Jim Connolly Marketing

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?