Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
    • About Jim Connolly
    • FREE Marketing and Business Development Tips
    • Great blogs
    • Commenting Policy
    • Help for marketing professionals
    • Privacy Policy
    • Disclosure
    • How I use cookies
  • Marketing Tips
  • Let’s Work Together
    • Let’s Grow Your Business!
    • Pick my brain
    • Copywriting that attracts clients and customers

3 Surprisingly effective ideas you can apply to your business, right now

November 19, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing tips, ask better questions, ideas

Today, I want to give you 3 powerful ideas, which you can apply directly into your business. These ideas are based on your answers to the following, equally powerful questions.

Okay. Let’s get started.

1. If your business was perfect in every way, what would it look like? The first step in building a great business, is to know what you’re aiming for. Include everything; from your working hours, revenues. profits and location… to the kind of clients you’d have and how your ideal working day would look.

With this picture of where you want to be, you can start developing a roadmap to take you there.

2. How easy is it for someone to clearly explain the benefits of using your service? The reason this question is so important is this: If people can’t easily explain what you do, they won’t recommend you to their friends.

Develop a short description of why people should hire you. Then, make it a prominent part of your marketing. This fantastic lesson from KFC will help you get it right.

3. What measurable difference makes your service more attractive than the competition? We live in an age where your prospective clients can find 10 alternative providers to you on Google, in seconds. Faced with such intense competition, you need to provide a compelling reason for people to hire you or buy from you.

Every business claims to offer outstanding customer service and value for money. So, if you want to regularly attract clients you need to provide them with something measurably better. Something they can’t get from your competitors. It takes time to come up with a compelling answer to this question. However, the time invested can lead to game-changing results. This post from my archives will help.

I hope you find these questions useful. More importantly, I hope you do something with them.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing

5 Words that can lift your business above the competition

November 17, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Think about it.

When you’ve delivered a project for a client, you want them to say to themselves, “this is much better than I expected“.

When you tell someone about the service you offer, then quote your fee, you want them to say to themselves, “this quote is much better than I expected“.

When someone experiences your customer service, you want them to say to themselves, “this service is much better than I expected“.

Much better than I expected

There’s REAL power in those 5 words. They’re a sure sign that you’re exceeding expectations. And the most successful business owners strive to exceed expectations, with every interaction.

Here’s why:

They know that by truly exceeding expectations, they’ll retain more clients. They know they’ll also receive highly valuable client referrals. And they know they’ll build an exceptional reputation, too.

The reason the majority of small businesses fail to achieve this, is that it presents the business owner with 2, tricky challenges. When you overcome them, you can benefit from all the advantages of exceeding the expectations of your clients and your marketplace. And that’s what I’m going to share with you today.

Let’s start by looking at those 2 challenges and how you can turn things around.

1. Almost every business owner thinks they’re already exceeding expectations

They know how hard they work. They know how passionately they care about their clients. They then confuse their hard work and passion with delivering a remarkably good service.

Working hard doesn’t mean you’re exceeding expectations. After all, you can work darn hard just delivering exactly what your client expects from you! That kind of hard work is merely meeting expectations. Not exceeding them.

How do you find out for sure, if you’re exceeding expectations?

Simple. Just look at the number of referrals your clients give you. This may sound harsh, especially if you’re not receiving regular referrals. But in every industry, people proactively recommend the products and services that really impress them. They want their friends to know. That’s how word of mouth works.

Some clients will stay with an “okay service provider” for years, just because it’s easier than switching to a better provider. The provider can wrongly assume this loyalty is a reflection of truly remarkable service. It isn’t.

When a business isn’t getting a regular stream of client referrals, it’s a sure sign that the business isn’t exceeding what their clients expect from them. And it’s a wake up call. A wake up call to put things right, to up their game, to go from average to remarkable.

At least it should be.

2. It’s harder to exceed expectations than to meet them

Even if a business owner accepts they’re not exceeding expectations, it can be a challenge to figure out what they need to do, to turn things around. Every marketplace is saturated with average providers. And this can make it tricky to get out of that mindset. To see what’s truly possible and blow the lid off the service you provide.

Fear not! Here’s something I share with my clients, to help them overcome this challenge. The best way to elevate your own expectations of what’s possible, is to look outside of your industry and beyond your competitors for guidance and inspiration.

