Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Here’s why you need vigorous, written marketing

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vigorous writing, vigorous written marketing

Most of the written marketing I see is at least 75% too long. Overlong marketing lacks impact. It also lacks clarity and totally fails to motivate prospective customers or clients.

I want to help you avoid this expensive mistake.

And it starts with maybe the best-known quote on the subject.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.

Professor William Strunk Jr. – The Elements of Style.

The vigorous writing referred to here, is writing that is strong and full of energy. That’s the kind of writing that moves people to take action; to contact you, buy from you or hire you. It’s the kind of writing that gets the results you need.

How can you and your business benefit from the power of vigorous written marketing?

The answer comes from understanding why the problem exists.

Google usually gets the blame

That’s because Google’s search algorithm needs overlong, written content. It prefers 2500 words to 250. So, for over 20 years, online marketing writers have been rewarded for high word counts.

But Google isn’t responsible for the wider problem.

Email marketing and off-line media is just as ruined by overlong content. Neither of those formats have ever required the writer to dance the Google dance.

The problem exists because most written marketing is composed by people who lack sufficient training. It’s either written by business owners who ‘dabble’ or by below-par marketing writers.

The solution?

The business owner wishing to switch to the vigorous written marketing they need, has two options.

  1. Learn how to do it effectively.
  2. Pay someone who already knows.

How to decide?

  • The cost (in time) of learning is considerable. It’s one of those subjects where you never stop learning. However, you’ll start seeing improvements relatively quickly.
  • The cost of hiring an expert is lower. And it’s a lot faster.

Of course, the price you pay for starving your business of vigorous written marketing, is massively higher than either of those options. So pick one of them and run with it.

7 Content topics to grab the attention of your marketplace

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content marketing tip

I write a lot about the importance of being useful with your marketing. A number of you have asked me if I can give you some specific examples, which you can apply to your content marketing.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done in this post.

Their needs and your products or services

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following 7 topics (or theme ideas) and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing messages.

  1. People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: Share ideas to help your prospects connect with useful contacts. The Wall Street Journal wrote about how I achieved this for one of my clients – 4 Marketing Strategies That Paid Off For Small Companies
  2. Everyone is trying to succeed at something: Share ideas to help your prospects achieve their targets, goals or dreams. Obviously, as with pretty-much every topic here, if you offer a specific product or service that can help them in this area, incorporate that into the content.
  3. We all need to feel safe and secure: Share ideas to help your prospects reduce risk or feel safer.
  4. We also share a common need for a sense of belonging: Share ideas to help your prospects feel like an integral part of your business.
  5. Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: Share ideas to help your prospects maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks faster, etc. I’m not a time management expert, but I’ve shared tons of ideas in this area, based on decades of running a successful business, without working crazy hours. The response is always excellent. So don’t be put off sharing from your experience.
  6. People want to improve and expand their knowledge: Share your industry knowledge, sure. But ALSO share your experience with them. For example, if you’re an accountant, don’t just focus on tax, profit and loss or the latest business news. They can get that anywhere. Tell them the common factors you’ve identified in successful businesses. And the ones you’ve identified in those that flounder or fail. Your experience is extremely valuable.
  7. Everyone wants to avoid unnecessary stress, especially now: Share ideas to help your prospects feel more relaxed and assured. If there’s a specific product or service you offer, which can assist them with this, incorporate that into the message or idea.

Are any of those topics missing from your content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Because this kind of useful, relevant information is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.

You’ll know you have the balance right, when your content marketing is SO USEFUL that people would really miss it if you stopped.

Discover the NEW way to destroy your sales results

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marketing tips

When it comes to creating a powerful marketing message and attracting new customers, ‘new‘ is overrated. It can also destroy your marketing results.

There are 3 core reasons for this.

  1. The newest product or service is always a riskier bet. At best, it’s a bigger gamble than the trusted incumbent. At worst, the customer feels like a paying guinea pig.
  2. The newest product or service is seldom the best. It lacks the improvements that come from years of feedback. It lacks the robustness that comes from stress-testing.
  3. New doesn’t last for long. This makes it a short-term marketing message. Anything that’s new is only new for now.

A dozen better alternatives

Instead of relying on new, offer your marketplace something more compelling. More motivating. More attractive. For example, instead of offering them a new way to do something, offer them:

  1. A faster way.
  2. A more enjoyable way.
  3. A greener way.
  4. A proven way.
  5. A stylish way.
  6. An original way.
  7. A premium quality way.
  8. An ethical way.
  9. An exciting way.
  10. A safer way.
  11. A more reliable way.
  12. A cost effective way.

