Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Your customer base is under attack!

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In just a couple of weeks, your customer base or client base will come under attack!

Why?

Because January is when your most savvy competitors will launch their New Year marketing initiatives.  These guys are the one’s you need to watch out for, as they tend to do things very effectively, (it’s why I call them savvy.)  They will be targeting your existing customers and your prospective customers with the most attractive offers and deals they possibly can.

Many of your competitors will be working with professional marketing consultants and copy writers, who will have written powerful marketing material, to motivate your customers to join them.  This is especially the case, if you work in the business to business sector.  This marketing material will already have been written and is waiting to be sent or published.

Here’s the good news!

It’s not too late for you to do something about this.  It’s not too late for you to ramp up your New Year marketing.

However, if you have still not developed a marketing strategy, to retain your existing clients and win new ones, here’s the best advice I can offer you.  Reschedule your next call or meeting and get working on it immediately! If you don’t know what to do, talk to someone who does.

It’s that important.

Make 2010 your best year ever – 8 simple ideas!

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Why not decide right now, to make 2010 your best business year ever?

This post contains 8 common sense, buzzword-free ideas, intended to help you achieve better results for your business in 2010 and beyond.  You will already be acting on some of these – You may already be acting on all 8 of them; in which case see this as a reminder and share it with your contacts and friends.

I would also like you to add to the list and make it more valuable for everyone.

So, to get the ball rolling, here are the first 8 ideas; to help a business thrive in 2010 and beyond:

1. Don’t wait for ‘it’ to just get better – It won’t

Do you know what most small businesses do when times are bad?  They hunker down and hope things will just get better.  Even when the economy was thriving and banks were throwing money at people and businesses, there were companies going broke every day; because they just carried on doing what didn’t work and hoped that things would magically, just get better.

Things didn’t just get better back then and they certainly won’t today – in the midst of the worst economic period in living memory.

Apple Inc produce an expensive range of premium products.  They are the kind of company that was supposed to suffer most during the recession. However, during the past year, Apple Inc have posted record breaking profits; the best numbers in their history.  They have achieved this through fusing great products with brilliant marketing.  My business has just had it’s most successful year in our 15 year history – again, by matching a great service with highly effective marketing.  Don’t wait for things to just get better in 2010. Make them better.

2. Embrace time management

Start managing your time more effectively, so you don’t waste major time doing minor things.  Delegate whenever possible.  Make it a habit throughout the day to ask yourself; “is this the best use of my time right now?”  If the answer is no, go and do whatever it is you were just avoiding.

3. Avoid toxic commercial relationships

Look at your commercial relationships and see if you are associating with the right people for what you need to achieve.  Associating in negative company does not only make good kids behave badly, it causes good businesspeople to make bad decisions too.  That’s because the people with whom we habitually associate have an impact on how we think.  As someone told me many years ago; “keep associating with people that are going nowhere and one day, everything they have will be yours.”

With this in mind, you can improve your thinking by listening to the right kind of influences.  As our thoughts control our actions, this 1 step alone can massively improve everything for you.  Start listening to people that already have whatever it is you want to achieve.  Let these people be the ones that influence your thinking.  Learn from them.

4. Spend less time staring at your TV

Don’t just get a year older in 2010, get a year better too!  If you watch TV in the evenings, try spending less time in front of the TV screen and use that TV time to sharpen your skills.  Just 1 hour less TV time each week night, will give you 20 hours of study time each month.

If you want to achieve more sales in 2010, learn how to sell and market your services during that time.

5. Set some business goals

It’s not enough to simply state on a piece of paper that you want to increase sales by X% – you need to make a plan for how this will happen.  Set yourself some tangible, measurable, time-specific marketing / income goals and write up a plan on how to achieve them.

There are a million places on the Internet that will explain the simple process of goal setting. Just remember to keep it simple and back the goals up with action.

6. Sharpen up your commercial image

What does your business look like from the outside? People do business with and recommend people and organizations that they trust.  If a business looks like it’s being run on the cheap, people are less inclined to use it; they want to believe that a business will still be there in 6 months or 6 years time.

These days, well over 90% of people check out a potential proider online, before they decide to do business with them. If a business operates behind an outdated website or blog – THINK about the image that’s creating in the mind of potential customers.  It shows neglect and lack.  It shows no commitment to quality.  There’s no need for this to happen!  Remember, you can get a polished, professional site or blog (like this one) using Headway for very little.

7. Develop your own unique voice

In business, it’s great to learn from others, but it’s really important to develop your own, unique voice.  This means having the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say.  Will you always be right? Probably not, but people will respect your honesty and your courage for voicing your own opinion.

