Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Keep it focused

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When you write a marketing message, make sure that it’s focussed 100% on getting the right message to the right person.

Too much marketing is vague; intended to appeal to as wide a group as possible.  However, by being vaguely relevant to everyone, the message is going to be directly relevant to no one!

Motivation and marketing

The word motivation comes from two words; motive and action. If you want to motivate someone to take action, (email you, call you, visit you, buy from you) your message must be motivating.

Never dilute your marketing in order to give it a wider appeal.  Instead, make your marketing as focused and compelling as possible, to the kind of people you want to do business with.

Do this right now

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Question: What happens whenever the economy gets tough?

Answer: People become massively more value focused!

Right now, there are businesses in the same industry, in the same town, selling to the same people; with very different results. Some will be struggling, whilst others will be seeing their market share increase – even in a recession.

We know that people are searching for great value right now, so ‘right now’, could be the perfect time for you to look for new ways to pump more value into your product or service.  No matter what you do or how well you do it, there will be something you can add or refine, which will increase the market value of your offering.

A pain in the neck

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In case you were wondering how come I have not posted anything to the blog for the past couple of weeks, here’s an update!

Over the past eight weeks, I have been suffering with an increasingly painful trapped nerve at the top of my neck. The end result was that for the past two weeks, I have been totally unable to type with my left hand (hence no posts to the blog.)

After realising that the medication I was on was not going to work, I decided it was time to call in a Chiropractor – and there’s a valuable lesson here, for anyone in sales!

I actually met with three qualified Chiropractors, before picking the one I trusted the most to get me out of pain and mobile again. Interestingly, the one I picked was NOT the least expensive. He was actually the most expensive by some margin!  However, he WAS the only one of the three to actually ask me about how the pain was making me feel; how the sleepless nights were impacting my quality of life etc.  He engaged me on the most basic level, by connecting with me as a human being. He fully understood my exact position and all the problems the pain was causing me.

Twenty minutes later, he had a new client.  Within 24 hours of my first treatment, he had reduced my pain by around 50%, I was able to throw the pain killers away and most important of all, I started being able to sleep again, after weeks of sleepless nights.

Sales lesson?

There’s an old saying in sales, which tells us that; “you buy the person, not the product / service.” By identifying the impact the pain was having on my life as a whole and showing me genuine empathy, my Chiropractor had set himself apart from the other two people I met. Their talk was all about them, how great they were and how affordable their services were.  They came across like salespeople, which is always a mistake, because there’s so much resistance out there to sales / marketing messages!

As Seth Godin, a friend of this blog said recently, “Selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us. The only way out, I think, is for a few marketers to so overwhelm the market with long-term, generous marketing that we have no choice but to start paying attention again.”

By the way, you REALLY should subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog – it’s excellent!

I have made many, many millions of pounds and dollars worth of sales over the years for my clients and myself and can honestly say, I have NEVER sold anyone, anything! However, LOTS of people have bought things from me!

Enough with the pitches – it’s 2009 for heaven’s sake!

Look for ways to contribute for free to your marketplace.  Engage people and show them you understand their ‘pain.’ There’s a recession on right now and many of those in your marketplace are hurting – get out there and find a way to help as many of them as possible.  For example, I offer free advice to people via this blog and my marketing newsletter. 95% of the people who read my material never even say thank you or comment here or email me – but that’s not important!

You see, there’s a MASSIVE 5% of people; who say great things about me, who recommend me to their clients and friends, who invite me to speak on their TV shows and radio programs and who pay me to handle their marketing for them.  These people forward my newsletter on to other people, they recommend my blog to everyone and they link to me. That’s why this blog as almost 13,000 links, even though it’s just 6 months old.

This is also the reason why I have no advertising on this blog.  I don’t want to sell you anything. I want you to come here, knowing that there’s no sales pitch.  I want you to know that when I say Seth’s blog is great or that FriendFeed‘s a great service, I am saying it for free, because I genuinely believe it.  If you like my work, use my ideas and see great results and THEN decide you want me to work with you, you will have to dig around the blog and find the one page, which tells you about my services.

Attraction marketing

Some call this approach ‘attraction marketing.’  That’s a fairly accurate description, because it’s an approach to business development and sales, which ‘attracts’ leads, enquiries, sales, orders and new clients / customers – rather than the traditional ‘pursuit marketing’ model.  There’s another post all about attraction marketing here.

Have a great day and please feel free to be one of that rare 5%, who forward this post, tweet about it, get in touch or leave a comment!