For example.

  • Compare your customer service to Disney.
  • Compare your product’s build quality to Rolex.
  • Compare your design quality to Apple.
  • Compare your distribution to Amazon.

Then, look for better ways to deliver your services, based on what you learn from these (and other) examples of excellence. It takes a little effort. That’s for sure. However, it’s a proven way to radically improve your services. And I’ve seen it work hundreds of times.

What next?

In my experience, it’s the first of those challenges that’s always the toughest.

Even when some business owners know they get very few referrals, they’ll still fail to accept it’s down to them.

  • They’ll say their clients expect too much.
  • They’ll blame their clients for being ungrateful.
  • They’ll tell themselves their clients aren’t the kind who recommend others.

In short, they’ll refuse to acknowledge the problem.

The second challenge is a little less tricky.

It means embracing the edges. And that feels riskier than staying in their comfort zone. But as any entrepreneur (I mean real entrepreneur) will tell you, the riskiest thing you can do is cling to the overcrowded middle ground.

Make no mistake, consistently exceeding expectations takes real commitment. And that’s why so few of your competitors will do it.

It’s also why this wonderful opportunity is open to you. It’s an opportunity to attract the best clients, to attract endless referrals, to retain your clients for longer and build an outstanding business.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing, Professional development

A comfortable way to attract new customers

November 14, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing approachable

How easy is it, for your prospective clients or customers to get in touch with you?

I’m not talking about how visible your phone number, email address or contact form are. I’m referring to something that is just as important and yet seldom written about: How approachable you seem to be, to a prospective client or customer.

For example.

  • When a prospect is reading your newsletter, how approachable do you sound to them? The best newsletters are written, so that the author comes across as friendly and informed. The worst are written by people who come across as lacking in personality or distant.
  • When a prospect reads your comments on social media, how approachable do you sound to them? Some business owners can appear patronising or sarcastic when people dialogue with them or ask questions. This is a really, really bad move, if you want prospective clients to feel comfortable contacting you.
  • When a prospect reads the about page on your website, how approachable do you sound? Many small business owners write their about page in the 3rd person, rather than speak directly to their reader. Instead of saying; ‘Hi, thanks for stopping by. My name is Bob and…’ they start with ‘Bob has worked in web design since 2002…’

Why does this matter to you?

All things being equal, we much prefer to do business with the vendors we like. We also tend to remain loyal to them and recommend them to our friends and contacts.

By building the human touch into the very foundations of your business, including your marketing, you start to nurture a positive relationship with your prospects. You help them form warm feelings toward you, long before you ever speak with them.

This combines to help them feel massively more comfortable contacting you, hiring you or buying from you.

Filed Under: Blogging, Copywriting, General marketing, Social media marketing

Today: An incubator for opportunities to flourish

November 9, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing tips, incubator for opportunities

There’s no doubt that these are worrying times.

There’s equally no doubt that this scenario is an incubator for opportunities to flourish.

Allow me to explain.

We’re looking at 2021 with no clear idea about what impact COVID-19 will have. None of us know when things will return to normal.

Perhaps just as worrying, is that things are almost certainly going to be very different from before, when they return to normal.

So even ‘normal’ will look different, whenever it arrives.

Here’s the thing: When faced with confusion, the tendency is to worry. To hunker down until things go back the way they were. That’s not going to happen. The past truly is the past.

This means that business owners waiting for the old, familiar ways to return before planning what to do, have no end point. No defining date to bounce back stronger. So they’ll drift, which is a lousy idea because you can’t drift your way to success or even survival.

Two points about this confusion and worry

Firstly, as business owners we need to learn to dance with the confusion. Move with the challenges. Live with the changing direction of our marketplace. This means planning for the super short-term as well as the medium and long-term. Checking the numbers once a month is like running blind. Keeping our finger on the pulse is essential.

Secondly, as business owners we have to be very aware that this same confusion and nervousness is impacting everyone else. Our clients and customers are confused. So are our prospective clients and customers. Their decision making is likely to be a lot less predictable than it used to be. We need to keep this in mind, as contracts come up for renewal. We also need to acknowledge that our marketing has to adjust (and adjust and adjust) to the evolving situation, or we’ll become irrelevant.

