Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

How would you cope, if this happened to YOU?

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How well do your business resources match your marketing goals or sales targets?

You may want “more business” right now, but if it came, if your marketing was so effective and compelling that all the extra business you want actually arrived, how well could you service it?

Many people say that this is a “great problem to have” but they are totally missing the point!  If you are unable to benefit fully from all that potential when it comes along, you are likely to miss out on what might be a business-changing or life-changing opportunity.

Internet

Many businesses, for example, have their websites on servers that are poorly equipped to cope with a sudden surge in traffic.  You need to know how your site would hold up, if a major Internet influencer, like Robert Scoble, decided to share your amazing product page or a blog post you wrote, with his huge social network.  Equally, if your site or blog gets linked to by a popular website for whatever reason, traffic can go through the roof.

I’ve seen sites drop after a few minutes, when they have been linked to by an influential person or website – The EXACT opposite of what they want, if they want to benefit from all that free exposure!  If you are serious about your website / blog as part of your business, get serious about your hosting too.

What about the phones?

Can your phone system cope with more than 1 call at a time?  If you were taking a call right now and I called you, what would happen to my call? Would I get a busy / engaged tone?  If you state your phone number in your marketing material and you plan doing some endorsed relationship marketing, for example, you would need as many simultaneous calls to be taken as possible.  Otherwise, you will lose sales AND stacks of highly valuable leads too.

Talk to your phone provider or one of the many call handling services to see what your best options are.  Some offer ad hoc services, which you can use during the busy times only.  These can be ideal for small businesses.

Logistics?

If you have to ship a physical product as part of your business, do you have a strategy in place to cope with a surge in orders?  When I first launched my Motivation Master Class audio program, it was only available as a CD box set.  I did an appearance on The BBC and had a massive surge in orders – Which resulted in me needing to find 5 people immediately, to help me deal with the packaging and despatching of orders.  Luckily, I knew some people and we got everything out in time.  Luck, however, is not a great fall-back plan!

It’s a lot easier today – you can simply click here and be listening to me in minutes!

Proposals and tenders

You just designed a wonderful website and it gets featured on a TV show that’s watched my millions.  Over the next 3 days, you get more tender requests than you did over the past 3 years!  Do you have a system in place to reply to every single request you get?  Do you have a way to efficiently sift through the requests generated, so that you spend your major time talking to serious people?  If not, now is a great time to get yourself prepared.

Those are just a few of the areas that are better to research and plan for BEFORE you need them.

If you have others you would like to add, ideas that will help people deal with a surge in business, please share them!

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

It’s only useful, if you use it!

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It’s a fact: The best marketing ideas in the world will not work, unless you use them.

Over the years, I have discovered that small business owners can be divided into 2 groups, when it comes to marketing.

Group 1: Those who find marketing interesting, but just dabble and seldom work with the ideas they find.

These people love reading about marketing and they enjoy the social elements of marketing such as networking, social media etc, but they seldom actually take time to develop a marketing plan and work the plan.  In many cases, they have businesses that are struggling financially and they knowledge to turn it around – If only they put some of their marketing ideas to work.

Ideas are GREAT, but they need to act on them if you want to achieve anything.

Group 2: Those who understand that marketing is an essential part of their business, so they put the best marketing ideas they find into action.

These business owners see things very differently from the previous, much larger group.  They have discovered that if they find a marketing idea interesting, then use it, amazing things can happen.  They are not afraid to fail, because they know that marketing is all about testing and measuring.  If they try something and it doesn’t work the way they want, they will review the feedback and try again with a new refinement.  They will then measure the feedback and make further adjustments, until they get the results they want.

Ultimately, our commercial success will be determined by our level of intelligent activity; not by how much useful knowledge we have acquired.  Why not take the best marketing idea you have right now, and use it!

Don’t push your marketing on people!

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One of the reasons that you get targeted with so much unprofessional marketing, is that small business owners never view what THEY do as spammy or unprofessional.  They know that their intentions are good, so as far as they are concerned:

  • It’s OK for them to add you to their mailing list without your consent, because THEY KNOW it’s not spam and that their company is legitimate.
  • It’s OK for them to ask you to recommend them on Linkedin, even though you don’t know them, because THEY KNOW they are decent, honest people.
  • It’s OK for them to send you sales pitches on Facebook, because THEY KNOW that their products really are extra special.
  • It’s OK for them to use Twitter as a broadcast medium, because THEY KNOW that their stuff REALLY IS worth broadcasting.