6 words to transform your results!

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“Start with the end in mind.”

Those 6 words contain a piece of business advice, which is of more commercial value than many entire books on business success.  The information in that simple, short sentence, could have saved many businesses from going broke and transformed many struggling businesses into super-star success stories.

By focusing with clarity on your desired end result, before starting something new, you massively increase your chances of success. However, many businesses will, for example, start a new marketing campaign, introduce a new service or maybe start a new blog / website – with only a vague idea of what they actually want to achieve.

With only a fuzzy picture of what they want to achieve, it’s very hard to know if they are even on target or not.  It’s like setting off on a journey “up north” for the first time, without the address of the destination.  You might know that you need to head north, but that’s not enough information – You need an address if you ever want to find the place.

Social media can be low leverage

I am seeing this more and more with businesses deciding to invest huge amounts of time and effort on social networking / social media, with no clear idea why.  They will start blogging, using LinkedIn, FaceBook or Twitter – simply because they think they should. However, without a clear goal for all that effort, you can waste a LOT of time and effort!  Social media can be a very low leverage activity and can eat into a vast amount of your time, unless you start with the end in mind.

In the past few weeks, several people with massive social networks have called or emailed me, asking what I think they should do “to monetize” their following. One guy, with over 40,000 followers on Twitter has told me that he is investing an amazing 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, building his Twitter network and has almost forgotten why he even started!  Here’s what he told me;

To be honest Jim, I started off without a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve, so I just decided to get as many followers as possible.  Now, I have all these followers, but 99% of them are not even in the market for my services; which is pretty niche.

Twitter focus

I started off using Twitter, in order to offer another channel of communication for the community of people who read my blog and my newsletter. Because of the number of readers I have, I soon gained a massive following.

Initially, I followed them all back and then quickly realised that I was following over 20,000 people, which was too time consuming. Because I had a clear picture of what I wanted to achieve from Twitter, I was able to literally reset my Twitter account (and delete the 23,500 “follows” I had too,) knowing with 100% certainty that I had made the right decision.

Before you start off with a new project, make sure you have a crystal clear idea of what you want to achieve from it.

You can only remain on target, if you know what your target is.

Blinded by the light?

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I was in a busy coffee shop yesterday, when I noticed that 25% of the tables were empty. The empty tables were all along one side of the shop, which was saturated with brilliant sunshine.

The sun, magnified through the shop’s 20 foot high glass windows, made those tables impossible to use because it was just too dazzlingly bright.  People were walking into the shop, seeing the only available places were in direct sunlight and leaving again for the coffee shop along the road.

As I left, I spoke with the owner about this obvious problem.  His response was typical of the way many small business owners think about investing in their businesses.

“Yeah, no one ever sits there when the sun comes out, but it’s just too expensive to fit blinds along that side of the shop.” I asked him how much he had been quoted for the blinds. “I haven’t actually looked for any quotes, but it’s got to be really expensive, those windows are 20 feet high!”

When is a cost not a cost?

Forgetting the huge additional electricity bills he’s going to have this summer, because of his air conditioning being needlessly overworked – what about the loss of trade?  Even if his customer’s average spend is only £5 per hour, the 24 seats rendered unusable will be losing up to £120 an hour, each day between 11am and 3pm, when the sun is, as he calls it, “in the wrong position.”  Ironically, his busiest period is between 12 noon and 2pm – when those seats would be filled with people on their lunch breaks!

I wonder how many times he will have to watch those 6 empty tables, before realising the difference between a cost and an investment?

It’s remarkable

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Earlier this week, I was writing an article for my newsletter; all about how to generate valuable, word of mouth recommendations and have the marketplace saying great things about you.  I was writing the article, whilst sat in the lounge of a London hotel, where I had been staying for a couple of days.

Word of mouth marketing

word of mouthWhilst writing article, a fellow guest asked me if I knew where there was a power supply, so he could plug in his laptop.  I told him that I didn’t, because I was using a netbook, which has around 7 hours battery life.

I explained how I charge it in the morning and that I don’t need a power source for the rest of the day.  After looking at the machine for 5 minutes and asking a few questions, he asked me for the model number, which I gave him (it’s a Samsung NC10) and promptly got his office to order him one!

It struck me afterwards, that I must have recommended the NC10 to around 20 people, since getting it just over a week ago.  This is a great example of the power of word of mouth!  By the way, I have no association with Samsung or anyone who sells their products. The reason I have told so many people about the NC10, is that I know how valuable that amazing battery life is to people like me; who often work away from their office and not always within reach of a power pocket.