People follow those who are courageous and trust those who are honest!

8. Measure it so you can manage it

Effective marketing comes from the process of testing and measuring.  It’s impossible to know if your marketing is on track or not, unless you are able to accurately measure the feedback it generates.  Most people count hits, clicks, bounce rates, followers, retweets etc – but seldom measure the impact each of these is having on their business.

What are 10 followers on Twitter or 500 Facebook fans actually worth to your business?  Yes, every person is priceless, but in commercial terms, you need to know what your business networks are actually generating for you and your business.  As my mentor, the late, great Jim Rohn used to say, money isn’t everything, but it’s easy to count.

So, start measuring what all your marketing is costing you (in both time and money) and what it’s generating for you in tangible, bankable results (that’s money.) Either learn how to fix what isn’t working or replace it with something that does work.

All you need is a laptop and a phone line

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I was speaking with the engineer who came to fix our heating system yesterday.

As I made him some coffee, he asked me what I did for a living, so I explained a little about what I do.  Afterwards, he said;
“So, you run an marketing business, with clients all over the world, and all you need is a laptop and a phone line? Wow!”

I then replied;
“So, you fix complex electronic control panels for advanced heating systems and all you need is a bag of tools? Wow!”

It takes more than tools

Thanks to the Internet, there are more free or inexpensive marketing tools than ever before.  Anyone can set up an account with; Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, WordPress or Blogspot etc.  However, very few small business owners or entrepreneurs achieve significant, tangible results from their investment in these tools.

Here’s why: They only take step 1, of what is a 2 step process.  Once you have mastered the mechanics of the tools, (how they work), there’s a second step required.

You need to study how to use the tools you have selected, in order to generate bankable results.  Very, very few people have a strategy for transferring; followers, fans, retweets, connections, readers etc, into paying clients or customers.  I include social media gurus here, most of whom seem to rely almost exclusively on speaking at conferences for their income – Few of whom, surely, want to spend so much time away from their home each year.

Sadly, there’s no generic piece of marketing advice I can give you, that will provide you with the correct marketing strategy for your business.  That’s because  your strategy needs to take many factors into account, which are specific to you and your business, in order for it to work.

For example, when a new client joins my marketing service, our entire first marketing session is a fact-finder, where I ask them dozens of questions about their business and what they want to achieve.  It takes hours!  However, armed with that fact-finder information, I can develop a powerful marketing strategy for them, based on taking them from where they are today, to where they want to be in 3/6/9 and 12-months.  Then, I work with them every week for a year to make that happen.  Between us, their competitors don’t stand a chance!

Here’s the bottom line: If the purpose of your marketing activity is to generate bankable results, (rather than followers, retweets and fans, etc), and this is not happening, you must change your strategy.  Don’t become one of the masses, who mistakes movement for progress.  Hard work alone is not enough.

How to discover what your prospective customers want

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If you want your marketing to succeed, it’s essential that you understand exactly what your customers and prospective customers want.  This feedback allows you to develop your services and market them; with an accurate understanding of what your marketplace actually needs, rather than what you think or hope it needs.

Listening to the marketplace

Sadly, the majority of small businesses get their feedback almost exclusively from existing customers.  And even then, only when there’s a problem or when a customer is delighted with the service they have received.  These extreme ends of the scale are useful, but limited.  They tell you what you are doing well and less well – but they don’t really help you discover what your prospective customers want or need!

Remember: When you develop a product or service that’s the answer to a common problem, which is not being solved effectively by anyone else, then market it well – You can achieve hockey stick sales figures VERY quickly!

I regularly ask my clients for feedback on everything I do.  However, I also ask for feedback from my blog readers, many of whom are prospective clients.  I regularly encourage them to comment on my posts and I often ask for their opinions.  I did this most recently on Saturday, in a dedicated post. I need to know what my readers think I am doing well and what they believe I am doing less well. I need to know what topics my readers are most interested in, etc.  This gives me a clearer picture about what my prospective clients are interested in.  So far, via email, blog comments and Twitter, I have had over 100 people get in touch.

Marketplace feedback

If you genuinely want to be as relevant and valuable to your marketplace as possible, start talking to them and request feedback regularly. Here are some of the things I suggest you look for:

  • Look for problems that you can fix.
  • Look for gaps in the market that you can service.
  • Look for areas where there are misunderstandings regarding your industry, as these are opportunities to educate and inform.
  • Look for areas where your competitors are strong, so you can make your services stronger / more valuable.
  • Look for ways to differentiate your services from what’s already ‘out there.’
  • Look for feedback regarding how well known your ‘brand’ is among your prospective clients or customers.

