Jim Connolly Marketing

A Content Marketing tip your competitors don’t want you to know

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content marketing, writing, material, information

Here’s a quick Content Marketing tip, to help you improve the effectiveness of all your marketing material.

Content Marketing and speaking their language

One of the cornerstones of effective copywriting, is to remove as many barriers to communication as possible. The person reading your copy (or message) needs to be able to connect with it cleanly and clearly. This means speaking their language.

Lawyers, web designers, accountants and financial experts etc, regularly use industry terms, phrases and buzz words in their marketing to potential clients. This massively reduces the effectiveness of their marketing message.

You can immediately improve your marketing results, by embracing a more accessible approach.

How to create powerful, accessible content

Before you write your next piece of marketing material:

  1. Think about the benefits you provide, from the prospective client’s perspective.
  2. Focus on ‘them’, their business, their needs.
  3. Clearly explain how the benefits you provide will tangibly improve their life, business or both.
  4. Finally, review your message and make sure it’s pitched to the sophistication of your ideal profile of client. Tip: Listen to the different way radio ads are pitched, according to the product and audience of a station or show.

In short: Match your message to your ideal profile of client, by focusing on benefits and using their communication style, not yours.

The art of successful selling

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If you want to sell successfully, get to know the prospective customer first.

Don’t say hello, then smash them in the face with a sales pitch.

Is your marketing built to last?

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If you want to develop great marketing, which will work hard for your business for years and years, today’s post is just for you.

The people who built the castle in today’s photo built it to last. That was way back in the year 1297. It took planning, time, hard work, money and brains. The end result is a building that was so well constructed that it was still being used as a home until the 1960’s. In fact, with a little work it could easily he used as a home again, over 700 years after it was built.

Marketing that’s built to last

Many small business owners only take their marketing seriously, when something drives them into action. It can be the loss of a major client, a change to their income requirements or the sudden realisation that their business has reached a plateau. Faced with this, they go from tick-over mode to proactive marketing. They adopt a tactical approach and usually try:

  • Advertising
  • Networking
  • Email marketing / mail shots
  • Social media marketing

Then, once the immediate crisis has been averted they step back into their usual routine. Marketing is no longer a priority. In essence, marketing is something they do reactively when something goes wrong. It’s not a part of the DNA of their business. It’s not woven into everything they do.

The problem with reactive, tactical marketing

The challenge with a reactive, tactical approach to marketing is that you start from zero each time. You have no relationship with the person receiving your marketing message. It’s a sluggish, low leverage and expensive way to build a business.

The following is a very recent example of how someone using a longer term, strategic approach gained me as a client.

Proactive, strategic marketing in action

I wrote yesterday about how I changed email service providers, upgrading from Feedburner to Mailchimp. As soon as Feedburner’s problems became apparent, a number of email providers started pestering me with sales pitches. None of them were known to me, so they were contacting me as strangers, with a product I knew nothing about.

Now, whilst those guys were selling (at) me, I was thinking of the email providers I already knew of. The stand out provider for my needs, was Mailchimp. Here’s why:

  • I instantly knew their logo and felt good about what it represented.
  • Over the years I have regularly seen reports and blog posts from them regarding email marketing best practices, which were useful and informative.
  • I’d signed up for newsletters, which people had built using their software and they always arrived on time and looked great.
  • Their approach to business and customer service is professional and also a lot of fun.

So, I opened an account with them. It was easy for me to do, because I already felt like I knew them. By strategically, proactively adding value to their marketplace on an ongoing basis, they had sown the seeds that motivated me to hire them.

Ongoing, strategic marketing builds relationships

Mailchimp had earned my attention because of their contribution to their marketplace. Their ongoing, strategic approach to marketing had positioned them in my mind as a trustworthy provider. The companies I’d never heard of, who suddenly started interrupting be with their messages, were simply pestering me. I didn’t know them. They were starting from scratch with me. No credibility had been earned. There was no relationship between their brand and me.

I know you are busy

I know that as a small business owner, you are busy and that it’s not always easy to find time to regularly deliver useful, valuable marketing for your marketplace. However, by developing a marketing strategy and working on it as an ongoing part of your business, you will find it easier to attract regular, good quality clients and sales leads. This approach is also the perfect antidote to the feast and famine problem, that so many small business owners struggle with.

In short: Make marketing an ongoing element of your day to day business and build relationships with people, before they even know they need you.

