Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

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.

A selfish request from a stranger

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email spam, marketing

I receive important marketing emails every day. I know you do, too. Of course, none of these messages are important to us.

They are not even of interest to us.

The vast majority are not even relevant to us.

They are only important to the people sending them.

I’m referring to the special offers that aren’t remotely special. The poorly targeted offers, which are totally irrelevant to you and your needs. And the outright spam from strangers.

There’s a limit to the number of times a business or brand can pester their prospective customers, before it hurts them commercially. If enough of their marketplace consider them pests, their reputation will take a hit. That’s really bad for business. If enough people block or report those emails as spam, the sender will find their emails start getting stuck in junk email filters, including legitimately important emails.

In short, it’s an unsustainable approach.

A far better alternative is to wait until we have something to say, which is worth listening to. Then share it with people who have given us permission to contact them. People who are interested. A valuable message, sent to people who want to hear from us, is vastly more effective than a selfish request from a stranger.

I’m busy. You’re boring. And I’ve never heard of you

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The most successful marketing is built on strong foundations. And here’s one of them:

Before you market anything to anyone, there are 3 essential questions your prospective customers need you to answer.

They are:

  1. I’m really busy. And I get pestered with sales messages all day. Why should I give you my attention?
  2. Everyone promises an outstanding service. Most fail to deliver on that promise. What meaningful reasons are there for me to risk buying from you (or risk switching to you from my current provider)?
  3. I’ve never heard of you. I’ve never done business with you. Why on earth should I trust you?

The most successful brands answer those questions fully in their marketing. And they answer them with clarity. In doing so, they capture attention, create a compelling message and build the trust required for their marketing to succeed.

In comparison

Now, let’s compare that with the marketing we see every day from small and medium-sized businesses.

  1. Instead of capturing the attention of their prospective clients, they pester people with uninspiring, needy marketing messages.
  2. Instead of providing a compelling proposition, they offer very little motivation why anyone should switch to their brand.
  3. Instead of building trust, they become instantly forgettable.

Failing in any one of those areas is enough to ruin your results. That’s why it’s critical to be as strong as possible in all three areas. Here are a few pointers to help you get it right, if you’re a DIY marketer.

  1. You’ll already know if your marketing is capturing attention, by measuring your response rates. If too few people open your emails, read your newsletters, respond to your advertising etc, see what you can learn from the vendors, whose material YOU always open. What do they do, which you can adapt into your marketing?
  2. Crafting a compelling message is a skill that takes years to develop. This is an area where almost every business owner, who writes their own marketing, has real trouble. It’s a skill that eludes not only business owners, but many marketing providers! It’s why you see at least one marketing provider at every networking event, because their own marketing sucks, so they need to network for leads. So, if at all possible, get expert help with this from a proven professional.
  3. Building trust is something I covered in this post – How to add credibility to your marketing.

One of the big shifts in business over the past decade or so, is the speed at which great marketing can spread. A natural consequence of this, is that average marketing (the type that kind of worked in the past), is less and less effective. It becomes hidden under the marketing messages that get shared and talked about.

Yes, the advent of low-cost digital communications has opened up a world of opportunity. However, if you want to benefit from this amazing opportunity, it’s vital to create marketing that your prospective clients will embrace and share.