Remarkable

It also struck me that in the 12 months I have owned my other laptop, I have never recommended it to anyone!  My other laptop is bigger, faster and does everything really well.  However, unlike the Samsung, with its amazing battery life, the other machine doesn’t do any one thing that is REMARKABLE.

‘Remarkable‘ is the key word here. People will only remark on you, your product or your business if you are remark-able in some way!

Just like my older laptop, which does everything really well, a business needs to offer more than a good quality service if it wants to attract stacks of word of mouth recommendations.  People EXPECT a business to offer a really good service, so it’s not remarkable when they get it.

That great service you offer your clients / customers is extremely valuable – it will help you to keep their custom and encourage some of them to recommend you to their friends.

However, if you want to have thousands of people or tens of thousands of people shouting your name from the rooftops, you also need to get creative and offer YOUR marketplace, YOUR version of the NC10’s amazing battery life!

What if someone sees this?

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I read an interesting post on Seth Godin’s blog yesterday.  It tells the story of someone, who had three people short-listed for a job as a housekeeper.  The employer decided to Google their names and found they were totally unsuitable; all because of the information she found about them online.

Only last week, a web designer told me he had lost a highly profitable piece of work, after his prospective client checked him out online.  He hadn’t written anything offensive and there were no negative comments anywhere about either him or his services.  The client withdrew the project, simply because they were uncomfortable hiring someone who was regularly posting to Twitter after midnight!

Apparently, they said his late night Twittering suggested to them that he would not be awake enough during the working day, to handle their project professionally.  The next day I read an article on the BBC website, about a lady who was fired, for saying that her new job was boring, on FaceBook.

Whatever you happen to think about these decisions, there’s a valuable lesson here.

We live in an age where most of what we do online is visible AND searchable.  We also know that employers and prospective clients are now checking people and companies out online, before making hiring or buying decisions. Before you post searchable information online, ensure that is consistent with the image you want to project; either of yourself your business or both.

Thriving or surviving in a recession?

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You can’t open a newspaper or watch a news report these days, without hearing how bad the economy is.  The media’s focus is pretty-much exclusively on huge, national and multinational companies, reporting drops in profits and job cuts.

However, whilst many huge corporations really struggle right now, there are countless small businesses out there, doing really well!  Of course, their success is almost invisible, because it’s not carried in the newspapers or reported about on the news.

Marketing success in a recession

I spoke with a man yesterday morning, whose main problem at the moment, is recruiting enough good quality people to cope with the 300% increase in business he has seen since last June.

I spoke today with the owner of a recruitment business (one of the industries hit hardest by the recession), whose business is growing faster right now than ever before.  I also spoke with an accountant earlier, who has seen an amazing 50% increase in the size of his client base in the past 6 months!

All three of these businesses are clients of mine, so their marketing is brilliant! However, their success is only possible, because they are focusing on growing their businesses rather than survival. Their competitors are ‘hunkering down’ and hoping to just stay afloat, so my clients have been able to gain market share and will continue to do so!

Recession thinking

Because of the wall-to-wall negative news coverage, most small business owners right now are focusing on what they might lose.  Their thinking and strategies are all designed around avoiding loss – Rather than developing their business.

Even in a good economy, ignoring the development of a business and focusing on loss, will guarantee that a business fails!

That’s because what we focus on determines the actions we take.  Let’s look at a very simple example, which shows how a business owner’s focus will dramatically influence what he does; based on whether he focuses on survival or growth.

If Bob asks himself; “How can I avoid going broke during the recession?” He might come up with answers like:

  • I could cut back on everything.
  • I could work harder / longer hours.

However, if Bob asks himself; “How can I double my profits, even during a recession?”  He might come up with answers like:

  • I could find a great new service to offer all my existing clients, which is also highly profitable.  Existing clients already trust me, so a high percentage will go for it.
  • I could get my website professionally copy written, so we get more sales leads from all those hits we get.
  • I could build an Introducer network, people who recommend me to their contacts in return for a commission. This way, unlike advertising, I only have to pay when a new client joins me AND I get an army of salespeople out there telling the world how great my business is.

I am certainly not suggesting that the current economy is a bunch of roses. It definitely isn’t!

What I am suggesting, is that we tend to get what we focus on; so why not focus on what you want – rather than what you fear?

Boost sales with your advertising!

