Marketing tips Marketing help

Your marketing map!

December 30, 2008 by Jim Connolly

In this post, I am going to show you a very simple way to make your marketing massively more powerful.

Most small business owners / entrepreneurs have only a vague idea of what they want from their business. They tend to be highly-motivated and launch themselves like a rocket into their work. However, with a little more forward planning, it’s possible to totally transform your sales results!

Imagine setting off on a journey; from where you live to an unknown destination 300 miles away. How would you prepare for that trip? You would probably check the route on a map, so you knew where you were going and how to get there.

You might also check the weather and traffic conditions and ensure you had enough fuel. With all this in place, you stand a 99.9% chance of getting where you want to be!

If that journey had been ‘planned’ ahead the way most small businesses plan ahead, it would have been very different!

There wouldn’t be a clear destination, so it would have been impossible for them to plan a route. In other words, they wouldn’t even know if they are heading in the right direction or not! With no idea of where they’re going and no route to follow, they could end up anywhere.

Marketing and planning

If you study any successful business, you will see that they deliberately plan what they want in advance. As a result, they can spot immediately if they are on target or heading in the wrong direction. They are also able to anticipate potential hazards and even identify the people; whose help they will need in order to succeed. Because they know where they are going, every step takes them closer and they can plan ahead with far, far more confidence than the average business.

How to smash your sales targets with a little planning!

Here’s a quick way to find exactly what you need to do, in order to reach your annual sales target. It also gives a quick insight into the power of using firm figures.

List your desired turnover & profit figures

You need to know what you are aiming for in real terms. This means writing down what you want to ‘get’ from your business financially.

List the number of sales needed in order to hit those figures

Once you know how much money you want to earn, you need to identify how many sales you must make in order to reach that figure. This then becomes your annual sales target.

List the number of enquiries needed to generate 1 sale

How many meetings, calls, emails, letters from prospective clients / customers do you need on average, to generate a sale? If you need 100 sales to hit your sales target and each sale requires 3 enquiries, your initial focus should be on generating those 300 enquiries as inexpensively and quickly as possible!

Divide the number of enquiries needed by 12

In the above example, you would need to generate 25 enquiries a month in order to hit your annual sales targets. This means you would now have a very clear picture of the kind of marketing activity you need to invest your time / money in, if you want to succeed.

What next?

Now that you have a good idea of ‘the numbers’ required for you to hit your sales targets, you need to start generating those sales / enquiries! To help you, here’s a list of 10 of the most effective forms of marketing for small and medium-sized businesses that I know.

Over to you!

What forms of marketing have you found to be most and least effective for your business? Please share your experiences with us and leave a comment below!

Stand out from the crowd and boost sales

December 17, 2008 by Jim Connolly

Would you like to gain a massive marketing advantage and boost your sales? Then find a way to market your services, which is NOT already being used by your competitors!

Take a look at the businesses in your local area and you will notice something interesting.

You will see that businesses in the same industry, advertise in the same places, to the same potential clients, using the same kind of marketing messages and the same kind of promises!

As a result, their marketing pretty-much cancels each other’s out. This is a shocking waste of money and extremely low leverage.

Creative marketing

To gain a competitive marketing advantage, you should think of ways to creatively market your services, which are not already being done-to-death by your competitors.

A great way to find new marketing ideas, is to look at the marketing methods common in other industries, which are not being used in your own. Then, think how you can adapt those forms of marketing for your business!

For example, a number of stores are now paying bloggers to write posts about their stores and their ‘special offers.’ Regardless of your industry, if your competitors are not already doing this, it could be well worth considering for your business!

Just imagine a well-known blogger, who has the respect of your future clients, telling them how brilliant you are – that’s powerful! Before you ask, I don’t offer this service myself.

If you provide a service that has a national or international client base, like; web design, copy writing, SEO, coaching, consulting – or you sell products via a website, you might want to consider sponsoring a podcast aimed at your core prospect group. This can be extremely powerful and yet, it’s a form of marketing that’s totally overlooked by most small businesses – including your competitors!

The bottom line

If you want your business to ‘stand out from the crowd,’ stop marketing it where all the competition is!

13 years this week since…

December 14, 2008 by Jim Connolly

It’s 13 years this week, since I got my first ever email address! At the time, even though I only knew a few people who used email, it was clear to me that email had massive potential for me and what was then, my new business.

Now that pretty-much everyone uses email, it’s interesting to me that so few businesses and entrepreneurs use email marketing effectively!

For example: Buying email lists & sending ads

When you buy an email database, it’s often just a list of people who are getting SLAMMED with junk mail and spam. Why? Because the same people, who are on the email list that YOU just bought, are on all the other lists too! As a result, they will have either changed their email address or they will only accept email from their ‘white list’ of approved contacts. In either case, your latest offer is NOT going to reach them!

By contacting a stranger with an advertisement, you miss the point totally! That’s because the ‘average’ person these days is not as stupid as some marketers seem to think – far from it.

In fact, the marketplace has never been better informed or more hacked-off at the amount of advertising they receive, than they are today! If you want to gain the trust of a prospective client or customer these days, you need to engage them first; rather than just throw more adverts at them.

