Jim Connolly Marketing

How to get free access to the world’s best marketing writers

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Write better marketing copy, marketing messages

Yes, you read the title of today’s post correctly. I have lifelong, free access to the world’s best marketing writers, and you can have it too.

This post started off with an email from Deborah.

My associate Deborah has a seemingly limitless capacity to ask great questions. The kind of question’s I’ve never asked myself before. Earlier today, Deborah asked me for book recommendations, to help her improve her writing. She’s already a great writer, and it’s easy to see why when she’s always seeking out ways to further improve.

That wasn’t the question that prompted this post. It was only her starter question.

Her follow-up was the kicker!

Just one book?

I recommended a book by Roy Peter Clark, called “How to write short” and it’s a classic from a master of the craft. He shows you how to write compelling messages and engaging content, using as few words as required. I don’t do book reviews. I don’t do affiliate links. You can search for it or find it on his website, using the link above. If it sounds like something you want to improve on, grab a copy. In my eyes he’s the boss of writing short, highly effective copy.

Back to Deborah’s question.

She thanked me for the recommendation. Then she asked me the question that inspired this post. She wondered why I only recommended one book!

Here’s my answer.

More importantly, here’s where you’ll discover how to have unlimited, free access to the world’s best marketing writers and communicators!

I study and practice my craft, daily

When I started out in this business, I learned everything I knew about sales and marketing, by studying the work of others. Initially I studied the work of colleagues, who were older and more experienced than me. Then I widened it out to all my inputs.

So, whenever I read or heard a powerful message, I’d write it down. Then, I would unpack the message to figure out why it was so powerful or motivating. I wanted to learn from it.

And I still do the exact same thing today.

I gather inspiration and rather than just swipe it, I swipe it and study it. The wordplay, the rhythm of the syllables. The mental imagery generated. The degree of urgency created… anything I can learn and grow from.

small business turn around, turn around times tough, things tough business

Here are some examples I noted and studied today.

They’re all from leading companies and brands – – those with the financial resources to hire the greatest marketing writers in the world.

I studied.

  • High converting text from website buttons and contact forms.
  • Powerful calls-to-action on store signs.
  • High yield headlines.
  • Motivating paragraphs from marketing emails and letters.
  • Memorable straplines.
  • Engaging tweets.
  • Powerful slogans.
  • The copy used on packaging and products.
  • Social media profile copy.
  • Instantly clickable email subject lines.
  • … and everything else that attracts my eye or my ear.

Rolls Royce, Apple, Rolex, Disney… international brands of that size and influence don’t hire $100 an hour marketing writers. They hire the very best and money is no object. Their wording (like the examples on that tiny list) is worth a fortune to you and your business.

You don’t have to wonder if their copy works. Yes, it works!

You don’t have to wonder if the copy writer knows what they’re doing. Yes, they REALLY do know what they’re doing!

My task and yours, if you’re interested, is to look for the lessons. Let these masters of the art teach you with their examples of excellence.

Then, use your version of it.

Put it into play.

Test what you’ve learned and measure the results.

Refine it, and then test again.

It’s a great way to improve. Because I publish information very regularly, I’m able to test what I learn just as regularly. I can quickly discover what’s effective and what’s less useful. This is one of the many reasons I believe every professional should write a blog and / or a newsletter. It’s perfect for developing your skills and style.

Making your work stand out

By not reading the same books (or subscribing to the same publications, podcasts and Youtube channels) as others in my profession, I’ve been able to develop my own style. It’s a style that’s often rough around the edges. It’s unorthodox. It’s certainly not perfect.

It can’t be perfect.

Here’s why.

The moment you’ve written something perfectly aligned with the style-guide, you’re camouflaged among the thousands who strive for that same version of perfection. Lost in an ocean of similar writing.

You’re no longer a voice. You’re an echo.

You’re no longer a signal. You’re a noise.

The way I write is imperfectly my style. And it constantly evolves, as the marketplace does.

Conclusion

You can learn a lot about written communication from the most effective and talented experts on the planet – – by way of non-obvious sources. The work of these genius writers is everywhere.

Seriously.

It’s on cereal boxes. It’s the book titles on the world’s best-selling books. It’s what catches your eye on magazine covers. It’s in movie trailers… it’s everywhere. And the people paid to write that material are among the best paid, most effective writers in the world. They’re really good. And worthy of our attention.