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In this post, I am going to show you how to get massively better results from your advertising – starting right now!

Making advertising work!

If you tried advertising in the past and found that the only winner was the person who sold it to you, you’re not alone.  Over the years, I have helped market the services of thousands of businesses, spanning just about every industry and profession.  During my initial conversations with the people behind these businesses, I would often hear a version of the following statement:

“We tried advertising – it doesn’t work!”

Advertising actually DOES work (really well), but only if you use it correctly.  I have personally sold many millions of pounds (and dollars) worth of products and services for my clients and myself, with the help of advertising.  In this post, I am going to share one of the secrets of my advertising success with you.

If you have a small or medium sized business and are advertising with the intention of making sales, boosting your profits and transforming your income; I suggest the only form of advertising worth investing in is action advertising.

Why is ACTION advertising so effective for smaller businesses?

ACTION advertising is designed to make the reader take action.  Big companies are usually seeking to get someone to switch from one brand of cola, razor blade or sports shoes etc to another.  These adverts can be effective by simply associating good feelings or famous / beautiful people with their ‘brand.’

Small businesses typically advertise in order to generate sales.  Their advertising needs to; get their phone ringing, fill their store with eager buyers or fill their inbox with sales requests and enquiries.  This means their adverts need to inspire some form of direct response or action from the reader / listener.  A good quality action advertisement includes the following:

–  It tells the reader who the advertiser is.
–  It tells the reader what the benefits of their product or service is.
–  It gives them a motivating reason to ACT NOW – to call, visit or e-mail the advertiser.
–  It tells them to contact the advertiser – usually with a time sensitive or limited availability element!

Here’s an example of a simple action advertisement I read (with the company’s details changed):

“ACME Widgets can save you a recession-busting 45% on your annual widget costs, that’s why we are inviting you to attend our wine and widget evening on 26th February at 7pm.  You can reserve your place now by calling Rachael on 012345 123123.  As places are limited, please call now to avoid disappointment!  Acme Widgets, 22 East Street, London.”

In contrast, most small business advertising creates little motivation for the reader to take action.  These ads are often based around the following:
–  They tell the reader the name of the service or business.
–  They show the reader the advertiser’s logo.
–  They tell the reader a little about what the advertiser does or their benefits.
–  They sometimes list a ‘special offer’.
–  They usually give the reader some contact details.

These ineffective adverts provide information about who the advertiser is and what they do, BUT give no reason for the reader to take action and contact them.  Guess what – generally, no one does!  Here’s a real life example, (with the company name/details changed):

“Acme Widgets have over 20 years of experience and our customer service is second to none.  Last year our widgets were voted ‘Best Value Widget’ by What Widget Magazine.  Our best selling Orange Widget is just £250.  Acme Widgets, 22 East Street, London”.

The majority of small business advertising I see in the press or in trade journals, is far less effective than it could or should be.  There is nothing compelling about what they say – nothing to inspire the reader to do anything.  When I started out in marketing, back in the 1980’s, we used to call these ineffective advertisements ‘flick-through ads’ – because people would literally see them and just carry on flicking through whichever publication they were in, without doing anything.

Remember, all motivation comes from motive

If you want your advertisement to generate masses of new business, you can!  But you need to advertise where your ideal future clients/customers are and give them a BIG enough reason to inspire them to take the action you require.  People are not stupid and will only contact you if there’s a compelling / motivating enough reason for them to do so.  Just having your message “out there” is simply not enough!

Quick marketing tip

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Here’s a quick marketing tip, which has helped thousands of people to massively improve their sales results.

One of the most common marketing problems businesses have, is reaching the right people at the right time. You need to get YOUR message in front of people, at the exact point where they are extremely interested in buying your kind of product or service.  So, how does it work?

Marketing, word of mouth and a recommendation too!

This quick marketing tip is all about identifying the people, which your prospective clients contact before they are about to purchase your kind of product or service – and getting these people to recommend you.  This means you not only get a supply of sales leads from extremely hot prospective clients, you also get to benefit from the power of a referral too!

Example:  Although this process works for business to business providers and in many different industries, for this example, let us assume that your business supplies and fits wall and floor tiles.  You would start off by asking yourself; “what do people do just BEFORE they get their bathroom or kitchen re-tiled?”  Well, in some cases, the person will have just experienced a flood etc and called in a plumber.  Equally, they may have got a plumber in to fit a new bathroom suite and now require the floor and walls re-tiled.

