Email marketing & mail shots Archives - Page 20 of 32

Just Launched: The Content Marketing Program

By Jim Connolly | April 21, 2011

Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of a brand new service, my Content Marketing Program.

The program runs for a whole year. During our year together, I will show you how to attract high quality clients and inquiries, based on the incredible power of content marketing. Working with you on a one-to-one basis, I will show you how to use tools like blogging, newsletters, and email marketing etc; to attract targeted inquiries from your ideal profile of client.

It works – Look!

The very fact that you are reading this right now, along with thousands of other business owners, proves how successfully you can reach the right people, with content marketing. Notice how I knew you were a business owner? That’s because when you use content marketing correctly, as I do here on this blog, you ensure that your messages reach the right people – LOTS of them too!

What kind of tangible results are possible?

In February, I wrote a short blog post, regarding a place that had unexpectedly become available on my Marketing Mentor Program. In less than 24 hours, that post generated 92 genuine inquiries for the remaining place!

Based on my typical conversion rate, I could have generated at least £90,000 in fees; if I had enough places to fill, just from that single post!

On my Content Marketing Program, I will show you exactly how I did that and how you can put the same super-powerful strategies in place for your business!

I will also show you how I used Content Marketing to generate almost £130,000 in client fees and product sales from this blog last year.

Just imagine what a difference that could make to you and your business.

By the way, if you are the kind of person, who prefers to attract business inquiries, rather than chase people for business, you will find this program especially valuable.

How it works: A quick overview

The program is tailored around your unique needs, resources and goals, so we start off with an initial fact-finding meeting. This meeting is conducted like all our meetings, via Skype or phone. We look at exactly where you are right now and then examine what you want to achieve; your goals and business targets etc.

Then, I work with you over the following 12 months, to develop a Content Marketing strategy, to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be. I will provide you with all the guidance, coaching, support (and clarity) you need; all included in the program’s price.

That’s right: One set fee which covers everything, for the whole year.

Find out more

If you genuinely want to start attracting high quality clients, the way I do here on this blog, I’d love to hear from you.

Simply email me on jim (at) jimsmarketingblog.com (with your contact details) or call me on (+44) 1427 891274, and I will happily answer any questions you have, in complete confidence. Obviously, there are a limited number of places available, so get in touch as soon as you can, to avoid disappointment. My full contact details are here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How to massively improve your online marketing results, the easy way!

By Jim Connolly | April 19, 2011

Do you prefer to attract client inquiries and leads, rather than having to sell your services?

If you do, then content marketing is exactly what you and your business need. Content marketing is where you use blogs (like this one) or newsletters, podcasts or webinars etc, as a way to deliver valuable information, which gains the attention of your prospective clients. Then, over a period of time, you get to position yourself as an expert in your field, to thousands of prospective clients.

Content marketing is extremely effective, it costs very little and the results can be amazing, life changing even! Moreover, the results get better and better over time, as your audience and influence increases.

In today’s post, I am going to share one of the secrets behind the world’s most successful content marketing. To begin, I am going to answer the 2 most common content marketing questions, which people ask me. Here they are:

How much free information should I give away?
What quality of information is “just too good” for me to blog about or include for free in my newsletter, webinar or podcast?

Here are the short answers to those questions:

You should give away as much free information as you can.
You should give away as much value as you can.

Allow me to explain!

Content marketing and me

Back in 1995, my fellow marketing professionals said I was crazy for giving away so much marketing information for free. This was before the Internet went mainstream, so I delivered my free content marketing via; radio shows, magazine articles, public speaking and networking groups. I then established an enormously successful marketing newsletter, before moving on to blogging.

In short: I gave and gave and gave. Then, I gave some more.

The more I gave away, the more I was accused of committing commercial suicide.

The more I gave away, the more high quality business I generated!

Here’s one thing that has not changed, over my 16 years in content marketing: Most people only give snippets of information away for free, or information which they believe is not good enough to charge for. Their belief is that by giving “the good stuff” away for free, it will reduce their income. This is the exact opposite of what actually happens!

Here’s why.

By putting a diluted version of their content out there for free, they showcase themselves as being less effective than they really are. The marketplace positions them in their mind as an average provider, because the free information they give away is average. They are under-marketing themselves and their abilities. For content marketing to work, your free material needs to be good enough to inspire people to subscribe to you, get in touch with you and link to you. It also needs to be compelling enough to motivate people to share your blog, newsletter or whatever, with their social network. People will only do that when the information they receive is valuable enough.

