Jim Connolly Marketing

This marketing gets opened 100% of the time

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marketing letters, mail marketing

Today you will be served thousands of advertisements. You’ll also be sent dozens of spam emails and texts. And one thing they all have in common is that you will ignore them.

But a targeted letter, sent to you, in a plain envelope (no branding of any kind), which addresses you by name, WILL get opened. If your name and address are handwritten on the envelope, the odds on you opening it are pretty-much 100%.

It will have your attention. And this is great news for you and your business.

Pushing the envelope

If you send a marketing letter like the example above, you will enjoy the same impact. Your message will be seen. And you’ll have the attention of your prospective client or customer. This includes those hard to reach prospects, who have previously ignored your outreach attempts. Just think about that for a moment. 

As long as your message is well written and provides them with something of value, you now have your best opportunity to win. And you have that same opportunity with every prospect you target.

What next?

To start with, target 2 or 3 prospects each week with that same approach. Soon, you’ll have lots of prospective clients to follow-up.

Lots of people who will remember your classy, personal and friendly approach.

Lots of irons in the fire. 

And a steady, regular flow of leads.

Use the feedback from your mailings to improve your message and your follow-up. As your conversion numbers increase, increase the number of letters you send. 

Just because email marketing is so cheap that everyone is using it, doesn’t mean you should ignore investing in small-scale direct mail marketing. In fact, that deluge of email is precisely what makes your marketing letter stand out and get opened. 

Photo by Mediamodifier on Unsplash

Higher Fees, Zero Competition, Maximum Profit. Includes 10 Examples!

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less competition, higher fees, better clients

Small businesses often struggle to attract high-quality prospects. They also attract too many price-sensitive enquiries. Are either of those happening to you? If so, it’s a relatively easy issue to fix.

Easy to fix?

Yes. We know exactly why it happens and how to fix it.

Here’s what you need to know, along with 10 examples to get you started.

Let’s go!

Here’s why the problem happens

When competing products or services seem similar, price becomes the obvious way to determine value. As such, there’s little, if any, motivation for someone to pay more. In this common scenario, the lowest price looks like the best deal.

Sure, they ‘may’ go for the 2nd or 3rd lowest price, hoping to insulate themselves from scammers or low quality goods or services. The key thing is that at this point, they’re price shopping. And you’re now competing on price.

Here’s how to fix it. Including 10 examples

A proven way to totally overcome this problem, is through developing something I call meaningful value.

Meaningful value is when you take what your industry normally delivers and improve it so dramatically that comparison becomes impossible.

By default, any product or service with meaningful value has to be radically different from what’s expected. That’s what gives it meaning and elevates it from being average. This automatically places you in a unique position.

A position, where everyone is talking about your products or services.

A position where a growing number of people know the name of your business and what your business stands for.

A position, where you’re no longer competing on price, because what you provide has no serious competition!

Here are 10 examples to get you started.

  1. A service that comes with a 125% money-back guarantee.
  2. A product that’s provably safer than anything in its category.
  3. A product that’s 50% lighter than the industry leader.
  4. A service that’s designed from the ground up, around the unique needs of each client.
  5. A product that’s the only one in its class, to be made from 100% renewable sources.
  6. A product that’s part of a numbered, limited edition.
  7. A service that’s 3 times faster than the industry leader.
  8. A product that’s far longer lasting than anything in its niche.
  9. A service that’s massively more extensive than anything else available to your marketplace.
  10. A product that’s clearly the most energy efficient in its class.

Those ideas are just food for thought. They’re examples to demonstrate the ‘base line’ required, for your products or services to stand out as being of meaningfully more value, than your marketplace expects.

So, invest the time required to create something special. Marginal improvements have marginal impact. They won’t improve your offering to the point where you have no real competition.

Go big. Aim for maximum impact. Make comparison impossible.

Photo by Robert Katzki on Unsplash

10 Reasons your business isn’t growing. And how to fix it

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why business isnt growing, fix it

Photo: Shutterstock.

If you’re wondering, “Why isn’t my business growing?” this information packed article is written just for you. I’m going to share 10 extremely common reasons why your business is not growing that limit or stop the growth of a business, PLUS how to quickly turn things around.

Let’s get started.

Your business isn’t growing, because you stopped growing

Your business is a reflection of the decisions you make. Your decisions are based on what you know and how you feel about what you know. So, for your business to grow, you need to grow. After all, you can’t give your business the benefit of knowledge, which you don’t have.