So, you would contact the plumbers, who work in the areas and the kind of homes you want to work with, and offer them a standard referral fee for every piece of work their referrals generate for you.  Obviously, you would show them some examples of how brilliant the quality of your work is, so they knew they were recommending a high quality service.

What kind of businesses can use this marketing tip?

I have seen this simple idea work wonders for; web designers, accountants, hotels, marketing consultants, recruitment companies, trainers, insurance providers, lawyers, hosting companies, maintenance providers, PR firms and stacks more.

By being selective about who you get to recommend you, you will also be able to attract work from the ideal profile of client or customer for your business too!  This is a great way to attract excellent quality, highly targeted leads – Without wasting a penny on ineffective advertising. You only pay when a lead becomes a piece of business, making it one of the most profitable forms of marketing out there.

Why I’m leaving Twitter!

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It’s sad, but the time has come for me to leave Twitter.  At the time of writing this, the three most followed people in England are; John Cleese, Stephen Fry and then me.  I have made some great connections because of Twitter and met a lot of interesting people too.  Twitter has been a great experience for me – BUT it’s time for me to go!

Twitter’s technical problems highlighted one of my own

My Twitter account was one of many to have recently suffered from the dreaded caching error. After 5 days, it was manually fixed by Crystal in Twitter’s tech support team.  This was a blessing in disguise!

For 5 days, whilst my account was waiting to be fixed, I was unable to follow anyone or see who had followed me.  I noticed that I suddenly had lots more extra time each day, so I decided to do some Twitter research! I wanted to know just how long I actually spent using Twitter each day.

I was amazed to see that even during a fairly quiet period, I was investing an average of 2 and a half hours each day!

Even more amazingly, less than half of that time was spent actually ‘tweeting’ with people!

The rest of my Twitter time was spent dealing with the hundreds of Direct Messages I get each day and filtering through the hundreds of people who follow me each day; to see from their profile whether or not to follow them back.  This is an increasingly time consuming problem, as so many people are now doing that follow / unfollow trick, to attract auto follows and make it look like they have lots of followers.

Most of the Direct Messages I get on Twitter are people asking me; ‘please share this link with your followers Jim’ or asking me to look at their blog / website and give them some tips.  I’m also getting stacks of spam sent to me via Twitter’s Direct Message.  This all takes time to review, answer or delete. Yes, almost all of these Direct Messages are from people, who have never tweeted with me or commented here!

The 1000 people on Twitter who connect with me

Although I have over 23,000 people following me on Twitter, I found that only around 800 / 1000 or so are in regular contact with me.  These are the people you see in my Twitter stream and commenting here on the blog.  These are the people, who I built this blog and my Twitter network for.  These are the kind of people, who make Twitter the best social media site / app on the Internet (In my opinion.)

The reason I am leaving Twitter, is that it’s the other 22,000 people, who never connect with me, who require the vast majority of my time!

The sensible thing to do, was for me to find a way to focus all my energy on the people who actually ‘connect with me’  – And that’s what I will now be able to do!

How I solved my Twitter problem

One of my options, was to delete 22,250 people from my Twitter account.  This would take forever and it still wouldn’t stop the flow of new people every day; who follow my account and require filtering. Yes, I could just set up an auto-follow, so every spammer on Twitter could target me, knowing they will get an automatic follow back – but that’s not why I invested my time in Twitter and it would only help with part of the problem.

FriendFeed and Twitter

Thankfully, I have found an excellent way to communicate with everyone, who wants to keep in touch with me – WITHOUT me having to waste all those hours each week on those who don’t!

I have decided to replace what I have been doing on Twitter, with FriendFeed.

Whilst FriendFeed is not as instantly usable as Twitter, it doesn’t come with the same insane focus on followers / following either.  Just like Twitter, you can interact with people without following / subscribing to them.  However, unlike Twitter – on FriendFeed the follower / subscriber thing is far less of a big deal!  There are also no issue with Direct Messages, which ate into so much of my time each day.

This means I can focus massively more of my time on the ‘social’ side of social media.

FriendFeed will allow me to have proper, threaded conversations with all of those who want to join in or share their content with me. 

I hope to see as many of my regular Twitter pals on FriendFeed as possible; so we can continue the conversation.

However, even if you don’t want to join with me on FriendFeed, you can still find out what I am doing via Twitter!