That’s not all.

By pulling from these priceless, non-obvious sources, different sources, you also give yourself the freedom to develop your own style and your own voice. Essential assets if you want your message, your work and your products or services to get the attention they need.

The world’s best are there for you to study and learn from. It’s free. And yours for life.

What an amazing opportunity.

Do lead magnets work?

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lead magnets, lead magnets still work? How to lead magnets

Photo: Shutterstock.

Business owners often ask me “do lead magnets work?“, as a way to grow their newsletter lists. If you’re considering using them, or you’re wondering why they’re not working for you, you should find the following useful.

Let’s go.

Lead magnets?

For those who don’t already know, the term lead magnets was made popular by internet marketing gurus / social media gurus (and pretty much every get-rich-quick guru). However, the concept has been around for decades.

It refers to a freebie, which is used to entice people to give you their contact details. The most common freebies include ‘special reports’, white papers, ‘exclusive’ audio / video content or some kind of information that’s only available via email. In return for the freebie, people are asked to provide their contact details.

Because of the negativity attached to lead magnets, many internet marketing gurus refer to them as ethical bribes. I’m not sure why they think a bribe sounds better.

Lead magnets and list building

Probably the most common use of lead magnets, is list building for newsletters. On the surface they seem like a no-brainer. You certainly can attract lots of contact details with them. That’s for sure.

However, there’s a major downside.

Lead magnets are notorious for attracting the lowest possible quality contact details. That’s because the use of free stuff as bait, is most attractive to so-called freebie hunters; who are attracted to freebies like moths to a flame.

Why does this result in such low quality?

Many / most freebie hunters use dedicated email addresses, just for getting their free offers. It’s used for nothing else. It’s only checked after they sign-up when they’re waiting for the freebie to arrive. As such, lists built from lead magnets can be really poor quality. Yes, you’ll probably attract some genuine contacts, too. But the overall quality will be massively lower than a normal list.

That said, there are some instances where lead magnets are worth considering.

Really?

Yes. Really.

Lead magnets can work

One example where lead magnets can work extremely well, is if you’re building a newsletter readership, where your business model is exclusively advertising.

Offering a freebie to people, who in return send you an email address, even a very low quality one, can be a pretty good fit. That’s because email advertising is still regularly sold, based on how big the advertising provider’s list is… which is absolutely nuts. The list size is close to worthless, without knowing all the relevant data.

Sigh.

Where lead magnets work least well

Without doubt, the area where lead magnets work least well is with service providers; lawyers, accountants, coaches, consultants, mentors and designers, etc., etc.

I regularly hear from service providers, who have built lists using lead magnets and seen terrible results. In fact, I was prompted to write about this after an email I received from a reader in Sydney, Australia. She’s a copywriter and has built a list of over 45,000 lead magnet contacts, which she’d mailed for 12-months. It didn’t generate one paying client. She showed me some of the emails she’d sent, and as you’d expect from a professional writer, they were superb. But the list itself just wasn’t worth mailing.

There are a couple of key reasons why lead magnets are so ineffective for service providers:

  1. Freebie hunters and prospective clients are totally different people. The level of commitment or interest required to download a freebie, is close to zero. However, the commitment and interest required to hire the services of an expert is absolutely huge.
  2. The service provider needs to somehow reposition themselves as a professional, who offers a high quality service. This, after showing they were fine offering ethical bribes / freebies, in an effort to get clients. At best, it looks a little needy. At worst it looks shoddy. Either way, that’s a considerable barrier to overcome.

Conclusion: So, do lead magnets work?

Yes. Yes, they absolutely have their uses.

My advice is to pause and think. Consider why you need lead magnets and what you hope to achieve. Unless you sell advertising based on list size, it’s usually a pretty poor strategy.

Tip: Here’s a massively better list building strategy: How to build a list that builds your business.

The most valuable lists, by far, are those that grow organically. No lead magnets required. Organic lists grow because people are genuinely interested in knowing more about what you do. These interested people are of enormous value to your business. They not only share your newsletter with their friends, they truly are prospective clients.

A selfish request from a stranger

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email marketing, jim connolly

I receive important marketing emails every day. I know you do, too. Of course, none of these marketing 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 even remotely special. The poorly targeted offers, which are totally irrelevant to you and your needs. And the outright spam from strangers.