How to fix it

Read the books. Study those who’ve achieved what you want to achieve. Seek expert advice. Grow. Then watch your business grow too.

Your business is not growing because you’re selling based on price

Your prospective clients can go to Google and find a lower priced alternative in seconds. If they can’t, your pricing is almost certainly way too low. It takes a huge amount of planning and a watertight strategy, to sell based on being lowest priced and still make a worthwhile profit. Some big brands manage to succeed on wafer thin margins, but it’s a very precarious approach. In the very unpredictable economy of 2026, this is just too risky.

Usually, small businesses only market based on being low priced, because it’s easy to lower prices or fees. It takes very little effort. It takes even less creativity. You simply undercut your competitors. We call this the race to the bottom. It’s a race you don’t want to win, as you end up working for peanuts and attracting the lowest value clients.

Note: Clients you attract through low fees are the easiest to lose. Price-focused buyers will jump ship as soon as they learn of a lower priced alternative to you.

How to fix it

Instead of selling based on being the lowest priced, look for opportunities to pump more value to what you do. Not only will this make your business more profitable, it will allow you to compete for better clients… those who value you and what you do.

Your business isn’t growing because you’ve camouflaged yourself

This is one of the most common mistakes made by small business owners. Very, very few small businesses stand out. Perhaps 1 in every 10,000. Instead, they opt for the fake safety of being just like their competitors.

This is why we find that when we look at the providers in any industry, they seem so similar. You could swap them around and no one would notice.

They offer a similar range of services. They make similar promises. They charge similar fees. In effect, they become invisible. Almost impossible to tell apart.
They have camouflaged themselves within the masses.

How to fix it

If you want to stand out, do something outstanding. Something remarkable. Something uniquely valuable. Find a new service, which your competitors don’t provide. Develop a new pricing model.

Just don’t be like all the others, if you want to get noticed.

You’re associating with the wrong people

There’s a direct link between how we think, and the people we habitually associate with.

  • If we associate with people who inspire us, we feel inspired.
  • If we associate with people who encourage us and motivate us to stretch, we grow.

That’s why it pays to be selective regarding the people we associate with. For example, when we associate with people who are doing better than we are, the natural inclination is for us to rise to their level.

Of course, the opposite is also true. When we associate with people who are pessimists, people who complain, people whose businesses are going nowhere, people who blame the economy, people who gossip… we can soon find ourselves with everything they have!

As Jim Rohn used to tell us: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. That average may have changed over the years since my mentor’s passing, but the concept remains true.

How to fix it

Choose wisely. Associate with people who will inspire you to be better. People who will encourage you and motivate you to be the best you can be.

You’re connecting with the wrong people

In business, it’s extremely important to build great connections with influential people. This is the exact opposite of what the typical small business owner does. They go for numbers instead, and look in the worst possible places.

Think about it: We’ve all met business owners who struggle to find new clients, even though they’re members of a networking group and have hundreds, maybe thousands of Linkedin contacts.

That should be impossible.

Right?

Surely, with so many contacts, these struggling business owners would be able to reach out with a message and quickly attract more client enquiries than they need. However, this never happens. Why? Because they are connected to business owners who lack the influence and contacts, to be able to make a difference!

How to fix it

The most successful business owners use the exact opposite approach. I recommend you do the same. It looks like this: They deliberately target the most influential people in their marketplace and put a strategy together, to connect with them. They do this months before they ask anything from them.

And no, you will not find the most influential people in networking clubs, asking struggling business owners for introductions. You’ll have to do a little research. But that’s fine. You’re aiming for quality, not numbers.

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You’re starving your business of the marketing it needs

No matter how great your business is, unless you market it effectively, no one will know. Sadly, it’s a fact that an average business that’s marketed correctly, will always outperform a wonderful business that has ineffective marketing. This is why some lousy businesses make a fortune, whilst some great businesses struggle.

By starving your business of professional marketing, by default, you’re relying on amateur marketing. This makes no sense, as it is both more expensive, and vastly less effective, than getting expert help.

How to fix it

If you want great marketing results get the expert help you need.

Your business isn’t growing, because you’ve become comfortable

Small business owners usually start off with great plans, but somewhere along the way they settle. Instead of focusing on building their business, so it provides them with the rewards they want, they switch.

They switch to lowering their lifestyle expectations, so it meets the limitations of their under performing business.

How to fix it

It’s up to you to switch things back the way they should be! This means leaving your comfort zone, setting exciting goals and then making the commitment to take the action required.