You will still see me on Twitter, via FriendFeed

Even if you don’t have or want a FriendFeed account – you will still be able to see what I post via Twitter anyway! I am going to keep my Twitter account active; so people who want to, can still follow my stream without having to do anything. One of the great things about FriendFeed, is that it will automatically send all my updates direct via my Twitter account – so anyone following me on Twitter will be able to see them.

This is not one of those; “which is best Twitter or FriendFeed?” arguments. It’s just that FriendFeed is the best option for me right now.

UPDATE:

Over the past 48 hours, I have found that most of the people who were regularly tweeting with me, have now found me on FriendFeed; with others introducing themselves all the time! Thus, I shall not be sending my FriendFeed updates through my Twitter account.

I don’t want to just broadcast via Twitter – Twitter’s supposed to be about communicating NOT broadcasting!

Is your marketing exposed?

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One of the secrets behind the most successfully marketed small and medium sized businesses, is that they utilise more forms of marketing than their less successful counterparts!  In my experience, ‘the average’ business will use just two or three different kinds of marketing – yet the most successful businesses will be benefiting from eight or more.

Compound marketing leverage

By developing a marketing strategy, which leverages many complimentary forms of marketing, you start to build a ‘compound marketing’ effect.  This is where the results you get for your combined efforts, are far, far greater than they would be; if you had done each activity in isolation.

Also, by relying on a number of different forms of marketing, your business’ future is far more secure.  I interviewed a businesswoman once, who relied on an advertisement in an industry magazine for almost all her new business. A competitor then started advertising in the same publication.  Overnight, her sales and enquiries dropped by more than half and she eventually went broke!

If you currently rely on just a small number of marketing activities, no matter how effective they currently are, make sure you are not too reliant on any one of them and always look for new ways to get great results.

Over to you

What forms of marketing have been the most (or least) effective for YOU? Share your experiences with a comment below!

A residual income & stacks of kudos

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When I wrote and published my Motivation Master Class audio series, I did so because I knew the product would be a success.  It has generated a very nice residual income for me over the past 3 years and helped thousands of people, spanning 4 continents, to achieve some great results.

Once the audio series was written and produced, I was able to refer to myself in my marketing as Jim Connolly; author and marketing coach.  You might (or might not) be amazed to know what an immediate, powerful impact that had on my marketing results. Response rates improved across the board.  I also found that I was able to easily get guest spots on the radio and to have my articles published.  The Business Editor’s of newspapers were keen to give me write ups in their business pages – and all because I decided to put some of my knowledge onto CD’s.

Two good reasons to get that book of yours on paper

These days, many people with a specialisation decide to write an ebook.  These are usually given away for free, though some are sold.  Whilst this is great, it’s becoming increasingly common.  In other words, telling people you are the author of an ebook has a lot less impact, than being the author of a hardback or paperback book. That’s because anyone with a computer and some free software can publish an ebook.

However, only a tiny percentage of people (and a microscopic number of your competitors), will have been published as the author of a traditional, softback or hardback book.  The good news is that now, you can self-publish a book for very little and benefit, the same as me, from; a new income stream and a stack of kudos!

How?

There are a number of websites, which will allow you to produce high quality hardback or paperback books in extremely small numbers (or huge ones).  Try a google search for “self publishing”.  Lulu.com is probably the best known of these self-publishing websites.  So, if you just want to produce 10 or 50 paper-based copies (just to get you started or test the market)  – Now you can!

A new income stream or career?

There could be a huge public demand for your book – and a great way to find out is to get it ‘out there!’  I sold copies of my audio program all over the world and made a lot of money with very little effort.  I know a large number of my readers are specialists in their area of business, just like I am with marketing.  However, I also know that many of my readers are not professional marketers – but you don’t have to be.  Many of these self-publishing sites will even help you market your book, if you want them to.  They will also deal with things like distribution.

I’m not suggesting this is ideal for everyone.  I would only suggest doing this if you genuinely believe your book will be of interest to people – the idea is to produce something of value, with potential to become a profitable income stream for your business. The kudos of the author title, whilst powerful, should be secondary.

Record breaking results

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With the media focusing constantly on negative business news, it’s refreshing to see some good news stories coming out; (yes, there are still a lot of businesses doing really well!)

Apple announce record breaking revenue & profits

This article, from my tech news blog, gives some background to yesterday’s announcement by Apple; that their figures for the last quarter are the best in the Company’s history!

Remember; Apple produce an expensive range of high quality products, which are non essential goods. They also operate in a market sector, which is supposed to be among the most challenging right now.

Great marketing + Great product = Great results!

