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How to be in high demand and earn the highest fees

November 24, 2020 by Jim Connolly

workaholic, love work

We know why the most successful businesses and freelancers are always in high demand. Its the same reason they command the highest fees.

They provide something of value, which is in short supply.

We also know why the average business isn’t in high demand. It’s because they provide something, which is in abundance.

Here’s the thing. It’s not enough to work hard, work smart and care about your clients. Most of your competitors already do that. To think otherwise is to underestimate your competition. And that’s a big mistake.

To be in high demand and earn the highest fees, you need to embrace the tricky stuff. The things that are in short supply, because they’re too challenging or uncomfortable for most business owners.

This includes a willingness to:

  • Set higher standards than your competitors.
  • Do work that’s meaningfully different.
  • Initiate.
  • Be there for people when they need help.
  • Encourage others.
  • Connect people.
  • Treat different customers differently.
  • Make promises and keep them.
  • Inspire your customers, your team and your marketplace.

Is this easy? No, of course not!

Here’s a better question: Is it worth it? Yes, absolutely!

You see my friend, the very fact it’s so challenging is why it’s so rare, in such high demand and so valuable.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing, How to, Professional development

How to be totally and utterly irreplaceable

November 21, 2020 by Jim Connolly

How hard would it be for one of your clients or customers to replace you with an alternative provider?

I was thinking about this yesterday when a salesman came to my home. He asked if he could quote me a price to look after the trees and hedges, which surround all 4 sides of our house. I said that I wasn’t interested. He then said that if I told him what my current guys charge, he’d beat their price. I explained that I still wasn’t interested. I thanked him for his time and he left.

Just think about that for a second. Imagine being so valuable to your clients or customers that they send competitors away, uninterested in hearing about their lower price.

Being irreplaceable

If the salesman had been a little wiser, he’d have asked me what made my current provider irreplaceable. If he’d asked, here’s what I’d have told him.

The team who look after my hedges and trees have worked for us for years. They know exactly how we like things. They are extremely reliable and when we needed them in an emergency, they responded fast; removing a tree that had fallen down in a storm. They provide a great service, which they are very well paid for.

They’re happy and we’re happy.

They’ve made themselves irreplaceable by building trust. They’ve earned that trust by doing great work over the long haul and being extremely reliable. I have recommended them dozens of times over the years to friends, all of whom are equally delighted with them.

There are 2 pieces of gold dust in the previous paragraph:

  1. The best way to become irreplaceable is to earn trust. It was during our first year with the tree company that they came out to remove that tree, which was blocking a road on a dangerous corner. They were here in 40 minutes and charged us their normal rate, when they could have exploited the situation. Their attitude to service has remained every year since.
  2. When a provider earns our trust and does great work, it’s easy to recommend them to our friends.

Clearly, every business owner should strive to make their business irreplaceable. It improves customer retention, whilst also generating a regular flow of word-of-mouth referrals.

How do you become irreplaceable?

It’s not about one huge action. In the above example, my tree problem gave them an opportunity to shine, but it was followed by years of excellent customer service. It’s certainly not about being the lowest priced.

It’s about the daily interactions we have with our customers and our marketplace. It’s the compound effect of many positive experiences. We earn the position of being irreplaceable over the medium and long haul. Every interaction should be viewed as an opportunity to increase our value to our customers.

That’s how we earn (then re earn) the position of being irreplaceable. Yes, you need to re earn the position, because when you act like you’re permanently irreplaceable, you’ll soon be replaced by someone who out manoeuvres you.

Let’s look again at my opening question. Ask yourself, how hard would it be for one of your clients or customers to replace you? If you don’t like your answer, do something about it today… and every day, until they’d have to be crazy to switch to another provider.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing, How to, Professional development

How to convert attention into paying customers

November 2, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing foundations, touchpoints

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

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

With this in mind, consider the following.

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

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

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

Filed Under: General marketing, How to

Relocate to an even more comfortable, comfort zone

October 2, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Why do we start a business?

  • It provides us with interesting puzzles to solve, which we find extremely compelling.
  • We’re very well rewarded financially, allowing us to enjoy the lifestyle we want.
  • We get to spend every day, working with wonderful clients or customers.
  • Our working environment is a hive of creativity, fun and productivity.
  • And it goes without saying that our plans for the future energize us.

Well, that’s how it should be

When we decide to start a business, we give ourselves a blank canvas. We get to choose the kind of work we do, the prices we charge, the place we work from and the clients we work with. In short, we construct every single element of our business, from the ground up.

Presented with this stunning opportunity, it’s a fact that most business owners end up seriously off-course.

This happens for a reason. Business owners are not stupid!

None of them set out to struggle or spin their wheels. Instead, they very slowly drift off course. It’s subtle. Little by little. Day by day. Until after a number of years, the business is not what its owner wants it to be.

That’s why it’s worth reminding yourself that your business can be whatever you decide you want it to be.