Those are just some really useful pieces of information, that can help you massively improve the success of your marketing.  However, in order to get that data, you need to ask.

What do you think?

So, what additional feedback would you add to that list?  Please take a moment to share your thoughts with your fellow readers and myself.

Your feedback please

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In order to make this blog as valuable a resource as possible for you, I need to know what YOU want to see here.

Sure, I have analytic tools that let me see the posts that get read and shared the most, but that’s only part of a much bigger picture.

So, with that in mind, I would really appreciate it if you would let me know what you would like to see me do more of on the blog (or less of.)  Am I missing subjects that you would like to see me cover? Let me know.

Please feel free to give as much or as little feedback as you wish on anything related to the blog. If you would rather contact me via email, feel free to drop me an note over at jim (at) jimsmarketingblog.com.

Please help me make this a better marketing asset for you and the rest of the blogs community in 2010.  Your opinions really matter to me.

Thank you!

For every promise, there’s a price to pay

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Here’s a question for you:
Why do millions of people own exercise machines, which they used for a week and then packed away somewhere, never to be used again?

The answer is simple, yet it contains a valuable lesson.

The reason people bought those machines, is because the ‘perfect’ people in the TV commercials advertising them, promised 6-pack abs in weeks with just 3 minutes of fun exercise a day. Why did the marketing team behind that machine promise those amazing results in just 180 seconds a day? Because they know that the average person wants results without the pain.  They want the washboard abs, just so long as they can still eat crap and avoid exercise for the remaining 23 hours and 57 minutes of each day.

In business, I see examples every day of people who want the results, without paying the price.  However, as my mentor, the late great Jim Rohn used to say; “for every promise, there’s a price to pay.” In other words, if we want a particular end result, we need to take the actions required to get that result first. We need to pay the price in advance.

  • Want marketing that works, so that your business thrives in 2010? Stop relying on generic, free advice to grow your business.
  • Want better cash flow?  Hire a better accountant.
  • Want people to spread great word of mouth publicity about your business? Make your business worth talking about.

This really is nothing more than common sense – yet the failure to apply it is putting people out of business, every hour of every day.

Paying the price in advance

If there’s something, which someone wants from their business in 2010, that was missing in 2009; they have a decision to make.  They can either decide to start paying the price for success or they can continue to count the cost of failure.

Is it time to ask for the sale yet?

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Today, I would like to share some ideas with you, about the importance of timing in the sales process.  The idea for this post came to me, whilst standing in a queue last night buying some milk!

While I was waiting to be served, I noticed that the shop had some pumpkin shaped, Halloween chocolate on a shelf, with the price heavily reduced.  Although the chocolate was still within its sell-by date and would have tasted exactly the same as it would have on Halloween, who wants pumpkin shaped, Halloween chocolate in December?  No one! Even with its price discounted by 75%, it was stuck on the shelf unsold.  That’s because it’s moment had passed.

Here’s the thing: The sales process is time sensitive.  If you have a prospective customer, who is thinking about buying from you and you ask for the sale before they are ready – you will lose the sale.  Equally, if you wait too long to ask for the sale, you will also lose it – because their interest has cooled. They are no longer a hot prospect!

Think of the sales process as being like a saucepan of cold water placed on a hot stove.  The water starts off cold, then it gets warmer and warmer until it reaches boiling point.  In business, that’s the point where the prospective customer is most likely to buy from you.  When we turn the stove off, the water quickly stops boiling and cools, until it reaches room temperature.  In sales, every degree in heat that’s lost, makes it less likely that you will get the sale – Until you have zero chance because they have gone elsewhere or are simply no longer interested.

Here’s what 23 years in the business tells me

In my experience, the majority of companies wait too long, rather than ask too soon.  I’ve lost count of how many times people have told me that they didn’t want to rush the prospective customer into making a decision – only to find that when they finally did ask for the sale, the customer had gone elsewhere!

In your business, you need to identify precisely at what point in your negotiating process, your prospective customers are at their hottest.  That’s the point where you need to ask them to make a decision. Not before. Not after.  Get this right and you will massively increase the number of sales you make.

Have you figured out when your prospects are at their hottest? Do you have any tips on how to get the timing right, that you would like to share?  What do you think?

3 ways to quickly improve your results

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Here’s one of the best pieces of advice anyone ever gave me:

Don’t just learn from your own experiences; learn from the experiences of others.

Learning from the experiences of others, is also one of the most effective (and fastest) ways to grow your business successfully.

That’s because:

  1. It’s a LOT less expensive to learn from the mistakes of others.
  2. By emulating their success, you can massively accelerate the development of your business.