3 lessons from a world class newsletter

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Here are 3 email marketing tips, from a company with almost one and a half million paying customers and a valuation of a billion dollars.

Why the Evernote newsletter gets it right

One of the best examples of super successful email marketing is the Evernote newsletter. For those who don’t already know, Evernote is a free smartphone app that allows you to capture ideas using; audio, photos, drawings and text. These can then be seamlessly synced to your computers, so you have access to all your notes, all the time, on all your connected devices.

The Evernote newsletter is almost as clever as their app. It does 3 simple things really well; things that most small business owners get wrong. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Their newsletter actually contains news

The Evernote newsletter provides users with news about the product and the company, meaning we are always up to speed on the latest developments.

evernore newsletter, email marketingHere’s why this matters: By ‘letting us in’ on what the team are up to and allowing us to see how the company is developing, we feel like part of their community. We feel a deeper connection with them. We get a picture of the people and brand behind the product. Very few small business newsletters do this and as a result, they miss out on developing a stronger connection with their readers.

2. Their newsletter makes Evernote more valuable

The primary focus of their newsletter, is to provide useful tips on how to get the best results from their app.

Here’s why: The team at Evernote understand that the best way to retain users, is to provide us with the information we need, in order to get the very best from the app. This also dovetails beautifully with the Evernote business model, which is to offer 60MB of uploads a month for free, with a small monthly charge (in the UK it’s £4 per month) for users who need to upload more data. Obviously, the more we use the app, the more likely we are to need more storage than we get with the free version.

By educating Evernote users on how useful the app is, users are also much more likely to rave about it to their friends. This helps Evernote to reach more and more potential customers. There are currently almost 40 million Evernote users. This has seen them attract 1.4 Million paying users and build an estimated company value of 1 Billion dollars.

3. Their newsletter doesn’t push

If you look closely at the Evernote newsletter, you will notice that there are no links anywhere, which ask you to buy the product! None. Instead, they just offer you case studies, ideas and tips, on how to make their free version of Evernote so useful, that becoming a paid user is a natural progression. There is a link from the Evernote desktop app and from their website, which you can use to upgrade to the premium version. And that’s exactly what 1.4 Million people, and counting, have done with no pushing or pestering required!

The Evernote approach to email marketing

The idea is beautifully executed, yet the framework behind it is extremely simple. It’s about focusing like a laser on delivering value, rather than pushing a sales pitch. It’s about using education to make the value of the app so obvious and relevant, that purchasing it becomes a logical conclusion for those readers with a need for it.

It’s a classy, human, value driven approach to email marketing and it’s extremely effective. Worth learning from? ABSOLUTELY!

2 Things you need to know, if you want massively better marketing results!

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marketing tips, marketing ideas, sales

Before you send your next piece of marketing to anyone, there are 2 important things you should consider if you want to get the best return on your investment.

Here they are:

1. Do I have permission to contact this person?

A lot of marketing is still based on interrupting people. For example:

  • They send us email because our address is on some list they bought.
  • They send us junk mail because they know where we live or work.
  • They cold call us because they have our phone number.

Yes, you can get people’s attention by interrupting or pestering them, but it’s not the kind of attention they welcome. People repel pests, they don’t embrace them. Walking into a company unannounced and poking the boss in the chest will get their attention, but it’s unlikely to win their willing cooperation or earn their trust.

So, rather than add people to some list and pester the crap out of them, we should earn access to them instead.

A great way to achieve this, is via the type of message you are receiving right now. Everyone reading this blog post, either by email, RSS reader or on jimsmarketingblog.com, has subscribed or searched for the information. It’s seen as useful, not an interruption. I work hard to deliver as much useful, free information as I can and as a result, thousands of prospective clients read my work every day. This blog is what’s called a permission marketing asset.

Permission based marketing delivers the kind of response rates that interruption marketing can’t touch. Newsletters, blogs, YouTube channels, Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups are permission assets that take time to build, but they offer unparalleled potential, for business owners seeking to earn the attention and trust of their marketplace.

2. Am I contacting them with something they need or is it all about me?

Most marketing (and almost all small business marketing) fails because it’s all about the sender and not the recipient. This happens for a number of reasons, but mainly because business owners wrongly assume ALL marketing has to be about pushing a sales message.

That assumption is not only incorrect, it’s toxic!

Successful marketing is about building permission and earning trust among a targeted group of prospective clients. It’s about making you an obvious choice, when they need the type of service you provide.

For example:

The local health food store, which offers advice on the best foods to eat for your unique needs, is building a relationship with you. They are also positioning themselves in your mind as an authority, when it comes to health food.

Their free newsletter offers healthy recipes, the dates of their next subscriber-only, healthy cooking evenings and the latest news on the benefits of certain food types – So, it’s eagerly awaited by its readers. These readers buy the ingredients from the store because they trust it. They are a part of the community and recommend it to their health-conscious friends. People LOVE to be part of a community of like-minded people.

It’s about them

Effective marketing is not just about pushing special offers and new product lines at people. It’s about engaging with them and building a relationship with them. It’s about earning their trust. It’s about being seen as the obvious place to go, when they have a requirement you can fulfil. It’s about them.

Tip: Do great work & put it where the right people can see it

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No one likes to be pestered. Yet, when it comes to marketing, it seems some people still think they can pester their way to success. This post is about a different way to do business. It’s based on one of the most powerful ideas in commerce and I strongly recommend you take a few minutes to read this post in full.

Pestering their way to the bottom

Over the weekend, I received more than 100 emails from people I don’t know, all asking me to do something for them. Most want me to blog about their latest product or tell you how great their blog is. They send me spam email, because I have a well known blog and they think that means it’s OK. In 100% of the emails, where I have checked the link, the stuff they are pushing is uninspiring, at best.

It seems they have not figured out yet that if their product was worth talking about, they wouldn’t need to spam me or anyone else.

Here are a few examples that came to mind immediately.

An alternative approach

  • I recently bought a Lenovo Ultrabook and was so impressed with it, that I told the 11,000 people who connect with me on Google+ and the 6,000 who follow me on Twitter. The quality of the product was worth talking about, so I did exactly that. I wasn’t asked to. I just did it because I am like you: I talk about the things that impress the pants off me.
  • I received such amazing customer service from Dell computers, that I was compelled to blog about it. Again, I have no connection with Dell, other than being a customer. The service was so good, I had to share my experience.
  • I saw a Facebook update, where Peter Bestel shared a video of his 14 year old daughter, Zoe Bestel singing. Zoe wrote, sang and played on a beautiful track called “Into the Night” and I must have shared that link dozens of times. Why? Because it’s fantastic. You can see Zoe’s video in a moment!
  • A couple of weeks ago, I had an amazing caramel latte at a place in Gainsbrough, Lincolnshire called Creme and it was so good I photographed the cup and sent it to everyone on G+ and Twitter, with my recommendation. Again, the recommendation was totally unasked for. Like all those in this list, it was earned. It was remarkable, so I remarked on it.

Do great work and put it where people will see it

If Bob puts his work out there, where his clients and future clients can see it and they value it enough, they will share it with everyone. As in the above examples, this works whether it’s a multinational company, an independent coffee shop or a 14 year old girl with an amazing gift. Seth Godin makes the point beautifully, in this post about Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true Fans. I suggest you read Seth’s post.

Now, what does Bob do if he has a product or service that he’s always pushing and when people see it, it fails to inspire them? I believe he has 2 options:

  1. He can try and pester his way to success. It may mean cold calling hundreds of people or spamming hundreds of thousands of people to make a sale, but he will make some sales. He will successfully piss off a huge number of people in order to make a sale, but Bob may feel OK with that. This approach will work for a while, until he gets added to enough spam lists and nuisance caller lists, that it’s not effective to push people any more. This pestering approach is extremely common, as your spam folder will confirm.
  2. Bob can develop something that is of such genuine value, that people will want to share it. I call this doing work that matters. As I wrote yesterday on Creative Thinking Hub, this requires a lot more thought than pushing something that’s average, but it’s where the value is. It’s also a far more enjoyable way to develop a business.

‘Average’ isn’t good enough to motivate people to tell your story

Life is too short and people are too informed, for us to waste our time offering a service or product, which people are underwhelmed by. Those interested in being better than average and attracting the best clients, doing work that matters, rest assured I am here to help you with this blog. To those of you committed to being better than average and attracting the best clients, doing work that matters, get in touch. Make it happen.

Finally: Here’s Zoe!

Before I wrap this up, I have to share the following video of Zoe Bestel with you. If you can’t see the video below for any reason, you can watch it here.