Marketing tips Marketing help

You’re probably doing it wrong

March 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Did you know, the massive majority of small businesses are built the wrong way round?

It looks like this:

The business owner decides the type of service they’re going to offer.
They then try to find clients for their service.

That’s nuts!

It can’t work in any meaningful way.

Why? Because it’s literally (yes literally, not figuratively) the wrong way round.

The most effective business owners do the exact opposite.

It looks like this:

They decide the kind of clients they want to work with. For example, clients who appreciate quality, clients who are happy to pay a premium fee for a premium service, clients with the right mindset, etc.
Then, and only then, they decide what services to offer. The service is based around the things, which their ideal profile of client will value and desire.
They then market this service exclusively to these high value clients. They shun everyone else.
And it works spectacularly well.

If you struggle to attract the right kind of clients, consider reviewing your current strategy.

Focus on the kind of clients you most want to work with. Then, consider rebuilding your services so that those ideal clients will find extremely attractive. Delight these ideal clients and they’ll tell their friends.

It’s way more effective, than trying to sell people a service that:

Wasn’t specifically built around their needs.
Is similar to what your competitors are offering them.

I built my business around this model. As a result, I work with fantastic clients every day and get 93% of my new clients, via client referrals.

The problem with knee-jerk reactions

March 4, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

…is that they often leave us looking like a jerk.

And more importantly, they can seriously damage a business.

In today’s post, I give a very recent example of how nasty a knee-jerk reaction can be, along with a strategy to avoid it happening to you and your business.

Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, a business owner responded angrily to a customer complaint on Twitter. The customer replied. A very heated argument ensued. The business owner then deleted his angry tweets, aware of the damage this could cause him.

Problem solved, right?

No.

As often happens, someone took a screenshot of the business owner’s angry tweets and shared them. Then more and more people shared his tweets. The problem escalated fast. He was soon being attacked by lots of his customers for the way he handled the original complaint, and his attempt to cover his tracks.

4 minutes

Knee-jerk reactions happen fast. Those offensive tweets were sent over a period of just 4 minutes, yet they’ve created a considerable marketing problem for the company concerned.

Marketing problem?

Yes!

Many of the company’s Twitter followers are customers. Some tweeted to say they were going to switch providers. What’s not known is how many other customers saw what happened and will simply leave. However, he also has a longer-term problem to deal with. Tweets are indexed by Google. Any prospective customer researching a new provider can easily stumble upon what his angry customers are saying.

That’s a heck of a marketing problem to overcome.

He’ll need to try and rebuild his connection with his customers. He’ll also need to earn their trust again. Some in similar positions have needed to invest in a rebrand. Others have needed to appoint a new CEO or leadership figure.

All because of 4 minutes of angry tweeting.

I believe the best thing we can learn from situations like this, is to develop a strategy that stops us making the same mistake.

Here’s the strategy I use. I hope you find it useful.

Pausing our knee makes us less of a jerk

Knee-jerk reactions only happen, because we react almost instantly… when emotions are running high.

Just as it’s hard to solve a problem using the same kind of thinking that caused the problem, it’s hard to respond with *love, when you’re still feeling angry or irritated.

*Yes, love. If we don’t love the community we serve, we’re in the wrong job.

So, my strategy when someone puts me in a toxic frame of mind, is to press pause before I respond. This inserts a time cushion between the incident and my response. I find 15 to 20 minutes is ideal. When possible, I use that time to go for a walk. I find a change of scenery makes my thinking even clearer. Either way, I’m able to respond in a much more thoughtful, measured fashion.

That approach has not only helped me professionally, but been enormously useful in general. After all, no one likes a hothead.

The key is to find an effective strategy, before you need it. If mine doesn’t work for you, keep looking until you find one that does. It’s so much easier to avoid knee-jerk problems before they happen, than to have to deal with all the damage afterwards.

Marketing Essentials: Start with the end in mind

March 2, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Small business owners come to me regularly, asking for something they don’t need. I’m sharing this with you, because it’s a symptom of a serious problem. A serious problem that loses business owners a fortune.

Here it is… plus how you can avoid it.

First, here are some examples of dangerously misleading statements. I receive these pretty-much every day from small business owners:

I need more leads for our sales team.
I need more enquiries from my website.
I need more social media followers.
I need more traffic to my website.

They’re wrong. One hundred percent, provably wrong.

More sales leads, additional client enquiries, bigger social networks and more website traffic are not their desired outcomes. That’s because they’re not end results or ultimate marketing goals. What they actually need, is more customers, higher profits, bigger contracts, higher revenues or more sales, etc.

The challenge with searching for the wrong thing, is that it will lead you down the wrong path. You’ll ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers and end up with the wrong outcomes.

Think about it

If fewer sales leads, BUT from high spending, profitable customers is exactly what’s required, you’ll never find it by asking the wrong questions.

If you can quickly (and massively) improve your profits / revenues, by developing new products for your existing customers, you’ll never find it by asking the wrong questions.

If you want to escape from the feast and famine cycle, by developing a reliable source of profitable new clients, you’ll never find it by asking the wrong questions.

So, start with the end in mind.