I have never held back information from this blog, in case it’s too valuable to give away for free. You know what though? I do the opposite all the time. I often refuse to publish posts here, because they are just not good enough for you. That’s a fundamental of successful content marketing. Give away as much high quality information as you can, and attract the attention, interest and respect of your marketplace. Show them what you know.

Content marketing and your business

If you like the idea of attracting clients (rather than pursuing them) and want to know more about content marketing, I have some GREAT news for you! I shall be making a very special announcement shortly, regarding an exciting, new content marketing program. This is NOT the typical; ebook, premium blog content and a few webinars – It’s the chance for you and I to work together, 1-to-1, on the development of the perfect content marketing strategy for you and your business.

If you want to know more, keep an extra close eye on the blog over the coming days!

What everyone ought to know about special offers!

By Jim Connolly | April 7, 2011

Do you provide special offers to people, as a way to encourage them to make a purchase? If you do, here are some things you really need to know in order to get the best results possible and avoid some common mistakes!

Special offers: Training the marketplace to wait

The first challenge with using special offers, is that if you get it wrong (and most small businesses I see do), you will be training the marketplace to wait, so they never pay the full retail on anything you offer. Here is an example, from a former client of mine.

This guy runs a seminar business and he always used special offers as part of his seminar marketing strategy. He used a newsletter for the marketing of his events and would start with an early-bird discount to encourage people to book early. These super-eager people who booked early, would have booked at the regular price anyway, they didn’t need incentives, as I later proved. Then, as the date of the seminar got closer, he always offered an x% “last minute” discount on the remaining places.

All he was actually doing, was training his best prospective clients to wait for his offers, before they booked.

Hardly anyone paid the actual price to attend one of his seminars, yet that fee was what all his planning was based on. As a direct result, he was losing an incredible, unsustainable, 40% of the profits on every event he held! By reviewing his marketing and goals, we were able to increase his profitability by over 260%, whilst offering some amazing deals – NONE of which required him lowering his seminar fees. Booking numbers and fees increased.

Special offers: The big brand approach

When big companies use special offers, we see something very different from the way most small business owners use them.

Big brands mix the timings of their offers, so they are only available when they know from extensive research, that business slows down during a certain period. They also develop their special offers, based on sound advice from their financial directors, accountants and marketing directors; so that a healthy profit is always part of the sale price. They never lose. Ever.

The discounts are usually only available for genuinely limited periods and often, only when the customer spends a certain fee (what we call a trigger fee) or buys in greater volume than usual. These are carefully planned, strategic offers.

Special offers: The all year round “sale now on”

We have all seen companies, who always seem to have some kind of sale on.

This marketing strategy is actually quite different from the use of special offers. The use of back-to-back “sale now on” messages, is typically used as a way to position a brand as a budget / value provider; because we learn to associate their brand with there being a “sale now on.”

This approach is widely used in the business to consumer market and is especially prevalent in the household goods, fast food and automotive industries.

Special offers: Make your offers work

Special offers should be used to increase your revenues and profits; not lower them.

Offering special offers is a skilled area of marketing and can sink a business, when used incorrectly. This is because they can not only lower the value of each transaction, it can also reduce the number of transactions too; as people keep on holding out for your next deal and then find a better one elsewhere. The net result can be fewer sales at lower profitability.

Here are some tips to help you get it right:

Genuinely special. They need to have real world value. Look to add something extra, rather than lower a price. Increase the value by adding, not subtracting.
Scarce. They are most effective when there is an element of scarcity. Offers that are only available for a limited time or where there is a limited number, work best.
Targeted. They need to be used to gain you sales you would not have made at your usual price.
Timed. They need to be timed in such a way, that people are not expecting to see them on a set date. Don’t train your marketplace to wait for the next offer. This hurts cash flow, lowers profits and lowers sales volume. That’s a lose, lose, lose!

I hope you found those ideas useful. Special offers are a superb marketing tool, which can produce amazing results when used correctly. Before you do your next; reader-only deal, early-bird discount, 2 for 1 offer or 20% off – Stop and think about what you want to achieve.

Consider the source – ALWAYS consider the source!

By Jim Connolly | April 6, 2011

Here’s a quick tip, which can help you avoid wasting your time and your money. It’s based around just 3 words: Consider the source.

Consider the source

Much of the information out there, particularly business related information, is biased. As a result, a lot of people have either bought something they don’t need or they are paying for a service they get little if any real value from. They bought into a sales message, often because they didn’t consider the source or realise how biased it was.

