Marketing tips, marketing help and advice

The right kind of business. The wrong kind of people

June 27, 2020 by Jim Connolly

You can’t build the right kind of business, with the wrong kind of people.

If the wrong kind of people work for you, they’ll ruin your business.
If the wrong kind of people hire you, they’ll ruin your business.

The solution seems simple: Decide exactly who the right people are. And then intentionally hire, and market to, the right people.

The tricky part? Saying ‘no’ to the wrong kind of people!

That’s why the best time to hire someone is before you desperately need a position filled. And the best time to choose a new client, is before you desperately need a new client.

It’s that easy.

And it’s that difficult.

But it’s required.

Build your ideal business. No selling required. None. Zilch!

June 25, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

I’m going to share a powerful marketing idea with you today. It’s all about how to attract high quality clients (or customers). With no selling required.

These leads will come from people who already know you, who already value your work AND who really want to work with you.

Let’s go.

I need to start by asking you a question: Over the past 6 months, how much valuable, free information have you given to your prospective clients?

I’m specifically referring to things like newsletter articles, blog posts, videos, Zoom sessions, podcasts etc., which offer useful and valuable information… rather than thinly-disguised sales pitches.

Here’s why that question is critically important to building your ideal business.

No selling required

If you want an endless stream of high quality clients or customers, you need to be front of mind when they have a requirement. You need them to be thinking about you. This means you need to regularly give them something, which they will value. Something useful. Something that makes them interested in what you have to say.

Most small business owners waste their time, trying to get their marketplace excited, using sales messages and special offers. They haven’t figured out yet, that they need to develop a relationship with their marketplace, in advance, if they want to attract the very best enquiries.

Notice I said ‘attract‘ enquiries?

That’s right.

When you stop selling and start helping, your prospective clients come to you. I haven’t sold my services to anyone in over 20 years. But people hire me all the time. And the difference this makes is huge.

Engage and inform: Don’t just sell

The secret to attracting high quality inbound sales leads, is to focus on engaging your marketplace. Educate them. Inform them. Inspire them. Help with their problems. In short, become a valuable resource. And do this before they even need you.

By engaging in this way, you’ll quickly begin to build relationships and credibility with the people who pay for the exact kind of service or products you offer. And if you tailor the information you provide, so that it’s directly relevant to your IDEAL prospective clients, that’s who you’ll attract enquiries from. (Note that word attract again?)

Through the distribution of valuable, free information, you position yourself as an authority in your field. You also build a relationship with your prospective clients, where they naturally think of you as the source of the help they need. This makes you a safe pair of hands. It also makes hiring you or buying from you way less risky when they need a new provider.

Make no mistake, if you embrace this marketing idea and do it correctly, the results can be breathtaking. You can build your ideal business, working with great clients who value you.

And with no selling required.

15 Powerful ideas to help you grow your business

June 24, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

It’s said you are often just one idea away from the breakthrough you have been looking for.

So here are 15 powerful business development ideas, to help you achieve the breakthrough results you need.