Get specific. Decide what your desired marketing outcome is: In other words, determine exactly what you need your business to achieve. Then, focus on that like a laser. This will help you get your marketing on the right track and ensure you’re aiming for the correct targets.

Are your prices too high?

February 28, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

They could be.

Alternatively:

You could be marketing to the wrong people.
Your marketing could be reaching too few of the right people.
You could be asking people to make a decision, before they have all the information they need.
Your marketing promises could be too similar to those offered by your lower priced competitors.
Your marketing could be failing to clearly demonstrate enough value, making your prices seem high.
Your marketing could be suffering from Toxic Complexity. This is dangerous and extremely common.
You could be responding to enquiries too slowly (or too quickly).
Your branding could be positioning you (in the mind of your marketplace) as a lower priced provider than you actually are.

And there are tons of other reasons. None of which have anything whatsoever to do with your prices.

Here’s the thing. Lowering your prices can be tempting. It’s a quick and extremely easy way to make your products or services seem better value.

However, it’s a terrible strategy.

It kills profitability. And it engages you in a pricing race to the bottom, where the cheapest provider wins. They ‘win’ the worst possible slice of the marketplace… low profit customers, who’ll leave as soon as a cheaper provider turns up.

A far better alternative is to find out what’s actually causing people to think you’re too expensive. And to then focus on improving your marketing in those key areas.

If you’re not sure where to start looking for answers, that brief list above is a useful place to begin.

Mistakes, birthdays and billionaires

February 24, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I have an idea to share with you today, from a weird combination of sources. It involves mistakes, birthdays and billionaires.

My friend Amy has a landmark birthday today. One of those birthdays with a zero at the end. She said she was now “officially old” and that it’s the first time she’s not felt like celebrating a birthday.

I offered her another way to look at things, as she was clearly feeling down.

Imagine you’re just a penny away from becoming a billionaire. Nothing really changes on the day you earn that final penny. You were already pretty-much a billionaire and probably extremely wealthy for decades. You may feel different now you have that extra penny, but you’re just a penny richer than the day before. That’s all.
Landmark birthdays work the same way. You may feel very different. In reality, you’re just a day older than yesterday. That’s all.

What does this kind of thinking have to do with business?

Every year in business, you make countless decisions, have thousands of conversations, give numerous presentations and send lots of proposals… it’s an almost endless stream of activity.

When you make a poor decision, it’s just one decision.
When you have an unproductive conversation, it’s just one conversation.
When your proposal is rejected, it’s just one proposal.
When a meeting doesn’t go the way you want it to, it’s just one meeting.

In the same way as the final penny doesn’t make you rich, and the day your age has a zero on the end doesn’t make you old, a negative commercial outcome must be seen in context.

When you make a poor decision, learn from it and make better future decisions.
When you have an unproductive conversation, unpack it and make the next one more productive.
When your proposal is rejected, look for ways to make the next one stronger.
When a meeting doesn’t go the way you want it to, review what happened and improve.

A recent failure does not define us as failures. The last penny doesn’t make us rich. And I hope Amy now has a very happy 20th birthday.

Stability through impact

February 22, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

There are 3 broad ways you can guide the direction of a business:

You can aim for stability.
You can aim for impact.
You can aim for stability through impact.

Here’s how those 3 options pan out, and why one of them gives you the best chance of fully achieving your maximum potential.

Primary focus on stability

Business owners with a primary focus on stability, plan and act with a safety-first mindset. This often blocks them from making the improvements they need, even when their business isn’t growing. If something ‘kind of works a little’, they’ll hold onto it tight. They do, this rather than try something new with an infinitely greater potential to help them.

They want things to improve. Of course they do. But they want things to improve, without them making any meaningful changes. Change equals risk. And risk feels scary. Too scary.

Primary focus on impact

Business owners with a primary focus on impact, plan and act with a mindset that’s driven by the desire to make a meaningful difference. They have a vision of the impact they seek to create and are motivated by the desire to see that vision become a reality.

Within this broad group are business owners who are well-prepared, with a thoroughly researched idea, which they are passionate about. However, this group also contains business owners who have a deep belief in their idea, but their idea hasn’t had the necessary rigour applied. There’s no market for it. The numbers don’t stack up.

We see this all too often, when a new business opens with an expensive launch, lots of bold claims and in no time, they’re gone. It’s heartbreaking.

Focus on stability THROUGH impact

The business owner whose primary focus is stability through impact understands something, which the vast majority of people totally miss.

They’ve figured out that a balance needs to be achieved.

They know that hunkering down, avoiding change and hoping things will magically improve is a terrible strategy. You can’t hope your way to the top. Or even the middle. At best, you’ll go broke slowly. (which is a lot more painful than going broke fast, as it traps you for years in a stressful, under-performing business).

They also know that stability is essential. If you’re only focusing on making an impact, without ensuring you have a stable foundation, you’re very likely to fail. Nothing of value can be built on flimsy foundations. You need that stability. It’s a must.

So, what do they do?

They decide what impact they want to create. In other words, they choose the thing that they want to be known for… the difference they want to make to their marketplace (or the world). Then they do the research and put a plan together. A realistic, costed and robust plan.

Then, they work the plan.

With the stability of working to a solid plan, and fuelled by the motivation of making an impact, you can fully activate your maximum potential.