The truth is, whether you love or loath Apple’s products and services, their marketing is superb. With the right kind of targeted marketing and a good quality product or service, there’s still a stack of potential out there, for your business right now!

I will be focusing on some inspiring success stories, from small and medium-sized businesses shortly.  To ensure you don;t miss them, subscribe to my RSS feed.

4 ways to grow a business

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With so many buzz words and marketing ideas flying around, it’s easy to forget the basics.  That’s why I wanted to share something with you today, which really helps us focus on what’s important.

4 ways grow a business jay abraham4 ways to grow a business

As Jay Abraham said so concisely, many years ago; there are only 4 ways to grow a business.  They are:

1. Attract more clients or customers (herein called clients.)
2. Sell more often to your existing clients.
3. Increase your prices or fees.
4. Reduce the number of clients, who stop using your services or buying your products (your attrition rate). Though this was not included in Jay’s original 3 ways to grow a business model.

The most effective businesses, focus on all 4 ways to grow a business.

The least effective businesses focus on just 1 or 2 of them.

Many businesses, for example, actively seek to win new clients; but to little to retain their existing clients.  Others look after their existing clients supremely well and their clients love them – but they don’t focus correctly on winning new clients.

Whatever business you are in, try and work on as many of these 4 ways to grow a business as is possible, for someone in your industry.

Recession thinking

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Judging by my inbox and the comments on this blog, it seems that the current recession is having a very different impact on different people.  That’s to be expected, yet I’m seeing businesses of similar sizes, in the same industries and the same region having totally different experiences.

Recession marketing

I wrote a while ago, about how some businesses managed to grow significantly during the last recession – whilst their competitors were treading water or going broke. You can read the secret of their success here!

Time and time again, we see that it’s NOT outside factors that determine our success or failure, but how we choose to deal with them.  As they say;

When life deals you lemons – make lemonade!

One of the advantages that small and medium-sized companies have over larger ones, is their ability to spot an opportunity and quickly get to work on it.  Large companies and corporations move like a cruise liner – small businesses can move like a speedboat.

Make sure you focus on opportunities and when you spot one, take action!

Business success in a recession

With the media spreading nothing but doom and gloom, I have decided to write a series of posts for you; about businesses I know, who are currently enjoying great commercial success.  These are businesses in highly competitive industries, which are thriving.

To make sure you don’t miss out, subscribe to this blog now, using the RSS button on the top right of the page!

Targeted marketing

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This post is all about how you can increase your sales and enquiries, by using a targeted approach to your marketing.

A great product or service, with an excellent marketing message, will still fail to generate sales – unless that message is reaching a targeted group of prospective customers.  That’s why it’s so important for you to target the marketing of your services, to the right people.

Targeted marketing

If Bob gets a well-written marketing message in front of 10,000 people, who have no need for his services and no ability to pay or obtain credit – he’s unlikely to make a single sale.  However, if Bob gets that same great message in front of just 10 people; each with a real need for his services and the ability to pay – he’s likely to make a number of sales!

Blogging and targeted marketing

Fortunately, one of the best ways to get an extremely valuable, targeted audience for your business, is either free or very inexpensive.  I’m talking about blogging!

Whilst it takes time to set up a blog and add regular, interesting content – the financial cost of blogging is extremely low. Great news for any small businesses who are struggling financially right now, yet still have time available for marketing.

So, how do blogs attract targeted prospects?

There are two main reasons why blogs attract such targeted prospective customers / clients.

Firstly, there’s SEO
A nicely designed blog, with good SEO, (search engine optimisation) and interesting content relating to your profession, will attract people who are interested in your area of expertise.  Although the numbers will be low to begin with, you can develop a great audience or marketplace for your services over time.

Secondly, blogs are read by bloggers
I read stacks of blogs each day and it seems I am not alone!  I’ve been running a Reader Poll on jimsmarketingblog.com for the past 2 weeks; asking my readers if they own a blog.  Interestingly, around 90% of the 300 or so people who voted, said “YES!”

So, someone reads something of interest on your blog, which they then mention on their blog.  Suddenly, their readership is alerted to your work and you get a stack of new, targeted readers!  Many of these new readers will be bloggers too – helping you reach more and more people.

This kind of targeted readership is ‘marketing gold dust’ for you and your business.  These people are reading your blog because they already have an interest in, or need for, your subject.  So, if they see you as someone with the answers they need in your area of expertise, who better for them to call / email when they want to hire someone?

