Marketing tips Marketing help

How to convert attention into paying customers

November 2, 2020 by Jim Connolly

So, you want to get your products or services noticed? Of course you do. You work hard, your business is excellent and more people need to know about what you do.

However, before you start working on how to get noticed, you’ll need to put some foundations in place. Otherwise, you’ll blow a ton of money, waste your time and miss out on some potentially great opportunities.

With this in mind, consider the following.

Do you have an accurate way to measure the number of prospective customers or clients who notice you?
Have you determined the number of people you need to notice you, in order for your business to flourish?
Are you able to accurately track whether you are getting noticed by the right people, or just a poorly targeted mix?
When people notice you for the first time, do your *touchpoints build an image of trust? *Touchpoints are the places where a new customer encounters you, such as your website, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, your office, your store, your advertising, etc.
Will new prospective customers find your marketing message compelling enough, to motivate them to come back for more, to contact you or to place an order?
And have you made it extremely easy and intuitive, for them to recommend you to their friends and contacts?
Do you have a robust strategy to obtain their permission to stay in touch with them?
Are your systems (online and offline) regularly tested, to ensure they’re working, or are you losing prospective customers or important data, without even knowing it?

Those are just some of the things you need to look at.

The key is to make sure you don’t simply get noticed, but that you get noticed by the right people. And that when these prospective customers notice you, you’re ready for them. Anything else and you’re leaving money on the table.

Your competitors are lazy and unprofessional

October 31, 2020 by Jim Connolly

When was the last time you researched your competitors?

It has never been easier for you to research the marketing you are competing against, than it is today. In minutes, you can tell if someone is serious competition to your business or simply a dabbler.

For example.

You can read their website and tell instantly if it looks professional or not.
Their site will also show you the range of services they offer and the guarantees they provide.
In some cases, you can see what they charge.
You can also check their social media footprint and see if they are using it to broadcast or connect. You can tell a huge amount about the culture of a business by looking at what they think is appropriate to share on social networks.

Over the past 26 years, I’ve worked with thousands of business owners. One of the things I see over and over again, is a tendency to underestimate the service offered by their competitors. This is a potentially fatal mistake.

Here are 2 of the main reasons why this happens.

1. Caught-up in their own hard work and dedication

They work so hard on their own businesses and care so passionately about their own clients, that they can’t imagine their competitors being equally committed. This is a total fallacy. The vast majority of business owners work their tail off and try extremely hard to keep their clients happy.

We need to avoid underestimating our competitors at all costs. It’s a mindset that causes us to ease off the gas. To coast. And in doing so, we make it way too easy for a hard-working competitor to eat our lunch!

2. Biased reporting

There are a lot of people out there, who tend to tell us what they think we want to hear. Others will tell us what they want us to believe.

Let me expand on that a little.

If you attract a new client, who was fired by one of your competitors for being a late payer / impossible to work with, they’ll seldom admit it. Instead, they’ll often say they left because the service was lousy. Similarly, when you hire people who previously worked for one of your competitors, they’ll often trash-talk about them.

Many business owners use the same suppliers as their competitors. If you ask a supplier how your competition are doing, you’ll often get negative reports. Don’t take too much notice. Those who are unprofessional enough to share news about their customers with you, are unprofessional enough to give fake feedback.

In short, take your competitors seriously. If you’re going to assume anything, assume they’re working hard and targeting your clients.

That will keep you focused on developing your business.

It’s also a really smart move, as we navigate the most uncertain economy in history.

What on earth are they thinking?

October 29, 2020 by Jim Connolly

I’ve been doing some thinking this morning.

I wonder why thousands of accountants pay, to use the exact same newsletter and marketing materials as their competitors… then complain because their look-alike firms attract fee sensitive client enquiries.
I wonder why marketing professionals join networking groups, desperately looking for leads, when they’re supposed to know how to attract the very best clients.
I wonder why most business owners have no idea who the top 5 or 10 people in their industry are, yet they can name the judges on a TV talent show.
I wonder why business owners say the reason their customers don’t recommend them, is that ‘their customers’ just aren’t that type, even though it’s provably incorrect.

Here’s one possible answer

Much like web designers who have ugly websites and communications companies who use bland messaging, I believe there’s too little thought given to the consequences. These situations occur when decisions are made (and avoided) with too little consideration of the effects they will have.

On a surface level, the decisions mentioned here are easy to make. So easy, they’re almost non-decisions.

For example.

Maybe the accountants with bought-in newsletters see them as a tiny financial investment, thus of equally little risk. They’re not thinking enough about the consequences of trying to grow their practice, with a cookie cutter approach.
Maybe the marketing person in the networking group hopes no one will notice the irony of their membership. And if their business is already struggling, they may not even care about the medium-term impact it will have on their reputation.
Maybe the business owners who are less informed about the top contacts in their marketplace, than the judges on a TV show, just want to chill after a hard day at work. They may not necessarily care that much, about the influential people in their niche.
And maybe the business owners who would rather assume their clients ‘just don’t recommend service providers’, aren’t ready yet to face the reality that they’re not referable.

Here’s the thing. Our results are always telling us something. It’s our job to listen. To take heed. And then to take action. That’s always sound advice, but never more so than today.

Closing the sale

October 22, 2020 by Jim Connolly

When I started out in sales and marketing, it was all about closing the sale.

In fact, good salespeople were often referred to as good closers.

Decades later, I still see sales recruiters asking for candidates who have a proven record of closing.

Here’s why we need to be extremely careful before adopting the closing mindset, or any of the countless closing tricks and techniques.

Closed for business?

The challenge with the closing mindset, is that it positions the prospective customer as little more than a barrier. A hurdle between you and the sale. An obstacle to be overcome. Little wonder so many closing techniques are based on psychological tricks.

The use of long, uncomfortable silences at key points in the sales process, for example, is used to put pressure on the prospective client. So is refusing to accept a “no” from them, by asking what they need additional clarity on, each time they clearly just want out.

In a nutshell, the focus is on outmanoeuvring your opponent. It’s them against you. A confrontation.

Here’s a very different approach, along with why I strongly recommend you use it.

Opening relationships

I built my reputation in sales by adopting the polar opposite approach. Instead of focusing on closing, I focused on opening.

Opening relationships, to be exact.

I found (and still find) the idea of closing to be self-defeating. I discovered that you can achieve a great deal more, by opening relationships with people. This means taking time to listen to them. And then learning about their challenges and what they want / need. If our marketing is targeted correctly, we’re automatically only speaking with people who are our ideal profile of client.

When handled correctly, and preceded with effective marketing, this means there’s no need to close anything (or close on anyone).

The whole process becomes a naturally-flowing conversation, where we seek to help people overcome a challenge, with the products or services we provide.

It’s a beautiful, fulfilling way to do business.

It also means refusing to sell anything to anyone, if we believe it’s not what they need.

Too passive?

This approach may sound passive, but consider your friends. Consider the people you like. The people you trust. The people you love to have around you. Are they aggressive towards you? Confrontational? No! That’s because we prefer those who respect us and are open and honest with us.

We like people who are open and honest.

We buy from people who are open and honest.

We trust people who are open and honest.

We recommend people who are open and honest.

In short, the more open we are, the more opportunities we’re open to.

How a failing business increased revenues by over 1100%

October 21, 2020 by Jim Connolly

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.

Choose to thrive, my friend. Choose to absolutely thrive

October 19, 2020 by Jim Connolly

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.