You’re getting too few referrals, so your business isn’t growing

Business owners who get too few referrals have to quickly figure out why their clients and associates are not referring them. This is a tough challenge to face. It means accepting there’s a serious problem and then being willing to fix things.

Yes, it’s serious, extremely serious, if you get too few referrals.

Not only are you missing out on a regular supply of valuable leads, your clients and associates, for whatever reason, do not want to recommend you. And there’s always a reason.

How to fix it

A customer survey may help you find out why. However, honest conversations with those whose opinions you trust are often extremely useful too.

Just as importantly, when you get the feedback you need, make sure you do something with it. It’s hard sometimes to accept you have areas of your business, which you need to improve. I’ve seen business owners ignore really valuable feedback, believing they’re already offering an amazing service.

Don’t make that mistake. Listen to what the feedback is telling you. Then take appropriate action.

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You’re not failing often enough

Many small business owners let their fear of failure stop them from putting their ideas into action. The challenge with that mindset, is that without trying fresh ideas, you stagnate by default.

When a business is new it’s easy to risk everything. After all, unless you start out with a ton of money behind you, (like Sir Richard Branson and Seth Godin), you have nothing to lose.

However, once your business is established the penalty for failing seems bigger.

Here’s why:

  • Business owners tend to over estimate the price of failure. They imagine all kinds of unrealistic worst case scenarios.
  • To make things worse, they also tend to under estimate the potential rewards. They seem unaware that just one good idea can improve their business beyond recognition.

The fear of failure is the biggest hurdle to your success. It robs you of opportunity. It causes you to play it safe, which is the riskiest thing a business owner can do.

How to fix it

Interestingly, the most successful business owners see failure very differently.

It looks like this:

  • If they try something and it doesn’t work, they learn from it. They then invest the lesson in their next idea. This makes them far more likely to succeed the next time. So, they win.
  • If they try something and it works, they learn from it and earn from it. So, they win.

That mindset regarding failure is what I recommend you work on. It was an area of my own development that needed a lot of improvement. But when you learn the commercial value of failure, everything starts to fall into place. It’s like removing a blockage that’s been a barrier to your success. You will never look back.

Now what?

If your business isn’t growing the way you want it to, it’s likely that several or more of those 10 reasons require your attention. Put them right and you’ll enjoy the rewards. So, take some time today to focus on just one of those points. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll achieve the results you know you deserve.

Attract new clients: It works better than advertising

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Typically, business owners buy advertising in order to get the attention of prospects. I’m proposing you consider an alternative. Instead of buying attention with ads, I’m going to suggest you attract new clients with zero money spent on ads.

I’ll include some examples of how you can attract new clients, and I’ll explain some of the huge advantages it has, over buying attention with ads.

Let’s go.

Here’s what we know about small business owners who want to be seen.

  • Some of them pay for ads on Google, Linkedin, X and Facebook, etc.
  • Others pay to be listed in directories.
  • Then there are those who buy ad space in targeted publications.
  • And some buy radio ads or pay to sponsor podcasts, etc.
  • Or they do a combination of the above.

In those examples, the business owner is connecting with strangers and paying a fee every time. That’s a flawed combination! Why? Buying attention though ads leaves you exposed to the threat of a better funded competitor who will outspend you.

I often hear from small business owners who have been priced out of online advertising, including Google Ads, because better funded competitors are outbidding them for the most important placements, words and phrases. And that half page ad you run in a publication, becomes vastly less effective when a competitor decides to invest in a double-page spread for the next 6-months.

If you’re tired of paying ever-increasing fees to interrupt strangers or you want to avoid being vulnerable to a better funded competitor, it’s time to consider a different approach.

Attract new clients from eager prospects

Some business owners attract new clients organically. They build their own community and nurture their own long-term relationships with prospects. This leads to sustainable growth for the business owner, with increasing, not diminishing, returns. With zero ad spend required!

Can you give me some examples, Jim?

Yes.

Here are a few ways businesses attract new clients that came to mind immediately.

  • I’m thinking of that wonderful example, where a small business that ‘doesn’t do social media’ is a social marketing star in their target marketplace area. Read it here: This creative marketing idea costs nothing and is super effective.
  • I’m also thinking about the local accountancy firm, which provides a free, Zoom class every 6-weeks to help new business owners avoid common mistakes.
  • And the art supplies store, which hosts crafting evenings or talks from local artists.
  • Then, there’s the author who speaks at events, which compliment the author’s genre. They not only sell lots of books on the day, they also add lots of newsletter subscribers. This further builds their community. Win win.
  • Naturally, I’m also thinking of people like myself, who freely publish useful ideas to the market they serve.