Targeted readers come from focused content

In my experience, the blogs that attract the most targeted readers, are the blogs that offer the most focused content.  Some blogs suffer from diversifying too much.  As a result, they attract a fractured readership.

Conversely, by blogging about subjects directly relevant to your services / products, you get to attract not only a readership, but a community!  Jimsmarketingblog.com is an example of a community blog. That’s because the blog’s readers, commentor’s and myself all share a common interest in sales, marketing and business development.

How well do you target your marketing?

If you want to improve your sales figures, a great place to start is by looking at how well you target your prospective customers / clients.  If you are a commercial blogger, (blog as part of your business), and you want to attract a more targeted readership, ensure your posts are ‘on topic.’

If you are not already blogging, this might be a great time for you to start! Just make sure you are committed to investing the time required.

Networking and numbers

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One of the biggest mistakes people make when building a commercial network, is that they focus too much on numbers.  However, the size of a network by itself is of limited value.  Building a large, low value commercial network is actually a low leverage activity and counter-productive!

Networking isn’t just about numbers

This is because the value of a commercial network is always based on 3 things:
1. The calibre of contacts in your network.
2. The quality of your relationships with your contacts.
3. Having the right number of people in your network.

The reason for this is simple. Firstly, as human beings we are obviously all of equal value. However, in each industry or profession there are some people who are more influential than others.  If you know these influential people, you can benefit from their influence.  If you don’t know them – you can’t!

Secondly, if you network with a group of people, even influential people, but they don’t really ‘know’ you and you have no real relationship with them; they are highly unlikely to be of any tangible value to you or your business.  People recommend, partner with, support (and buy from) people they know and trust.

Thirdly, you need to be connected with as many of these influential / credible people as required; in order for you to get the help, support or referrals etc you need.  The correct size for your network will depend on the industry or profession you are in and what you hope to achieve.

Twitter and targeted networking

Ironically, by engaging like-minded people (rather than focusing on numbers), I’ve attracted over 18,000 followers on twitter; my primary online network!  Because I tend to keep my conversations around marketing and social media, I have attracted people into my twitter network, who by default are interested in my areas of expertise.

Little wonder that I now regard my network of twitter associates, as one of my businesses most valuable assets.

Over to you!

What are your tips for developing effective networks, either online or offline? Share your tips and ideas in the comments section below.

Trust your instincts

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After running a successful business for 13 years, I have come to understand and appreciate the power of trusting my business instincts.

Trust your instincts!

Whenever I have gone against my natural business instincts, it’s almost always been the wrong thing to do!  Even if I sometimes think on a conscious level that my ‘hunch’ must be wrong – it has an uncanny knack of being right. Interestingly, when you read the biographies of successful businesspeople and leaders, you will often find that they too have learnt to follow their instincts.

I have done some studies into why our instincts / gut feelings can be such useful indicators and it seems opinions are split.  Some people believe it’s a throwback to skills we developed when living in caves. Others believe it’s our brain tapping into something more spiritual.  Whatever you believe, there’s no doubt in my mind that your instinct can be a powerful business development tool; so long as you listen to it.

I experienced the power of my own instincts earlier today.  I was due to start working on a project with someone next week, yet all along I instinctively knew that this person was just a time-waster.  They said all the right things and tried their hardest to appear super-motivated, yet I knew instinctively that they were never going to proceed.  Thus it came as no surprise, when they called me this morning to confirm that my instincts were right.

Marketing and science

Marketing is a very scientific process, based around testing and measuring. We know that if we do the correct things in the correct way, we can get a very predictable response. However, I believe there is also real value in listening to your gut feelings, hunches or instincts too!

Over to you!

Do you trust your instincts in business or do you think it’s a waste of time? Let us know, with a comment below.

A new year or the same old year over again?

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For most businesses, the first week in January is not the start of a New Year – It’s simply the chance to live the same old year over and over and over again!

They carry on investing their time and money in all the wrong places and thus, they get the same kind of results.  Such businesses reach a plateau after a few years and tend to stay there.  Like a truck that’s stuck in the mud, the harder they try the deeper they seem to get trapped.

The owners of these businesses complain about their lack of results, but fail to make the changes required for success. This fear of change is what psychologists refer to as The Homoeostatic impulse.  It’s best demonstrated in the human desire for things to “be the same – but better.” However, as we all know, improvement can only come as the result of change.  Things don’t “just magically get better” – we have to make them better.

If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!

So, as we enter the first full working week of 2009, let’s embrace the opportunity to learn from what we did in 2008.