The challenge here, is that in order to learn from others, you need to become a skilled observer.  However; whilst most business owners and marketers are excellent at general observation, they are very poor at detailed observation.

Here are 3 simple ways that you can improve your commercial observation skills:

Step 1: Learn from the right people and companies

Sometimes, people in business are less than 100% honest with the claims they make about their commercial achievements.  If you then try to emulate them and they are actually going nowhere, it’s going to be a total waste of time.  You will, unknowingly, be copying a model of failure.  I see this a LOT more often than you might think!

For example, I know a marketing guy on Twitter, who has tens of thousands of ‘fake’ followers. If you were to replicate how he uses Twitter, thinking it would build you a valuable network, you would fail.  He actually used software that mass followed, then unfollowed hundreds of thousands of random twitter accounts. He then attracted tens of thousands of auto-follows – from people who automatically follow anyone who follows them.  The day Twitter stopped that from working, his follower numbers stopped, then started shrinking!  However, his follower count is still measured in the tens of thousands, which will fool many into thinking his approach works.

So, never just assume that someone is succeeding with something.  Before you seek to emulate someone’s success, check them out as thoroughly as possible.

Step 2: Be selective, because what works for some may not work for you

Just because something works for one person, that’s no guarantee it will work for someone else.  A great example of this is Seth Godin’s blog.  Seth decided to switch comments off – so his readers could no longer comment on his posts.  As a result, if people want to discuss Seth’s posts, they need to do so on services like Facebook, Twitter etc – which helps Seth reach even more people. A stroke of pure genius!

That approach works brilliantly FOR SETH, because he’s an international best selling author with millions of fans.  If ‘the average’ blogger tried that same approach, they would anger their regular commenters and probably lose a ton of readers, being seen as arrogant or uncaring.

So, even if you know that something is working for another business or person, think about how likely it would be to succeed for you, in your unique situation, before you embrace it.

Step 3: Learn how to read data correctly

Very often, business owners and marketers will observe a business achieving a great result and totally misread how they did it.  It’s very easy to look at information and come to the wrong conclusion.

For example, if I said that taking medicine is what kills the majority of people, you would rightly think I was nuts!  However, if you look at the data, most people who die were on some kind of medication.  However, that’s because the majority of people who pass away, do so after being ill, and thus taking some kind of medication.

You could use the same twisted logic to say Mary was a bad person and not to be trusted, because she spends her days mixing with criminals – when that’s simply part of Mary’s job as a police officer!

Here’s another example.  Someone recently told me that she tried using the same retweet plugin on her blog, that I use here, but that it didn’t work.  I asked her if it was installed correctly, and she replied that it was – but that very few of her readers used it.  She assumed that the button was what generated the retweets, and not the content.  Of course, the button only makes it easier for people to share what they want to share.

In my experience, the key to becoming an effective observer, is to take time to look beyond the obvious and then to apply good, old-fashioned common sense before taking action.

Over to you!

What do you think? What are your tips to become a better observer? Take a moment to share your ideas with the rest of us.

Warren Buffett and daring to be different!

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This quick marketing tip is all about the marketing power of being one of a kind in a world full of blandness.

One of the many common characteristics of successful businesspeople, is that they have the courage to be different.  I’m not talking about being different just for the sake of it – I’m talking about being brave enough to stand out from the crowd and do what you believe to be right.

I remember listening to Warren Buffett, the world’s wealthiest and most successful investor, explaining how his company made so many tens of billions of dollars. He said: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” In other words, he achieved financial success by not following what the crowd were doing.

Marketing the ordinary

In marketing, we know that the more similar a product or service is to its competitors, the harder it is to market or get noticed.  People don’t talk about the mundane and ordinary – they talk about the extraordinary.  Yet, most businesses within the same industry are almost clones of one another.

Here’s what we see in every town and in every city: We see competing companies offer the same range of services, to the same marketplace, with the same generic promises.

  • You need to be smarter than that, if you want to avoid price or fee sensitive customers.
  • You need to be smarter than that, if you want to attract word of mouth publicity too; because people only speak (or remark) on those businesses that are remarkable.
  • You need to be smarter than that if you want to want an above average business.

Most small business owners don’t really own a business at all.  They have simply bought themselves a job with long hours and a ton of stress.  They don’t look to the future with excitement, they look to the future with apprehension.

The great irony here, is that by taking the easy route and replicating what their competitors are doing and saying, they actually make business (and life) far harder for themselves.  Conversely, by having the courage to be different, business and life become far, far easier.

Who do you listen to?