Whilst sending unwanted information via email requires a very small publishing investment, the cost to the sender’s reputation is far higher.

An unsustainable, short-sighted approach

There’s a limit to the number of times a business can pester their prospective customers, before it hurts the business commercially.

For example, if enough of their marketplace consider them pests, their reputation will take a damaging hit. That’s really bad for business. If enough people block their email addresses or report the emails as spam, the sender will find their emails start getting stuck in junk email filters, including legitimately important emails.

An effective and proven way forward

We know from the ongoing, outstanding results enjoyed by successful businesses, that there is a far better alternative.

It’s simply this: We should 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. People who will have a potential requirement. The kind of people we had in mind, when we decided to offer the product or service in the first place.

Pestering people with unwanted email is cheap (in every sense of the word), easy and only takes a matter of minutes. However, an interesting message, sent to people who want to hear from us, is vastly more effective than a selfish request from a stranger.

5 Tips to help you build a HUGELY valuable newsletter list

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newsletter lists, list building, email marketing

Here are 5 tips, to help you build a big and valuable newsletter readership or list.

Let’s go.

1. Go easy on the pitches

Make sure it’s a newsletter and not a badly disguised advertisement. Here’s the thing: People avoid advertising. We skip the commercials on TV. We pay developers to remove the ads from the free version of their apps. We see advertisements as unwelcome interruptions.

If your newsletter reads a little too much like a sales pitch, it will be largely ignored. This leads nicely into the next point.

2. Be useful

The more useful your newsletter is, the more your readers will value it and share it. Your ultimate goal is to build a large, targeted reader community, who become either clients, customers or advocates. None of that can be achieved with predictable, pedestrian content.

Useful content is what gives your newsletter legs. It’s what inspires people to subscribe, stay subscribed, share and make purchasing decisions. So, before you hit send on a newsletter, make sure it contains valuable, useful information. Provide answers to your reader’s problems. Share useful tips. Point your readers to helpful resources. You get the idea.

The more value you pack into each newsletter, the more your readers will value it… and the more they will value you. Think about that for a moment.

3. Get the design right

Even if your content is wonderful, people won’t take it seriously if the design looks poor. The first bite is with the eye.

If your newsletter provides valuable information, but the design looks amateurish or outdated, it’s like serving a delicious meal on a dirty plate.

So invest in the best design or newsletter template you can. Because whether your newsletter looks cheap or is presented professionally, it all reflects back on you.

4. Ask readers to share

Even if readers think your newsletter is great, it may not occur to them to share it. People are busy. Really busy. By reminding them, you plant the idea of sharing the newsletter in their mind. Moreover, you do this at the exact point, where they have just read it and enjoyed it. I used to have a section at the bottom of my newsletter, which said:

“If you have found this newsletter interesting, please share it with your friends”.

When I added that short message to my newsletter, the results were immediate and measurable. It’s amazing what a simple reminder can do.

5. Help it spread

Convert people who had your newsletter forwarded to them, into subscribers.

Imagine your friend had just forwarded a great newsletter to you. You’d want to get a regular copy, right? You don’t want to have to rely on your friend, remembering to forward each edition to you. So, I added the following sentence to the above message:

“If you have had this newsletter forwarded to you and would like a regular copy, click here.”

Never underestimate the power of a subtle, non-pushy reminder.

Make no mistake, newsletters can be an extremely powerful marketing asset. It’s why I make my best blog posts available in newsletter format. And it’s why I ask you to take your newsletter seriously and invest in it accordingly. Give it the time and effort it needs. Because the rewards for getting it right are huge. Really, really huge.

The BIG marketing problem that no one talks about

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Marketing silence, feedback marketing

Image: Nick Fewings

You’ve probably heard the old phrase; “Silence is golden“?

Well, that’s not the case when it comes to the marketing of your business. In today’s post, I’ll show you how silence can have a devastating effect on your results, plus how to avoid it from happening to you.

I was in a coffee shop once, when a guy with a very obvious hairpiece came in. He had natural, thick brown hair around his ears, with a jet black hairpiece on top. Of course, no one mentioned it to him. People just smirked when he wasn’t looking. Whether this guy needed the hairpiece for vanity or medical reasons, it’s entirely possible he has no idea that it’s so poorly matched to his natural hair.