If you want to REALLY succeed using email marketing, it’s my experience that the best route is to build your own list of subscribers, and contact them using an informative, valuable newsletter. In fact, I have a few tips for you here; based on my own newsletter, which is read by thousands of people from more than 100 countries. This newsletter generated over a hundred thousand pounds for my business in its very first year – starting with an initial readership of just 29 people!

By the way, the free newsletter guide I mentioned earlier is part of a series I am planning. If you have any questions regarding newsletter marketing, either contact me here or leave a comment.

No advertising or sponsors!

December 13, 2008 by Jim Connolly

I’ve mentioned previously that this blog was never intended as a tool to generate advertising, sponsorship or affiliate income. I said at the time that the only way I would have any kind of paid ads here, was if it was for a product I use, love and endorse.

On review, I have decided not to take those ads either – In fact, no paid advertising of any kind!

Why?

Advertising and sponsorships can be great business models for a blog, when done correctly; but they are inappropriate for what I am trying to achieve here. Advertisers have been attracted to me because of the tremendous level of interaction here between my readers and myself. For example, my last post currently has over 200 comments.

This shows the kind of connection between a blog and its readers that advertisers love AND it is also the EXACT reason why this blog will NEVER carry paid advertising or sponsorships!

jimsmarketingblog.com IS a commercial blog, but its commercial value to me, is that it allows me to connect with more people, through my work. It does this extremely well and I get enquiries every day from people, who want to find out more about how I can help them and their business achieve great sales results.

So, whilst I am VERY pro advertising and sponsorship – as you can see, it’s just not appropriate for what I am trying to achieve with this blog.

Thanks for taking time to read this. Please feel free to let me know what you think.

Chunking it down!

December 6, 2008 by Jim Connolly

Isn’t it strange how people think about money? There are people who happily spend £3 a day on a coffee at Starbucks, but who wouldn’t dream of investing that same £60/£70 a month on SEO for their website / blog or even a private health plan or gym membership!

For those of us involved in sales and marketing, there’s a valuable lesson here! It’s all down to the way people perceive money.

If you sell a service, which has an annual cost of, let’s say £500 – you are asking people to make a £500 purchasing decision.

However, if you tell people they can have that same service for the equivalent of just £42 a month, you are helping them to focus on a far smaller, more manageable figure.

By further chunking that figure down to a weekly investment of just £9.62 or a daily figure of just £1.30, you change their focus completely. Especially if you use something like the Starbucks example I gave earlier, in your marketing.

In today’s economic climate, your prospective clients are thinking REALLY hard before spending their money. This is why it’s important for you to put the cost of investing in your service, into terms that show it’s relative value.

For example, an SEO provider might say:

“For half the price of your daily cappuccino, your business could be getting stacks of targeted leads & enquiries through your website!”

The bottom line?

To a business owner, worrying where her next sales lead will come from, it’s clear that the cost of the SEO service above is infinitely more valuable to her; than the coffee she is currently paying twice as much for!

Find something that your prospective clients / customers already buy, which compares favourably with the cost of your product or service. Then, use it like in the above example – to showcase what GREAT value you offer!

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Get your timing right!

November 21, 2008 by Jim Connolly

One of the fastest ways to dramatically increase the number of sales you make, is to make sure you ‘close the sale’ at the right point in the negotiating process!

Why is timing so important to your sales success?

In any sales situation, there is a certain point in time where the prospective client or customer is most likely to agree to buy from you. If you ask for the sale within this golden period, you stand a far greater chance of the prospective client saying “yes.”

Here’s why:
If you ask them to make a buying decision before they are ready, they will think you are either ‘pushy’ or desperate. This will massively reduce your chances of making the sale, because people hate to feel pushed or pressurised.

If you ask them to make a buying decision after their interest has dwindled, they will be far less motivated to buy from you. This will massively reduce your chances of making the sale, because without that all-important motivation to buy, there’s little reason for them to purchase. The moment will have passed.

Hot stuff!

A great way to remember the role of timing in the negotiating process, is to think about what you do when you boil some milk in a pan. You start off with the milk at room temperature. Then, once the pan of milk is placed on the hot stove, it slowly gets hotter and hotter until it starts to boil. Once you turn the heat off, the temperature slowly drops until it goes back to room temperature again.

In a negotiation process, you need to ask for a buying decision ‘when the milk is at boiling point!’ This is the point where the prospective client or customer is at their most motivated to buy.

How to improve your timing

No two people are the same. When some people are at their most motivated to buy, they will lean forward with their eyes wide open, nodding their head in agreement. Others will hardly change their physiology, but ask you lots of relevant questions, and some will do neither! Whilst anyone involved in face-to-face negotiating should study the basics of body language, you need to combine this with additional resources.

For example, try asking the last 10 people who didn’t buy from you, what it was that made them decide not to proceed and pay attention to anything that suggests your timing was off.

If you regularly hear people say that “it all happened so fast” or their head was spinning from all the details, this might suggest you need to slow down a little. If you regularly hear people say that they just “went off the idea” or they are going to “review it again next year,” this might suggest you need to speed up a little.

I have been in sales and marketing long enough to know that there are many, many reasons why people decide to use one provider over another provider. However, by paying close attention to this often-overlooked area of the negotiating process, you can significantly increase your sales conversion rate.