In short, be extremely careful about how and where you use the word new, as you put your 2022 marketing strategy together.

Why email marketing doesn’t work

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email marketing doesn't work, does not work

A reader shared an interesting observation with me.

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

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

Email marketing works

Email marketing works. In fact, email marketing works extremely well.

Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. Whether it’s used for newsletters or promotions, the return on investment is off the charts.

Email marketing also works more predictably than just about any other form of marketing. And the tiny financial investment required for email marketing makes it the most cost effective form of marketing out there.

email marketing doesn't work, content marketing

When email marketing doesn’t work

What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. Just ask anyone who’s doing it incorrectly. Here’s the thing: ineffective email marketing can’t work.

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

  • A poorly written email won’t work. It will fail to motivate the reader to take action; to call you, email you, visit your website, make a purchase from you, whatever.
  • A professionally written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a want or need for your services.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a dull subject line, won’t work. That’s because no one will open it. The subject line has to be compelling or no matter what your message is, it will literally be ignored.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, offering a generic product or service, won’t work. No one wants to switch to a service that’s no better then their current service.

You get the idea.

In short, before you reject any form of marketing as ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly. Email marketing does work. And it will work for you and your business when you do it correctly

Sorry to disturb you

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email marketing, email open rates, marketing conversion

Image: Nick Morrison.

I received a marketing email earlier, which contained a dangerous error. This error will have dramatically reduced its open rate. Here’s what happened, so you can avoid it from happening to you.

It started with the following 4 words: “Sorry to disturb you”.

There’s a lot of information packed into those 4 words. Enough for the vast majority of those who received it, to form an opinion on the sender.

  • The sender knew what they were doing was wrong, which is why they opened with an apology.
  • The sender also knew that their email was a disturbance. An unrequested interruption from someone I’ve never heard of.
  • Knowing all this, they still decided to send it anyway.

Like others who received that email, I stopped reading after the opening sentence. After all, a stranger had interrupted us, without our consent, to tell us that what we were about to read is just spam. It’s an instant delete.

What if the email had been valuable?

That email may have contained a useful message. It might have offered an outstanding deal. It could have provided details of a wonderful opportunity. But their email let them down. So no one will know. The list they used. The copy they used and the tone of their opening line destroyed their email campaign.

Oblivious to this, the sender will be wondering why they received no positive response. Especially if they genuinely had something valuable to share. They’ll perhaps be pondering whether they need to lower their prices, or if email marketing is a waste of time, or if their great offer isn’t actually great.

If we consider this to be merely an example of ineffective email marketing, we totally miss the point!

It’s way, way bigger than that.

This example provides us with a powerful insight of how easy it is, for a business owner to offer an amazing product or service, only for ineffective marketing to let them down. It’s the difference between being inundated with enquiries from eager prospective clients, or being greeted by crickets.

Content marketing: It’s all about pressing the publish button

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marketing

Image: Danielle MacInnes. 

Hannah just emailed me with a question. She wants to know what’s the secret to publishing content marketing more frequently. Here’s my reply.

There are lots of reasons for not publishing more of our ideas, to more people, more often.

  • I just can’t think of anything useful to say right now.
  • Maybe no one will bother reading it.
  • I know what I want to say, but I can’t figure out how I want to say it.
  • This needs to be really, really good and I’m not sure I can write something of that quality today.
  • I don’t have enough time.

Those are totally valid reasons. I know because I’ve experienced all of them more than once over the years. However, I don’t think they address the primary reason why so few people, regularly create and publish their own content marketing.

In my experience, as someone who has mentored hundreds of people on content creation and delivery, the main barrier is pressing the publish button. Moreover, their concern regarding the response they might face, after publication. The fallout, criticism and possible confrontation.

It’s certainly true that if we choose to publish nothing, we don’t need to worry about unleashing a wall of potentially hostile responses.

It’s also true that we miss out on all the opportunities that could come our way, if we were to press publish and share our ideas or observations.

But tragically, by failing to press the publish button regularly, we never learn how other people manage to publish regularly.

Here’s the thing. By repeatedly pressing the publish button, we become perfectly, totally comfortable, publishing our original content whenever we have something useful to share.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

  • My first blog post took several days to write, edit, re-edit, format, re-edit… then publish.
  • This post was written on my phone and published on WordPress in around 15-20 minutes.

What was the difference between the two posts?

The experience I gained, from pressing the publish button several thousand times.