If you write a blog or newsletter, ask yourself, if you’re building a tribe or simply writing drive-by content? Almost everyone gets this wrong. Here’s why this is so important.
Embrace brevity. People are busy and their attention has never been in more demand. Keep your marketing messages as short and useful as possible.
Do at least one thing each day, which your future self will thank you for.
Remind yourself that the process of giving and receiving starts with giving. Making selfish demands from strangers doesn’t work. It also damages your reputation. Bring your seed, not your need.
Fail more often this week than you did last week. Why? Because if you’re not failing often enough, you’re sticking to things you already know. This means you are no longer growing. This is why Steve Jobs famously reprimanded members of his team, if they were not failing regularly enough. Then, fail more often next week than you did this week… repeat.
Stop aiming for perfectionism. It will stop you getting started, kill your creativity and block your progress. The next time you find yourself blaming perfectionism for your lack of progress, call it out for what it is: a stalling tactic.
Stop doing work purely because it pays the bills. Start doing work that makes a difference. This post explains why.
Get expert help in any area of your business, where you are under performing. Things don’t just change for the better because you hope they will. Hope is essential, but it’s not a business strategy.
Remind yourself that you pick your clients, they don’t pick you. This is true of 100% of the most successful business owners and consultants I know. Pick clients who value you and allow you to do your best work. Build your client base deliberately. Here’s what you need to know.
Get serious about the value of your time. No one ever lay on their deathbed, regretting they hadn’t spent more time watching TV. Throughout the day, ask yourself, is this the best use of my time right now? If it isn’t, go and do something more productive.
Make the decision to do the tricky stuff. Every business owner claims to give their business 100%. What they REALLY mean, is that they give their business 100% of the stuff that they are comfortable with. Decide to get less comfortable with the limitations of your comfort zone. This will help you.
Learn to embrace your inner freak.
Get the most from your creativity. There are hundreds of free, creative thinking ideas here.
Believe that almost anything is possible. No matter how bad things may be right now, with courage, hard work and passion, you can achieve almost anything. This post gives a great example of what I mean.
Build a great reputation by setting deadlines and delivering on them. Think about it: Telling a client that their project will be ready “by the end of the week” is far less powerful, than telling her it will be ready “by 9am Thursday”. Keeping your deadline promises is a superb way to earn trust and build an excellent reputation. I explain this in more detail here.
Give people more than they expect. Don’t under-promise though. Instead, over-deliver.

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How to get the best, free marketing advice

June 22, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

There’s a lot of free marketing advice available online. Some is good. Sadly, most is ineffective. Today, I want to help you identify the best marketing advice and show you how to avoid the worst.

A new client with a familiar problem

I was prompted to write this after my initial session with a new client. I went through some questions with her, as I do with all my new clients. I quickly noticed that she was making a number of serious marketing mistakes. During our session, I asked her where she got those marketing ideas from and she named around half a dozen marketing sites.

I soon figured out what had happened.

Today, I want to help you avoid making the same, expensive mistake. I need to start by drawing your attention to 2 types of marketing blogger.

1. The marketing blogger, who doesn’t have a business

Many marketing blogs are written by people who are career employees, paid to produce lots of content. Others are employees, who were previously entrepreneurs, but they failed to build their own business and are now paid to produce “content” for their employers.

Think about that for a moment: On sites like these, you’re taking marketing advice from someone, who has either never marketed their own business or whose own business failed.

2. Guest bloggers on popular marketing blogs

The vast majority of top marketing blogs rely very heavily on unpaid, guest bloggers. Guest bloggers are people who write for free, in return for access to a popular blog’s readership.

None of the guest bloggers I checked on the sites my client mentioned, had the assets you’d expect from a competent marketer. In other words, they were unable to market their own brand.

Think about that for a moment: Their readers are taking marketing advice from bloggers, who feel forced to work for free. Bloggers who still haven’t figured out how to grow their own valuable readership, community or tribe. Bloggers who still have no idea how to market their own brand, other than by guest blogging. Taking advice from them lost my new client a fortune.

Check the source

No, not every employee / guest blogger who writes about marketing is clueless. Some will be knowledgeable. At least a little.

My point is simply this: Always check the credentials of those offering free marketing advice, before you act on what they tell you.

They should have an about page on their site, (like this one). See if they’ve achieved what you need to achieve. See if they have a proven track record at the highest level. If not, then find a better source.

Well-written and sincere

Lots of bloggers write extremely well and make a compelling point, when what they’re telling you is incorrect or ineffective. They may be sincere, but it’s possible to be sincerely wrong.

I estimate my new client has lost at least 5 years worth of business growth. And probably missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenues. All because she followed the same, ineffective marketing advice as thousands of other small business owners.

Don’t let it happen to you.

Before you invest your time or money on marketing, check the source.