Those aren’t just words!

You can choose to work on rewarding projects, for great customers who value you. Or you can choose not to. You can choose to create compelling, motivating plans for your business, which energize you. Or you can choose not to.

So, how do you turn things around?

And what must you do, to finally own the business you’ve always wanted?

It starts with belief… and then a decision

You need to believe (on an intellectual and emotional level) that you deserve a better business, free from whatever limitations you now face. That’s because after a while, many business owners find themselves settling for less than they deserve. Most commonly, I find they lower their lifestyle goals, to accommodate the limitations of their business. You need to believe that by doing the right things correctly, you can transform your business into a spectacularly rewarding enterprise, on every level.

Then you need to decide.

You need to decide to do what’s required.

It means deciding to move from your current comfort zone, and make yourself comfortable in a kinder zone. A zone that’s more rewarding. A zone that provides for your needs and your wants. A zone that’s REALLY comfortable.

Is it worth it? Yes. Absolutely. One hundred percent!

How can I be so certain?

Simple.

I work every day with business owners who have the belief and made the decision. They decide where they want their business to be. We then look at their current position, and work together to make it happen. And the improvement, not only within their businesses, but their lives as a whole, is breathtaking.

You deserve the same, my friend.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing, How to, Professional development

Crank up your fees by 500 percent

September 21, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing premium service

In today’s post, I’m going to share a proven idea with you that can massively increase your revenues and profits. It’s something I’ve done successfully for countless clients over the years. And it’s based on a wonderfully effective business model, too.

I’d like to start by asking you to consider the following. I want you to imagine for a moment, that your clients paid you significantly more than they do now. Maybe 300% or 500% more.

Now hold that thought.

If they were paying you that rate:

  • You could give them considerably more of your individual attention.
  • You could provide them with a dramatically better level of service.
  • Your clients would value you more. So, they’d keep returning, delighted with the service they receive from you.
  • Your clients would also recommend you to their friends, many of whom would then become clients. Remember, birds of a feather flock together. People who value premium services and can afford them, have lots of contacts with the same mindset and resources.
  • And these new clients would be just as delighted… so they would recommend you to their friends.
  • Repeat.

Before you know it, you could have a premium quality client base, growing organically.

Premium quality clients. Growing organically. Surely that’s worth considering?

Maybe it’s time you considered offering a premium version of your services. Your marketplace already has a highly profitable subset, who value quality and will very happily pay more for it. In fact, they eagerly seek it out.

And that’s not all.

The premium quality corner of your marketplace is not only the most profitable. It’s also, by far, the least competitive. It’s the middle ground, which is always stuffed full of competing providers, forcing fees down.

Just think how your business would thrive, with higher fees, higher profits, happier clients and less competition.

Average is easy. But it’s overcrowded and overrated.

Filed Under: Business Development, General marketing, How to, Professional development

How to have inspiration, ideas and answers on demand

September 10, 2020 by Jim Connolly

marketing ideas, marketing inspiration

How would you like to have access to inspiration, ideas and answers whenever you need them? That’s what this brief post is all about.

I found the above note in an old Apple Notes file. I think it was part of some research I did, for a blog post I never published. Anyhow, discovering that note this morning reminded me why I take (and keep) lots of notes and how extremely valuable they are.

I thought you might find it useful, so I’ve decided to quickly share it with you.

Now, as you can see, that note by itself is just a snippet of an idea.

But that note isn’t by itself. It’s part of a massive body of ideas I’ve jotted down over the past 20 years. They’re mostly pen and paper notes, though I also have thousands of digital notes, like the above example.

It’s this stack of ideas and observations, in note form, that’s extremely valuable for anyone involved in problem solving; which is every person reading this.

Inspiration and answers on demand

As a marketing professional, I can’t ‘wait’ for inspiration to arrive. When work starts, I need to command inspiration to appear. If I’m more than one coffee into my day and I’m struggling to get into the flow, that’s where the notes come in.

I grab a notebook or search my digital notes and usually within 5 minutes, my brain is in a highly creative state.

An old note with a nugget or two of information, soon points my thinking in a massively more productive direction. That new direction helps me focus on new ideas and new solutions, which I couldn’t possibly have accessed otherwise. I use these to help my clients build great businesses, develop new products or services and spot windfall profits they never even knew existed.

More importantly, just think how valuable that kind of asset would be for you and your business. Imagine you were able to know in advance, with confidence, that you could tap into a powerful source of inspired ideas and answers.

Start by collecting ideas. The sooner you start, the sooner your stack of ideas will grow. And don’t just collect your own ideas, but ideas from others (like this one). And definitely spend more time on ideas from outside your industry. Grab ideas from books, movies, artists you love. Don’t limit yourself. Collect your ideas in a format that’s easiest for you.

And most importantly, make it a daily habit.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Development, General marketing, How to, Professional development

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marketing advice, marketing help Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.

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