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As someone who has worked in marketing almost all my adult life, I am a keen student of human behaviour.  You know what?  After 23 years in the business, I am still often amazed at what I see.

Take yesterday for instance

Following the sad death of Jim Rohn at the weekend, I wrote a brief tribute.  After it was published, I was stunned by the number of direct messages I received via Twitter and Friendfeed, from intelligent people, telling me they had never heard of him.

The reason I find this so interesting, is that Jim spoke at over 6,000 events and reached over 4 MILLION people.  He was a true thought leader, who focused exclusively on delivering tangible results.  But what about value? I recall how Jim was once paid a million dollars by a soft drinks company, for a little of his time and some of his ideas.

By way of contrast, you can hire many of today’s Internet famous thought leaders for relative peanuts.

Here’s my point: We all need to be super-selective regarding the voices we allow to influence us.  That’s why I believe it’s important to check from time to time, that we are listening to the right people for what we want to achieve.

Jim Rohn RIP

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jim rohn, jim rohn international, e james rohn,

On 5th December 2009, my mentor passed away.

E James Rohn, known to millions simply as Jim Rohn, was a truly incredible human being. Though we never met in person, Jim’s words of wisdom helped me turn my life around. His work has been a regular part of my life and my business ever since.

There may have been days where I didn’t read, listen to or watch something of Jim Rohn’s, but not many.

I own just about every word Jim has ever published and I believe I have every recording he ever made too.  This was easily the best commercial investment I ever made.

Jim Rohn’s impact on me

When I discovered Jim’s work I was 21 years old, broke and living in a slum. I was financially secure for life just 8 years later. That’s the life-changing impact Jim Rohn has had on me.

Jim’s work was the spark that ignited something, which even I did not know I had.  He showed me, in plain English, with no bullshit, that I could become whatever I wanted to; that my past did not equal my future.

Jim’s advice helped me more than ‘just’ commercially.  In fact, at the lowest points in my life, especially when my parents passed away, Jim’s advice helped me remain sane and kept me moving forward.

Perhaps the strongest testimony to the impact of Jim Rohn’s work, is that right now, all over the world, there are millions of people who are feeling his loss just like I am. That’s quite an achievement, for a farm boy from Idaho.

Photo credit: Jim Rohn International

This is marketing madness!

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Here’s a great example of how bad marketing can not only result in you making fewer sales – But actually LOSE you existing customers too!

As you read this post, the owner of a small web hosting business is wondering why so few people have responded to his latest marketing email.

In his marketing email, which was forwarded to me by a reader, he explains that over the Christmas holiday period, the load on his servers increases and this means people’s sites will load really slowly. To frighten his customers still further, he explains that the server speed could be too slow for their customers / clients / readers to bother with.  It could screw up their business and make them look bad. (Ouch!)

Sounds horrible right?  Well, the email goes on to paint a picture of increasing doom – Until he asks his customers to consider upgrading their hosting package, claiming that the new, more expensive package, will deliver a reliable service.

Marketing madness

Can you spot the problem here?  This guy has just sent all his customers an email, which tells them the servers he has placed their sites on are overloaded.  However, on the page of his website, which sells the package that he now says is unreliable, he says the total opposite.  In fact, he makes a number of very bold promises about the reliability of the servers he uses.  I have never heard of this hosting provider, his services might be great – but that’s not the point!

Not only has he just informed all his customers that he put their sites on overloaded servers, they now know they can’t trust his company’s marketing promises either!

In a shockingly bad effort to up-sell his clients onto a 400% more expensive package, he has actually massively damaged their opinion of the current service they receive from him.  They will now be worrying about the problems that he has forecast for December and some will be looking for a reliable alternative to him and his false promises!

It’s madness for someone to try and scare their customers into upgrading, by claiming that the service he previously sold them is not what he promised.  It’s also just plain stupid to tell lies to your customers.  This up-sell approach does nothing, other than damage the provider’s reputation and alert the customer to change provider.

Marketing an upgrade to your customers or clients

If you want to encourage existing customers to upgrade from one level of service to the next, you need to demonstrate huge, additional value in the upgraded service.  You create a vast difference between their current service and the upgrade, by massively increasing the value of the upgrade – NOT by telling them that what you already sold them is crap. You need to pump so much value into the upgrade, that they would be nuts not to use it.

This value focused approach makes the upgrade process less of a risk for the customer and enhances their experience of your business.  They get to see you as being able to grow to meet their demands.

Your turn

What do you think of the approach used by this hosting company?  Have you seen examples of it before and did it encourage you to spend more money with them?  What do you think when a provider bad mouths the quality of their own, entry level services?  Share your opinions with us.