It’s not a case of people deliberately misleading us, pretending their products or services are just what we need when they are not. In many cases, probably most cases, people genuinely believe that what they are recommending to us is the answer to our problems. The thing is, they are often wrong and if we act on their recommendations without considering the source, we pay the price.

Consider the source: The problem with hammers

Abraham Maslow said:

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Maslow’s point, was that people who are incomplete in their knowledge of solutions, propose the same type of answer to every problem they encounter. So, if they are a keen user of a marketing tool which works for them, they will often believe that it is an essential investment for everyone in business.

An extremely common example of this kind of hammer and nail thinking is the way email marketing software is marketed. Yes, email marketing software, such as auto-responders, do have their place and for some people, they can be great; but unless you consider the source, you’d think you needed it, when you might be far better off using something more akin to your needs.

For instance, I don’t use email marketing software or email auto-responder services and I don’t write an email newsletter – Yet I have a rapidly growing email subscriber list of thousands. Marketing genius Seth Godin, no longer offers an email newsletter either! Why? Because he doesn’t need to and neither do I.

We blog regularly and get emails in front of prospective clients all the time, because (in my case) over 65% of my readers receive this blog via email. I use a Mailchimp account, which allows me to deliver these blog posts, via email, to anyone who selects it; using that orange box on the top right of my blog. If I have something I want to promote, I don’t need to send anyone marketing emails. I simply share it here on the blog and it will arrive, at a set time, in thousands of inboxes. It works REALLY well and helped me sell almost £130,000 in services and products last year.

I recommend email marketing to many of my clients and my point here is certainly not to bash it. As some of you may know, I once wrote a very popular marketing newsletter, which was extremely successful. I’m simply using the way email marketing software and services are marketed as an example. The exact same point could have been made using; networking groups, newspaper and magazine advertising, mailing lists, blogging, pay-per-click and just about every other form of marketing.

So, before you decide to part with your hard earned money, or act on some free advice, always consider the source. Is the person being paid to promote a certain marketing tool? Are they knowledgeable enough about marketing, to be able to give you the right advice?

The bottom line: When you consider the source, you get a fer better insight as to the quality and accuracy of the information.

How to improve all your marketing with this 1 great idea!

By Jim Connolly | April 4, 2011

Get noticed

Enthusiasm is contagious. It spreads like a virus, infecting everyone who comes into contact with it. In today’s post, I’m going to share some ideas regarding how you can tap into the viral power of enthusiasm, to improve just about every area of your sales and marketing!

Enthusiasm, sales and referrals

One of the finest testimonials I ever heard, regarding the power of enthusiasm in sales, is this:

A successful sale always starts with the transfer of enthusiasm.

As a direct result, by speaking or writing with enthusiasm, we increase the sales potential of every commercial interaction we have. Of course, this also breeds confidence and when people feel both enthusiastic and confident about us and our services, they not only buy from us; they also feel confident recommending us to their friends too. Think about it, when was the last time you recommended someone or something, which you had a bad feeling about? Never, right?

Enthusiasm in business

Given the incredible power of enthusiasm, I find it mind blowing that the vast majority of business owners sound so pedestrian, when communicating with the written or spoken word. For example, we get those marketing emails and letters, telling us; “I have some information you may be interested in regarding our new XYZ service.” Instead of; “I have a great idea to share with you Bob, which will be of genuine value to you and your business!” The latter message inspires confidence and is motivating, for former message does nothing.

Some people confuse enthusiasm with cockiness. They think that by standing firmly behind your products or services, that you somehow sound pushy. The reality could not be further form the truth. The reality is that by sounding meek and pedestrian when we speak about our business, we do ourselves a huge disservice. We show ourselves to be less than we are and our services to be less than they are too. We give those who see our messages every reason to doubt us. That’s an insane way to market anything!

The power of enthusiasm in your business

If you genuinely believe that your business offers great value or amazing service, SAY SO! Spread your enthusiasm all over the marketplace.

Here’s a quick tip. Review your marketing messages, online and offline, and check to see if you have pumped your enthusiasm and passion into your copy. Ask yourself:

Will people read what you have written and feel inspired?
Will people hear your message and feel motivated to call you, email you or visit you?
Will they hear what you have to say and feel compelled to learn more about you, your business, products or services?

If not, that message is almost certainly massively under performing. Either rewrite these messages yourself or (recommended) find a copywriter who can put into words, the passion you feel for your business and your complete confidence in your products or services.

Photo: Kodomut