The key to marketing success, is to understand that your marketing results are based on your actions, rather than your intentions.  People will respond positively, negatively or not at all, based on what you do.  Consequently, when you irritate people by pushing marketing at them, they will typically respond negatively.

The most successfully marketed small businesses, abide by the following 8 words:  Have something worth saying and say it well.

They offer a product or service that provides unique value (so they have something worth saying.)  Then, they use professional marketing, to get their message out correctly and motivate people to buy from them (so they say it well.)

The least successful businesses do the exact opposite.

They offer a similar-ish product or service to their competitors, (so they don’t really have something worth saying.)  Then, they use push marketing techniques like; cold calling, social media broadcasting, unsolicited email marketing etc, which just irritates people (so they don’t say it well.)

Before you send out any piece of marketing, always ask yourself the following question:  “If  someone sent this to me, how would it make me feel about that company and their services?”

We should always hold ourselves up to at least the same level of scrutiny, as we use when evaluating other providers.  Preferably, far, far higher!

How do you feel about pushy marketing or those that broadcast to you, rather than engage you?

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Just because Bob can, does not mean he should!

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One of the great things about being in business today, is that we can get an idea, write it down, click a mouse button and get it in front of thousands of people in seconds.  Better still, we can reach all these people for little more than the cost of our time.  However, instant communications also present us with a challenge.

The marketing challenge of free, instant communications

Not that long ago, it would cost a small business owner a lot of money, to send a traditional mail shot via the postal service to a few thousand people.  It would take ages to print out all those letters and even the ink was expensive.  Then you had to fold them, stuff them into envelopes and either stick a stamp on each envelope or frank each one.  Because the cost in both time and money was so significant, people thought long and hard about what they wrote and who they sent those letters to.  Every letter needed to count, when you were paying hundreds or maybe thousands for each mail shot!

Today, Bob can write an email during his coffee break and send it to his list, with the click of a mouse button.  It will cost him nothing and take seconds.

As a result of this shift, you and I now find our email inboxes and social media streams, regularly littered with a lot of low value crap, from people like Bob.

Of course, the smartest business owners and marketers out there, are even more focused on the quality of their messages today than they were a decade ago.  They know that in order to stand out in a world full of “Bobs”, their messages have to be professionally crafted.  They also ensure that they only send their messages to people who are interested and who have given them permission to get in touch.

While people like Bob are filling the marketplace with low quality, badly targeted messages and getting added to an ever increasing number of blacklists, the savvy business owners and entrepreneurs are taking a different, less common route.  They are focusing on value first, volume second.  For them, quality comes before quantity.  They send the right message, to the right people. It’s such a simple concept, yet it’s becoming increasingly rare.

Just because there’s little financial cost attached to sending emails or using social media sites, doesn’t mean we won’t end up paying a hefty price for using them ineffectively.  If we get it wrong, we risk simultaneously damaging our reputation and missing out on an avalanche of new business and opportunities.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Keep clear!

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One of the primary reasons that so many small business owners miss out on sales, is that their marketing messages lack clarity.  When it comes to sales, clarity is king.  In fact, one of the oldest sayings in the business is:

“A confused mind always says NO!”

In other words, if you ask a prospective client to make a purchasing decision, before they clearly understand your proposal, they will typically say “no”.  That’s why the best salespeople and negotiators always make sure they clearly explain their proposition, in as few words as possible.  They prompt prospective clients to ask them questions, and answer them fully, before asking them to make a decision. The clearer a prospective client is about what you are offering, especially regarding how it will benefit them, the better.

Copy writing and clarity

With written marketing, we also need to ensure that prospective clients can clearly and quickly learn what we do and how it will benefit them.  However, when we look at most small business marketing, we see pretty-much the exact opposite!  It is generally written in a long winded, bloated, pedestrian style, which the reader has usually given up on way before the actual core benefits have even been mentioned.  It usually focuses way too much on how great they are, and way too little on the problems facing the person reading their message.

Guess how interested the average reader is in YOU or YOUR business?

Not very!

They came to you because they have a problem.  Every successful product or service is designed to solve some kind of problem.  If your marketing is targeted correctly, the people reading it will be suffering with the problems, which your offering solves.  By clearly explaining how YOU will directly make THEIR situation better, you stand the best possible chance of attracting their custom.  The focus should be on them and how you can help them.