Why bloggers post every day!

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Ever wondered why some bloggers write blog posts every day?  Well, I did too – So I tried a 14 day experiment, and I am going to share my results with you.

Usually, my blogging schedule is erratic; often just a handful of posts in a month.  However, as regular readers will have noticed, I have been updating this blog with fresh posts every day, for the past 2 weeks.

Why?

I wanted to measure for myself, just what the value to a blogger is, of updating their blog every day with new posts.  I assumed (rightly as it turned out) that 2 weeks would be a long enough period, for me to get some worthwhile data for you.  The results have been VERY interesting!

In brief, here’s what I have found:

RSS Subscribers

One of the biggest differences (in percentage points) has been the increase in new RSS subscribers to the blog.  New subscriber numbers are up an amazing 400% on the 2 weeks previous!  I was expecting to see some increase, but this was far, far higher than I imagined.

Blog Comments

The number of comments per post varies all the time, literally from post to post, making it very hard to measure over such a short period.  Equally, comments are often added to blog posts weeks, months and even years after a post is written.

Comments in total during the past 14 days are up by around 300%.  This is less impressive than it may sound, as there were many more posts for people to read and thus comment on than usual.  Also, regular readers have been visiting the blog more often and sharing posts with their friends more often, which increases comment numbers.

This leads me on to the biggest difference I have noticed with the comments, over the past 2 weeks.  The biggest (and most interesting development for me), has been the number of new people commenting here.  I have seen a lot of new commenters, many of whom have said that they have only just discovered the blog.

Blog traffic

The number of unique visitors here increased by just under 30% during the 2 weeks.  That’s a significant increase, especially as most of it came over the past 5 days.

Interestingly, the number of page views here increased massively.  This seems to be from new visitors having a look around and established readers visiting more often, in line with the number of new posts.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that daily blogging, even for a relatively short period of time, has significantly increased ‘traffic’ into the blog.

Conclusion

The biggest revelation for me has been how much fun I’ve had! I have REALLY enjoyed putting the posts together.  More than this, the increased activity on the blog from commenters and those discussing posts on Twitter, has been amazing.  The whole ‘atmosphere’ of the blog has been improved in every way.

However, it is very clear from the significant increases across the board, why so many bloggers post fresh content every day.  Daily blogging has improved literally every metric I have measured – not just those mentioned in this brief post.  It’s also improved areas that are far harder to measure, like making the blog a lot more ‘alive’ and vivid.  These things are harder to plot on a chart than RSS subscribers or traffic, but they are massively valuable to anyone who genuinely cares about their blog and it’s community of readers.

My dilemma

I strongly believe that the only time to write a blog post is when the writer has something VALUABLE to say, which is worth sharing.  I don’t believe in having a blogging schedule. As a professional writer, I have found it relatively easy to publish fresh content each day – but what about the quality of that content?

I see zero point in posting dross occasionally, just so that I don’t miss a day!  That material will live on the Internet forever, with my name attached to it. My 4 year old son will see it when he’s older – I don’t want him thinking his daddy writes pedestrian, generic bullshit occasionally, because I’m a slave to some self-imposed, daily blogging schedule.

I occasionally read posts by people considered to be GREAT bloggers, which seem ‘pretty average’ at best.  The thing is, these guys are NOT average writers; they are the top of the blogging pile.  I always wonder if the reason I find those posts average, is just that the subject is not of interest to me, or if it’s because the blogger wrote an average post, just to maintain his or her daily blogging schedule.

The bottom line for me, is that by blogging here each day, the value of this blog has improved in every way.  So, I’ve decided to aim for blogging here on a more regular basis than before, but only when I have something I believe is worth sharing with you.  If that’s daily, then fine. If not, then I assure you, you will be missing nothing worth reading.

What do you think?

Did you find any of that data useful or interesting?  What has your experience been?

Photo credit: UnSung

Your 5 step marketing make-over!

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This post is all about how to improve your marketing and it contains links to stacks of great, free marketing advice!

I wrote this today, because I know that many of my readers work really hard and yet fail to get the sales or profits that their hard work deserves.  In the majority of cases, their products and services are great – But they are being let down by ineffective marketing.  So, in this post I am going to give you a quick marketing exercise, designed to get you on the right track.