Always, always check the source.

Help required

June 19, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Every successful business is built on a foundation of help.

The help you provide to your clients or customers, through your services or products.
The help you require in order for your business to thrive.

If either of those areas are neglected, the business suffers.

If the quality of help you provide is matched or overtaken by your competitors, your business will stop growing and then shrink.
If the help you require in order to thrive is missing, your business will stop growing and then shrink.

Most small business owners are very good at offering help. But they’re lousy at asking for it. This holds true even when they are 100% certain they need help. For some, the block is a financial one.

But for most it’s the inability to emotionally understand the difference between a cost and an investment.

On an intellectual level they know the difference and they can see that they have a problem that needs investing in.
But on an emotional level, they freeze.

As we face the months ahead, our thinking must be intellectually and emotionally aligned. That’s because knowing what to do is pointless, if we fail to do it.

A proven starting point is to examine the excuses we tell ourselves, in order to self-justify why we’re refusing to do what’s needed. Then consider where our inaction will lead us. We find it’s like wanting our flowers to grow, yet starving them of the water and sunshine they need.

Ultimately, when we work against what is right, it keeps going wrong. We know this to be true.

The next step is to believe it.

You’ve been lied to for years

June 17, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

The following statement will sound counter-intuitive. That’s because you’ve been lied to for years. Okay. Here goes.

In marketing, there’s a case for style over substance.

It’s a strong case, too.

Just think about this for a moment:

The top political commentators get paid a ton of money, to deliver their take on the news for major networks.
The also-ran commentators get paid peanuts, to deliver their take on the news, for small, local networks.

Here’s the thing. In both cases, the news (substance) they comment on is the same. Here’s why one of them is earning 10 times or 50 times more than the other. It’s their style. The style with which they work.

For example:

Their courage, when choosing to take (or avoid) a controversial stance.
Their vocabulary.
Their energy.
Their ability to communicate with confidence.
Their effectiveness when injecting their personality (style) into their work, so that it’s truly theirs.

Here’s my point. When it comes to business, the substance should be there by default. Every qualified consultant, coach, lawyer, whatever… knows what their service (substance) is and how it works. It’s their style that makes all the difference. It’s their style that sets them apart from the crowd.

Style over substance in marketing

The newsletters, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, Facebook groups, Medium publishers, etc., that people take notice of, all have their own style. The same is true of the most successful email marketing, advertising, marketing campaigns and copywriting.

And the ones that fail to grow, fail to get noticed, fail to make an impact… well… they don’t.

Instead, they follow the cookie-cutter approach to marketing. They bought into the lie. The lie that says, “Just do things this way and it works. Follow the steps. 1-2-3”.

That’s bullshit.

It doesn’t work. In fact, it can’t possibly work. Because your style can’t be found in a book.

You can certainly learn substance that way. However, your style, the very thing that gets you noticed, by default, can’t possibly be learned from a marketing seminar, a course, a book or any other generalized form of information.

Why?

Because your style is all about you.

Where are you right now?

Okay, I already know that you totally understand your subject. So the substance is there. It’s taken care of. That’s covered. You’re good.

But what about the style?

When it comes to your marketing, when it comes to the story behind your service, are you telling it from your perspective? Are you sharing the substance of your knowledge, using your voice, your stories and your experiences? Because it’s your style that people connect with.

It’s your style that sets you apart.
It’s your style that causes people to return for more.
It’s your style that makes you approachable.
It’s your style that gives you a voice.
It’s your style that inspires people to share your message.
It’s your style that gives value to your substance.
It’s your style that motivates people to hire you or buy from you specifically, rather than a cheaper alternative.

And none of that can be robotized. Or automated. Because it’s you. It’s your authentic experience. It’s your greatest marketing asset. In fact, with so many competitors out there, with so many people trying to get the attention of your prospective clients, your style is the most powerful tool in your arsenal.

So, give your style the oxygen it needs.