Quick marketing tip

Take a moment to review your written marketing and see how long it takes the reader, to find out exactly how you can help them.  Check your website’s statistics software and note the pages that visitors to your site arrive on the most.  Ensure that your marketing message on those pages is clear and that it gets to the point quickly and without fuss.

Are you marketing with a hammer, an axe or a chainsaw?

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How would you describe the way you market your business?

When I used to speak with marketing students, I would explain the three basic small business marketing approaches like this.

Marketing approach 1: Chopping down a tree with a hammer

Yes, you can chop a tree down with a hammer but it will take days of needless, backbreaking work.  This is what happens when you use the wrong tool for the job.

Most of the small business owners I hear from fit into this category.  Instead of using the correct marketing tools for what they want to achieve, they use the tools they are comfortable with.  They complain about their lack of success, but keep repeating the same old errors.  If you are not getting the results you want from your marketing, stop whatever you are doing and make sure you are using the right tools for what you want to achieve.

Marketing approach 2: Chopping down a tree with an axe

Yes, you can chop a tree down with an axe and instead of it taking you a few days, as it would with a hammer, it might only take you a couple of hours of hard work.  This is what happens when you use a tool that’s designed specifically for what you want to achieve.  It’s massively more efficient.  You get better results, for less effort.

From a marketing perspective, a far smaller group of small business owners fit into this category.  These are the people, who have invested their time refining how they market their business and thus eliminated what didn’t work and embraced what did.  What’s left is a shiny set of effective marketing tools.

Marketing approach 3: Chopping down a tree with a chain saw

You can chop a tree down with a chainsaw in minutes; without even breaking into a sweat.  Like an axe, it’s a tool that’s specially designed for the job.  Unlike the axe, which was designed hundreds of years ago (or more), today’s chainsaws use the very latest technology.  So, not only will the chainsaw do the job, it will do it better, more accurately and  in a fraction of the time.

From a marketing perspective, very few small business owners fit into this category.  These rare people are the ones who have not only discovered some marketing tools that work; they have also discovered the perfect tools for what they want to achieve and the most effective way to use them, so they get the best possible results.  They plan their marketing ahead of time and make far better decisions.

Compare that approach, to the more typical small business owner’s attitude to marketing. Marketing is something these guys do when there’s a problem; like the loss of a major account or the sudden realisation that they are not making any real progress.  So, for example, they might decide to “try a mail shot” and send a poorly written letter (which is essentially a sales pitch) to an out of date list of people, who never asked to be contacted.

They then usually proclaim; “we tried mail shots – they don’t work!”  I’m assuming they are the same people who think “cars don’t work” because they don’t know how to drive! ;)

Most people reading this, will see themselves primarily in one of those three general groups.  The best advice I can give you, is to get yourself into that third group, as quickly as you can!

Get to the point!

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One of the fastest ways to improve the effectiveness of your marketing messages, is to get to the point as soon as possible, in as few words as possible.

For example, I recently helped a new client increase the conversion rate of a page on his website by 450%, after reducing the number of words on that page by 75%.  I have also seen response rates from email marketing soar by over 700%, when rambling copy was changed into a shorter, compelling and more powerful message.

Most of the written marketing I see is at least 50% too long.  This is because amateur copy writers feel they have to include everything in every marketing message they write.  They feel compelled to tell the reader about every benefit of what they do.  They don’t want to miss a thing, so they go into way too much detail.  Thus, what needed to be a brief, focused message with impact, becomes a meandering, diluted message instead.

If you are disappointed by the conversion rates of your written marketing, it might be time to focus more on brevity.  Concentrate on delivering your most powerful points and do it with impact!

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

How to make better marketing decisions

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If you want to make better marketing decisions, you may find today’s post really useful.  It’s all about something I call bad numbers.

Allow me to explain!

Bad numbers = Bad data

Imagine you wanted to know what the average small business owner thought about social media.  If you asked that question via a poll on something like Facebook or Twitter, the results would be inaccurate and potentially damaging.

Why?

Because you would not be asking the average small business owner!  You would be asking the average small business owner, who already uses social media.  That group would give a very different response, than you would get from a true, random sample of small business owners.  Any decisions you made based on that data would be based on bad numbers.

Everyone says…

I spoke with a fellow blogger recently, who changed the size of the font he used on his blog, because; “everyone said the font size was too big.” When I checked it out, everyone was actually just 3 people who commented on his blog.  The first person said that he found the font size was a little large, then 2 of their friends said that they thought it was on the large side too.  This guy gets around 300 unique visitors a day, so he based his decision on a flawed group of just 1% of his readership!  After making the change, he immediately saw the average time people spent on his site drop by 15%.  He has now reverted back to the original size font and has regained that 15% again.