Attracting new clients in action

In those examples, the business owner is growing a community of prospective new clients or customers. They’re building their very own marketing asset and it increases in value all the time. Their community organically spreads the word, telling friends, colleagues and contacts. This can be massively boosted, if you provide a newsletter for your community. You’ll then have a direct line of connection with them, and they’ll share your newsletter.

And this connection to your community doesn’t belong to an advertiser or a social network. No. It belongs to YOU!

Just think about it: you’ll be building your very own, extremely valuable community. And that community will be helping you reach others. These are people who will get to know you, who will trust you, who will recommend you, who will hire you or buy from you.

How do I know for absolute certain that this works amazingly well?

Simple. I know because I’ve used this exact approach to regularly attract new clients for 30-years! And you can do the same.

Here’s how the best paid service providers earn the highest fees

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marketing, service providers

If you’re a service provider, your income is based on just 2 things.

1. The value you bring. This is what determines how much your clients pay you. Between the best paid and the lowest paid, there can be a factor of hundreds and hundreds of percent. Here’s an example I have used many times. My friend hired a photographer for a product shoot in London. The person he hired charged £17,000 for the shoot. The lowest quote for the same shoot, on the same date, with the same remit, was just over £900.

2. How well you market the value you bring. This is what attracts the attention of your prospective clients. It’s what communicates your value in a way that motivates people to hire you.

Each of those areas can be improved. And by focusing on both areas, they leverage one another. When this happens, it radically improves everything for you.

Compounded for spectacular results

That’s right. You get the financial reward of charging 5x, 10x or whatever. Plus, you’re also attracting more clients. These combine and compound. The results are transformational.

The best part (other than the massive financial rewards)? All of this is possible, by focusing your attention and activity on just 2 things.

Business owners who work on those areas correctly, don’t just improve their results. They dramatically improve everything about their business and their financial future. This isn’t marginal gains I’m talking about. It’s life-changing. You know what always amazes me? Most service providers reading this will find it compelling, or at least very interesting. And they will do nothing.

Consider this for a moment.

Think about how amazing things would be for you at the end of 2025, if you decided now to do something, so you can correctly apply those 2 ideas.

You can do it.

How do I know?

Because I’ve literally lost count of how many people I have seen go from charging average and below average fees, to charging vastly more and enjoying all the benefits that brings.

The power of empathy

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marketing tip, the persuasion gap, sales

Photo: Shutterstock 

How interested are you, regarding the challenges facing your prospective clients or customers? That may seem like an odd question, but your answer is spectacularly important.

Why?

Because the most effective marketing, and strongest business relationships, are all built on a foundation of empathy, aka ‘the feels’: The ability to understand and share in the feelings of another person. 

Think about it for a moment.

  • The vendors you are most loyal to, are those you feel have a connection with you.
  • The vendors you tell your friends about, are those you feel confident recommending.
  • The vendors you feel closest to, are those who understand your wants and needs, because they took time to find out.
  • And the vendors you appreciate the most, are those you feel you actually ‘know’.

Conversely, the vendors you have no interest in are those who have a mostly transactional relationship with you. These are the vendors that don’t really give a rat’s ass about you or what matters to you. Their focus is cold and based on how to maximize their yield from you.

Show your empathy through your marketing

Despite the value of demonstrating empathy and the damage caused by a transactional focus, most marketing lacks feeling. Instead we’re hit with needy messages transparently designed to milk us like a cash cow; sales pitches, killer deals, special offers and marketing gimmicks. It’s stripped of empathy, yet that human connection is the most valuable part.

Here’s the thing

Business is all about people. And marketing is about how those people feel.

That’s because our feelings are what drive the decisions we make and the actions we take. Feelings are what cause people to hire you, buy from you, recommend you and remain a loyal customer. Without those feelings there’s no connection.

And without that connection, you and your business lose.

You know that you care about your customers and the community you serve. So, don’t keep it a secret. Instead, make empathy a visible part of the way you do business and the way you market your business.

Look for empathy opportunities

Proactively look for ways to demonstrate empathy.

Yes, demonstrate!

Words have amazing power. But when you show someone, it has massively greater impact, than when you merely tell them.

Here’s a suggestion. Do a review of the way you communicate with your customers and prospective customers. Are you creating empathy? Are you building them-focused relationships? If not, put it right.

Because when you do, it will radically improve the way they feel about you. And those feelings are what drive their decisions and actions.