Here’s a simple 5 step process, for improving the effectiveness of your marketing:

  1. Make a list of every marketing activity you currently invest time and / or money in.
  2. Write down the results you are getting from each marketing activity. If the results can’t be measured for any activity, stop it immediately!
  3. If any activity is on that list purely because it’s something you are COMFORTABLE with or it’s there just because YOU HAVE ALWAYS done it, that’s not a good enough reason. (This is where I find a lot of people are wasting valuable time and money!)
  4. Next, grab your beverage of choice and read the 3 posts linked to below. They will show you some of the most popular and effective forms of small business marketing.
  5. Finally, select the marketing activities that you feel are most suited to what you want to achieve.  Then, spend some time studying how to do THOSE activities correctly and add them to your marketing mix.

Below are the posts I recommended earlier.  The first is a 2 parter, which contains a number of different marketing activities and explains what they are.  The final link will take you to the most popular page on this blog; a list of my top 10 marketing tips for small businesses.

Designing your marketing mix (part 1)

Designing your marketing mix (part 2)

Top 10 Marketing Tips

This is intended as a launchpad, to get you focusing on more effective ways to market your services.  If you want to know more about any of the activities mentioned, remember to use the search box on the right hand side of this blog.

If you found this information and the links useful, please take a moment to share this post with your friends.

How to have zero competition for YOUR business!

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This post is all about how to market your business, without ever having to worry about the threat of competition.

I decided to write this after receiving an email from a reader, Elizabeth, who asked me a great question.  Elizabeth wanted to know why I promote the websites and blogs of fellow marketing professionals.  She went on to say that this seemed, “an unusual way to treat the competition!”

Apparently, Elizabeth was specifically referring to the fact that I often link to other marketing sites and ReTweet interesting posts and articles from other marketing professionals.

In a way, I can understand what Elizabeth’s saying.  It probably seems counter instinctive to most people, when they see me use my network to promote someone, who could be a direct competitor.

However, I see things in a different way!

Marketing and competition

When it comes to growing my business, I don’t operate from the mindset of having competitors.  I operate from a creative mindset.  I focus on making what I do so uniquely valuable, that there isn’t anyone else offering that set of unique skills to the small business marketplace.  You know what? It works really well too! There are some great marketing people out there, but none that compete with me.  They do their thing and I do mine.  Operating from a creative mindset allows me to work without limitations.  For example, I actually market the services of a number of great marketing and marketing-related businesses. Isn’t that brilliant?

I genuinely believe that if any business tries hard enough, it can make its services uniquely valuable enough to never have to ‘worry’ about the competition again.  The challenge, is that most businesses, large and small, look just too similar to the other providers in their industry. As a direct result, they are constantly worried that prospective customers will see the ‘competition’ and then use them.

If they were uniquely valuable enough, they would never have to worry about that.

Marketing your business

Here’s my suggestion for you – something for you to consider.

Look at what your competitors do and re-design your raft of services, your promises and guarantees, to make your offering massively more uniquely valuable.  Market your unique value and show the marketplace how brilliant you are.  Get this right and will OWN your very own hyper-valuable niche. Become the only show in town, for someone looking for YOUR kind of service.

What do you think?

Don’t treat people like numbers!

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Many businesses seem to forget that people are people and numbers are numbers.  As a result, they lose touch with the ‘people‘ side of their business.

Here’s why this is a REALLY bad idea:
It’s People who work for us, buy from us, recommend us and help us – not numbers!

When a business starts regarding people simply as ‘numbers’ on a spreadsheet, customer base or mailing list – it becomes disconnected from those people.  This is madness!

Each client, customer, potential client, reader, follower and contact you have is unique.  These people have feelings. They have good days and bad days. They have ups and downs. They have days where they want to cry with joy and days where they cry with sorrow.  These unique, immeasurably valuable individuals are many things to many people, but they are NOT numbers.

Always focus on the people behind ‘the numbers’ that you use in your business and whenever possible, try to connect with them.  Sometimes, something as simple as a sincere offer of help, a quick phone call or even a smile, can turn someone’s day around.

Will this help you grow your business? Quite possibly.

Will it transform the way you FEEL about your business and the way others FEEL about you? Definitely!

Opportunity knocks, even if you can’t hear it!

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Last week, for only the 5th time in 4 years, I offered readers of my marketing newsletter a very special free marketing opportunity.

I told them that simply by sending me their contact details, that 10 of them would randomly be selected to have a free, 1 hour telephone based consultation with me.  The response was amazing.  After all, the newsletter is read by thousands of people, spanning over 100 countries.

I’m writing this post, after calling the first 3 winners to inform them and set up a date for their call.

Winner number 1 was over the moon. He’s been reading my newsletter for 3 years and can’t wait for the call.  He’s entered every time I have made this offer and said that right now, his business could really do with some free, specialist marketing help.

Winner number 2 is another long term reader, who is also a student of my motivation master class.  She told me how she was really looking forward to our call next week.  She is busy getting a stack of questions ready for me, and I am really looking forward to speaking with her.