Before you make a business decision based on numbers, it’s extremely important that the data you are working with is good.  This means you need to be able to rely on the quality of the data and the size of the data sample, needs to be statistically relevant too.

For example, I spoke with the owner of a new, London based accountancy practice a few years ago.  He told me that his last mail shot provided a zero response rate.  As a result, he said he was no longer going to use mail shots as part of his marketing mix.  I looked at the letter he used, and it was actually pretty good (for a change.)  I then asked where he got the database that he used for the mailing, and it was one of the world’s leading suppliers of databases.

I then asked how many letters he sent.  Here was his reply: “We sent 12 letters out, because we got 12 contact names and addresses for free, to evaluate the database they wanted to sell us.” He was basing his decision that mail shots did not work, on a mailing to just 12 people!

Before you make any decisions with your marketing, make sure you are basing those decisions on good numbers.

Your marketing has a sell by date!

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How up to date is the marketing information you use?  I ask you this, because it’s extremely easy to be working hard implementing ideas or using tools, which are so outdated that they have very little potential to help you achieve the bankable sales results you need.

Marketing basics stay the same, but the tools change

Although the basics of marketing have been around for many years, the tools we use to market products and services change all the time; as does the effectiveness of these tools.  If you are currently basing your marketing on ideas and insights you garnered even 2 or 3 years ago, there’s a very good chance you are missing out on a stack of great opportunities to boost your sales and reduce your marketing costs.

Mail shots and social media marketing

For example; just a few years ago, response rates from direct mail or mail shots, was lower than it is today and some were even writing it off, (pardon the pun).  However, with so much small business marketing now being conducted via email, marketing letters, especially those that have been individually signed, have become a more personal, polished and powerful way to introduce your services to a prospective client or customer.

Most marketing books and programs that are more than 2 years old, totally fail to mention social media as a marketing tool; even though social media is rapidly becoming one of the highest yielding forms of marketing available.

The pace of change these days is such, that marketing books, especially those based around social media marketing, are often out of date within months of being published.  Even books written earlier this year, which included how to market your business using services like Facebook or Twitter, will miss all of the new features added to those services this year.  The same is true of books and courses on commercial blogging.  Yes, many of the basics will be there, but the powerful new features and opportunities will not.

Marketing tip

If you are currently not getting the bankable results you want from your marketing, take a moment to review the information you are using and the assumptions you are making.  Examine the various marketing tactics and marketing tools you are using.  Are they appropriate for the 2nd half of 2010?

2 steps to improve your marketing messages!

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Did you ever hear that old saying; “You can’t keep everybody happy”?  Well, when it comes to marketing messages, you shouldn’t even try!  When you embrace this idea, it can provide a massive boost your sales figures.

It’s all about using a more targeted marketing approach.

Targeted marketing messages

A targeted marketing message consists of 2 equally important components:

  1. The message is sent to a targeted group; those most likely to have a need for whatever you are offering.
  2. The message is composed exclusively, with the people in that target group in mind.  In other words it’s directly relevant to them and their needs.

Marketing to a targeted group

Every day, you will see offers in your mail and your email inbox, from companies offering things you have absolutely no need for.  What do you do with these?  You ignore them!  That’s because no matter how great a product or service is, it will only succeed commercially, if it’s marketed to the right people.

For example, you may have just been offered the best deal ever on a new coffee machine, but if you are not a coffee drinker, that offer is not going to motivate you to buy the coffee machine.  So, make sure that you are speaking, writing and advertising to the right people.

A targeted marketing message

Most of the marketing messages we see are very poorly targeted.  The reason this is so common, is that amateur marketers often think that by writing for the widest spread of people possible, they stand the greatest chance of making a sale.

They want to ensure that everyone who reads or listens to their marketing message, will find “something” there that’s interesting.  However, that approach is the exact opposite of what effective, targeted marketing is all about.

Effective, targeted marketing is about getting a directly relevant message in front of a targeted reader / listener / viewer.  It’s about talking to that person, about their needs and what’s happening in their world, and showing how you can help them, with your products or services.

The bottom line here is this: The more compelling, inspiring and motivating your message is, the more successful it will be.

If you would like to see a better return from your current marketing efforts, take a moment to check who you currently market your services to, and also, how targeted your marketing messages are.