Flourishing

Every business challenge creates an incubator for opportunities to flourish. Before calling bullshit, take those two points I just mentioned.

  • One business owner will see them as 100% negative.
  • Another will identify (at least) a dozen opportunities to improve their business and own their competitors.

What makes this a perfect storm to flourish, is that the vast majority of business owners are focused on the gloom. This static majority wait and hope, leaving their marketplace wide open to the motivated and agile minority.

  • Interestingly, both types of business owner are equally fearful.
  • All that changes is the reaction they choose when faced with fear. Their response.

Fear either inspires us to respond with positive action, or causes us to respond by hunkering down and doing nothing. It’s where the phrase ‘scared stiff’ comes from.

The key here is that both responses are a choice we make. And our choice is a critically important factor in our results over the coming months and years.

In short, look for the opportunities. If you can’t see them, find someone who knows where to look. Adapt and adjust as required. If you don’t know how, find someone who does.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing, Professional development

Revealed: Why email marketing doesn’t work

November 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

success doesn't care

A reader shared an interesting observation with me.

She told me she had “found out the hard way that email marketing doesn’t work”.

She asked me for my thoughts on why email is so ineffective. I said I’d share them here, as I’m sure some of you will find it useful.

Email marketing works. In fact, it works extremely well. It works predictably, too. Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. That’s because ineffective email marketing can’t work.

Here are just a few, very common examples of how small business owners get email marketing wrong.

  • A poorly written email won’t work. It will fail to motivate the reader to take action; to call you, email you, visit your website, whatever. And almost all small business marketing emails are DIY attempts.
  • A professionally written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a demand for your services.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a dull subject line, won’t work. That’s because no one will open it.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, offering a generic service, won’t work. No one wants to switch to a service that’s no better then their current service.

You get the idea.

In short, before you reject any form of marketing as being ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly.

Filed Under: Business Development, Copywriting, Email marketing & mail shots, General marketing, Social media marketing

Contacts for vanity. Relationships for sanity

November 3, 2020 by Jim Connolly

I’d like to ask you a relatively easy question. How many business contacts do you have?

You can easily get an approximate figure by adding together your social network contacts, the contacts in your address book and email lists, etc. For most reading this, the number will be in the high hundreds. For many it will be in the tens of thousands. And hundreds of thousands for some.

Here’s a harder question. How many business relationships do you have?

Business relationships are harder to count. That’s because they are people you connect with on a deeper level. Not just numbers on the social networks you use. Not just names in your address book, who you have no history with.

Vanity

Building more and more contacts can be intoxicating. It’s often referred to as a vanity metric, because most of these numbers are visible, such as our social network contacts / followers / friends. The bigger the number, the more it strokes our ego. We can be like the popular kid at school. Look at us. We’re a big deal. Even though we know hardly any of these people. We have the BIG contacts number. Go us!

Sanity

Building relationships doesn’t seem as intoxicating. That’s because there’s no publicly visible number attached to it. Who else knows how many people rely on you when they need help, how many people trust you, how many influential people you know, or how many people go to you for council when faced with important decisions?

Sanity numbers are a lot less public than our vanity numbers, but a lot more meaningful and massively more valuable.

With this in mind, how much time do you dedicate each day, to building and nurturing relationships? I’m talking here about going deeper than contact building.

For example.

Everyone who reads my work via email, can chat with me by simply replying to the email. I’ll see it and reply to you personally. I’ve built countless relationships with people, who went from being a reader (contact on my email list), to being in regular dialogue with me (person I have a relationship with).

Business is ultimately all about people. That’s why it’s essential to focus on relationships. This has never been more true than it is today, my friend.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • …
  • 221
  • Next Page »
marketing advice, marketing help Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.

Featured by

marketing advice, marketing help

Categories

  • Blogging (399)
  • Business Development (1,324)
  • Copywriting (279)
  • Email marketing & mail shots (170)
  • General marketing (1,322)
  • How to (282)
  • Misfits (31)
  • Professional development (1,081)
  • Social media marketing (343)
  • Home
  • About
  • Marketing Tips
  • Let’s Work Together

Copyright © 2021 Jim's Marketing Blog

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok