Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

The business experts you absolutely must avoid in 2021

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marketing blogs

In life there are certain people who you absolutely need to avoid. The same is true in business.

Some are easy to spot

  • The web designer whose website is a piece of crap.
  • The marketing expert, who embarrassingly needs to pester people on Linkedin because their own marketing doesn’t work.
  • The consultant or adviser who claims to be in high demand, yet offers free consultations.
  • The self-proclaimed leadership guru, who clearly isn’t leading.
  • The copywriter whose content is poorly-written and lacks impact.
  • The creativity expert who’s just like all the other creativity experts. (Think about that for a moment).

Others are trickier to spot

  • The marketing consultant, who used tricks to attract a million social media followers.
  • The accountant who understands numbers, but can’t clearly explain what they mean to their client’s business.
  • The strategist whose own strategy is failing.
  • The business development adviser who has never built a successful business of their own.

Protect your business from bad advice

The personal recommendation of a trusted friend is usually the least risky way to find an expert provider. Just make sure the friend has recent, first-hand experience of the quality of the provider’s work.

Another option is to hire someone whose work you’re already familiar with. For example, if you subscribe to a provider’s podcast, YouTube channel, blog or newsletter and they regularly share useful information, they’re giving you some powerful clues.

  • The fact they have turned up consistently, demonstrates a degree of reliability. This is especially the case if they have many years worth of material available.
  • You get to experience first hand, how knowledgeable they are from the quality of information they provide.
  • In addition, you’ll know in advance if they share information with the clarity you need.
  • You also gain an insight into their personality and mindset, which can help you determine if they’re the kind of person you work best with.

With an attractive looking website and some testimonials, anyone can claim to be an expert at anything. And that’s why you need to look deeper.

The cost of taking bad advice is far, far higher than the person’s fee. And the importance of getting the right advice has never been greater, if you want to successfully navigate your way through 2021.

Content Marketing: Use short sentences. Here’s why

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Content marketing, content tips

Here’s a quick copywriting tip, to help you improve your marketing results.

Your prospective clients prefer to read short sentences. This is especially true when explaining detailed information. For example, how your service works.

I’m not suggesting you use fewer words than required. Far from it! Use as many words per sentence as you need. Don’t remove a single, necessary word. Just don’t use more words than you need.

Why is that Jim? Because from a marketing perspective, long sentences lack impact and clarity. Those are essential components of effective marketing.

Tip: One way to shorten content, without losing anything important, is to remove extraneous words. Look at the 2 examples below.

  • People should exercise on a regular basis.
  • People should exercise regularly.
  • We have no news at this point in time.
  • We have no news currently.

A whole story in just 6 words!

It’s amazing what can be achieved using fewer words. Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story in just 6 words. It’s a powerful story, too.

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn”.

Inspired by Hemingway’s brevity, look for opportunities to keep your sentences as short as required. Aim for clarity. Remove the fluff. And keep sentences confined to one thought.

It’s not as simple as it sounds. But your prospective clients (and your business), will appreciate the additional effort.

Content marketing: 7 Topics that will grab the attention of your marketplace

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Content marketing, content tips

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. Each example is almost universal and represents something, which your clients and prospects are attracted to or extremely attracted to.

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following themes and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing messages.

Each theme ends with a question to help you focus on how it applies to your business.

  1. People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: What are you doing, to connect them 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: What are you doing, to help people achieve their targets, goals or dreams?
  3. We all need security: What are you doing, to help people reduce risk or feel secure and safe?
  4. We also share a common need for a sense of belonging: What are you doing, to create a community?
  5. Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: What are you doing, to help people maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks, faster?
  6. People want to improve and expand their knowledge: What are you doing, to share useful information with them? This is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.
  7. Everyone wants to avoid unnecessary stress, especially now: What are you doing, to help people feel more relaxed and assured?

Are any of those themes missing from your content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them.

You’ll be very glad you did.

This 3 letter word can 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 2021 marketing strategy together.

Revealed: Why email marketing doesn’t work

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success doesn't care

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. In fact, it works extremely well. It works predictably, too. Just ask any business owner who’s using it correctly. What doesn’t work is ineffective email marketing. That’s because 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, whatever. And almost all small business marketing emails are DIY attempts.
  • A professionally written email, sent to the wrong people, won’t work. It will fail to reach those with a demand 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.
  • A well written email, sent to the right people, with a compelling subject line, offering a generic 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 being ineffective, make sure you’re using it correctly.

Sorry to disturb you

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I received an email this morning, which contained an extremely valuable marketing lesson.

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

There’s a lot of information packed into those 4 words. Enough for everyone who received the email, 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 everyone else who received that email, I stopped reading after the opening sentence. After all, a stranger just emailed us, saying they were sorry for spamming us. It’s an instant delete.

However, that email may have contained a great 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 customers, or being greeted by crickets.