rather than just slipping one of YOUR marketing flyers in with one of THEIR client mailings (as they would in a Joint Venture), they actually write to their clients and give you their full endorsement. This is easily the single most powerful form of referral and one of the most powerful marketing tools on the planet.

I have seen endorsed mailings return a 90% positive response rate!

Conclusion

Obviously, the above list does not cover every marketing option open to you, but I hope it gives you a few ideas.

No matter how good your service is, your future success will be determined by how good you are at winning and retaining good quality clients. As Robert Kiyosaki says, lots of people can make a better hamburger than McDonalds; but very few can sell hamburgers more successfully. In today’s super-competitive economy, your marketing is more important than ever before, so make sure you give it the time and investment it needs!