Winner number 3 had no idea why I was calling her.  She then remembered that her son had entered her details, because she needed marketing help.  She was downright rude to me and to be honest, the vast majority of people would simply have hung up on her.  What she didn’t know, apparently, was that (literally) thousands of people have entered to be chosen for the opportunity, which I had just gifted to her. When she realised the value to her business of that call, her tone changed completely and she was extremely polite.

You know what though?

In 99.9% of cases, this lady would have already blown it with her rudeness and missed the opportunity of working with me, for free, on the development of her business.

There are opportunities around us, all day long.

However, I wonder how many people repel them because of their attitudes?

Who is influencing your decisions and why?

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As a marketing professional, I’m a keen student of human behaviour. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me, is when I see intelligent businesspeople looking for answers in all the wrong places.

For example, I hear of business owners asking their web designer to write the marketing copy for their new website; even though the designer is not a copy writer.  I hear of people asking their accountant for legal advice; even though she has no legal training whatsoever.

I was inspired to write this post, after my first marketing session with a brand new client yesterday.  This guy used the complete opposite approach. When he first called me to find out what I do, I asked him what motivated him to get in touch with me.

He said; “I got in touch Jim, because I want my prospective clients to think and feel the same way about me and my business, as I think and feel about Jim Connolly and his business. The best person to show me how to achieve that has to be you – right?”

Business success comes from making good decisions and backing them up with action.  Most businesspeople are hard workers, but find they are working hard doing the wrong things or doing the correct things – In the wrong way.  As a result, they don’t really own a business – they have simply bought themselves a really stressful job.

You deserve better than that!

Thankfully, you can improve any area of your business, simply by acting on better advice.

Are you fishing for time wasters?

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Have you ever wondered why you have to deal with so many time wasters?  I was thinking about this question earlier, after hearing the owner of a small business complaining that all he seems to get these days, are enquiries from people who are wasting his time.

Marketing and fishing

The thing is, marketing is a bit like fishing.  When an angler wants to catch a certain type of fish, she knows she needs to do 2 things.

  • First off, she needs to find the correct spot (where that particular kind of fish is.)
  • Then, she needs to use the correct bait.

If she’s in the right place, with the right bait, she stands a good chance of catching the fish she wants. However, if she uses the wrong bait for that type of fish or she uses the correct bait, but is fishing in the wrong place, she is going to attract either the wrong kind of fish or no fish at all!

If you find yourself dealing with a lot of time wasters, it’s probable that you are using the wrong marketing message (bait) or that you are using the correct message, but delivering it to the wrong people. Yes, there are many other possibilities, but I would always check those 2 first.

Will 2010 be a New Year for you or the same frustrating year all over again?

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income and time chartFor most small business owners, the first day of January 2010 will NOT be the start of a New Year!  It will simply be another chance for them to relive the same frustrating year over again.

Sure, they will complain about their lack of results, but they will continue to make the same basic marketing errors that they made this year and last year and the year before. For them, it’s just too attractive to stay as they are, rather than STOP making the same mistakes and move forward based on an effective, proven strategy.

For those of you, who are serious about growing your business and finally making the income you deserve, you need to do something that very few people have the guts to do. You need to change your approach to marketing and making money. You need to move away from what you feel comfortable with and embrace what works.  You need to throw your current approach to making money and generating sales into the bin and replace it with something that is finally going to work for you.

When people start working with me for the first time, I begin by doing a fact-finding session with them. During this session, I find out all about what they want to achieve from their business. Then, I put a plan together with them, which we work on together for a whole year! The reason they get such great results, is that the plan we work on throughout the year is developed and refined by me; a marketing professional.

My clients are; accountants, designers, IT companies, trainers, consultants, lawyers, recruitment companies, insurance providers etc – NOT marketing experts.  In today’s super-competitive marketplace, they know they need specialist marketing support if they want to thrive and grow their business.  They know the clock is ticking.  They know that businesses without specialist marketing support always reach a plateau, where no matter how hard they work, they can’t seem to move on to the next level.

Whatever you plan to do with your marketing in 2010, I strongly recommend that you change your marketing strategy if you want better results.  As Einstein once said; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Only when you use a better strategy will you see better results.  Working hard doing the wrong things is fruitless and stressful.  If you are rowing your boat in the wrong direction again in 2010, no matter how hard you row, you will never get where you want to be.

Those of you, who are genuinely interested in massively improving your business results in 2010, should read this and then get in touch with me.  HOWEVER: This is only open to small businesses and entrepreneurs.