A very similar kind of silence happens regularly in business. And when it does, it costs you a fortune.

Allow me to expand on that.

  • We check out the social media accounts of a potential vendor. We notice their updates are mostly just a series of sales pitches or automated quotes from famous people. We don’t tell them their social media activity is so dull that we leave in seconds. We silently move on.
  • We go to a website to check out a potential service provider. We then see that their site looks amateurish and decide not to consider them. We don’t email them to let them know their site created such a bad impression. We silently move on.
  • We start reading a poorly-written piece of marketing and quickly discard it. We don’t call the company and tell them their content is losing them business. We silently move on.

Faced with all this silence, how do you figure out if what you’re doing is working for you?

You ‘listen’ to what your results are saying. That’s where the most accurate signal is.

Don’t wait for someone to tell you your marketing sucks. Because they won’t. Your friends don’t want to upset you. Your competitors don’t want you to become a threat. And strangers don’t give a rat’s ass.

In short, the silence of your marketplace is easy to miss. If things are too quiet, for too long, take action.

The HER strategy. Something to get excited about!

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marketing

As long-time readers will know, I tend not to write about the specific work I do with my clients, or how effective / exciting some of the strategies I use are.

Today, I’m going to show you behind the scenes. You’re going to discover an amazingly powerful marketing process that I use daily, but haven’t written about in over a decade!

I call it the Highest Ethical Return (HER) strategy. If you followed my work back in the 1990’s, you’ll remember this as a foundational part of my marketing ethos. It’s also how I earned an international reputation for results, despite being one of the youngest, independent marketing professionals out there.

Here’s a very quick look at how the Highest Ethical Return strategy works. You’ll also get an idea of how I, as a Marketing Mentor, work with my clients.

The Highest Ethical Return strategy

I use this term to describe a strategy where you ethically achieve the highest possible return from every element of your sales and marketing activities. To achieve the Highest Ethical Return, you optimize multiple different marketing activities, so they compound on one another.

You start, by taking one marketing element and optimizing various, high return aspects of it. I’m going to use the example of email marketing because it’s so widely used.

  • You choose to optimize the subject line of the email and manage to increase open rates by 20%. (I’ve achieved increases of hundreds of percent)
  • You choose to optimise the timing of your distribution, so it arrives at the optimal time on the optimal day of the week. You increase open rates by another 5%.

At this point, you’ve increased the number of prospective clients or customers who will see your marketing by 25% and it hasn’t cost you a penny.

It hasn’t increased your risk. It hasn’t taken much effort. And you’ll benefit from these improvements again and again and again!

Naturally, you don’t stop there

  • You choose to optimize the content of your email and your CTA (call to action) so that it’s more compelling, and increase your sales rates by 15%. (Again, this increase can be 10x or 100x higher – depending on your baseline).
  • You choose to optimize your marketing proposition (offer) by pumping more value into it, and your 15% increased sales rate grows to 25%.

At this point, you’ve increased open rates by 25% AND you’ve also increased your sales conversion rates by 25%. This means you’re reaching 25% more people with a prospective need for your services AND 25% more of that bigger number are hiring you or buying from you.

Depending on the size of your marketing list and the lifetime value of your clients, you may have just increased your income or revenues my thousands… On just one mailing.

Continue improving it, and thousands can become tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

Did you notice something?

All that additional revenue and profit came from using your same old list, but using it to achieve the highest possible return.

No additional money was required, there was no additional risk and very little additional time required. Extremely high return. Extremely low exposure. Exciting eh?

This is a tiny example – a quick glance of a few optimizations, of just one marketing activity. There are tons more things you can deploy, to further increase your email results. (For instance, think how you could ramp up your sales numbers by getting the Highest Ethical Return on your email follow-up process. That one additional step compounds on the others to radically increase your results).

Remember: You’re still only getting started. Even after you’ve fully optimized email marketing, there are numerous, additional (and more profitable) marketing activities to apply the Highest Ethical Return strategy to.

The strategy is only fully utilized, when you’ve applied it to every element of your sales and marketing. Consider how this could improve your revenues and profits, if you choose to use it correctly.

I mean that. Ponder on the idea.