Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Creative marketing?

by

marketing, creative marketing

Image: Shutterstock.

Almost every small business owner spends too much time focusing on the wrong kind of marketing.

Here’s why you’re probably making the same mistake, plus an example of what happens, when you switch to the right kind of marketing.

The wrong kind of marketing?

I’m referring to the dull, obvious stuff that small business owners think of, when they consider marketing.

This includes the things they do when business is quiet and they have to do SOMETHING. The things that look easy enough for them to try. The things they copy from their competitors. The predictable, uninspiring messages they put on their websites, newsletters and social media accounts. In short: the obvious things that small business owners dabble with.

That’s not how you grow a business, if you’re serious about building a successful enterprise. That’s running blind, hoping you’ll get lucky. And it’s why the majority of small businesses go broke and the typical medium-sized business is extremely average.

The right kind of marketing?

I’m referring to creative marketing. You already know what creative marketing looks like. It’s what 100% of successful brands do; from the expanding small businesses in your marketplace, to the world’s fastest-growing companies.

Creative marketing is not only spectacularly effective, it’s rare among small and medium-sized businesses. Really rare. This is one of the reasons it’s so powerful, compared to the dabbling bullshit I mentioned earlier.

Here are just a handful of reasons why creative marketing is so powerful.

  • It’s hard to copy, which means it carries on working.
  • It stands out, so you get noticed.
  • It helps you differentiate your business, products or services, so you never have to sell based on prices / fees or work with low value clients.
  • It inspires your prospective clients to take action.
  • It gets shared. This increases the reach of your marketing.
  • It’s memorable. Because small business marketing is useless, creative marketing finds it easy to make a positive, memorable impact.
  • It touches people in a way that never happens with uncreative marketing.

Still not convinced?

I’d like to tell you about Sara.

What creative marketing can do

I’m having lunch with a wonderful business owner this afternoon. Her name is Sara. Sara’s semi-retired now, but I mentored her for over a decade.

Why am I telling you this?

Just 2 and a half years ago, Sara invested in a small, independent bakery. The bakery was already employing great people, already using premium quality ingredients and already making delicious food. BUT too few of the right kind of customers knew it was there, as they’d been using typical, small business marketing.

Sara spotted an opportunity and because she knew the owners, she offered them a price for their business. They eagerly accepted, especially as Sara promised she’d employ the same team to run it. (And they were going broke).

In a call last week to arrange today’s lunch, I asked Sara how the bakery was doing. She’s increased the turnover by almost 1100% and it’s massively more profitable, too.

One thousand, one hundred percent.

Remember: She kept the same team, the same levels of quality, the same delicious food. Her only change was to switch from typical small business marketing, to creative marketing.

This probably goes without saying

But I’ll say it anyway. If you’re currently dabbling with marketing, switch to a deliberate, creativity-driven approach.

Punch above your weight, by creatively gaining the attention, trust and patronage of your marketplace (ahead of your competitors). Look to the future with excitement, not apprehension, because your creativity-driven approach works perfectly in every economy, location and industry.

The cookie cutter

Here’s the challenge.

There are cookie cutter guides everywhere on how to market your business. This is why we get pestered with so much dull, ineffective marketing every day.

However, there are no cookie-cutter guides on how to make a creative piece of marketing for your business. By default, creativity is the opposite of the cookie cutter.

The answer? Well, there are 2 actually.

  1. You can decide to apply yourself to the study of creative thinking and then learn how to apply it to your marketing.
  2. Hire a mentor to show you, based on your unique situation and needs.

If you have plenty of time and are interested in learning creative marketing, I recommend that first option. I’ll even help, with a greater focus on creative marketing, here on the blog. If you want things to happen fast, the second option is a no-brainer.

The key thing I want to share with you is that you don’t need to settle for low quality clients or too few sales. You simply need to choose the route you want to take, then act accordingly.

The trick? Be an April person

by

marketing, april

Image: Shutterstock.

Every year for the past decade, January has been the busiest month for visitors to Jim’s Marketing Blog. By the end of March, the numbers revert to normal.

January is also the busiest month of the year for gym memberships. By the end of March, the gyms are way less busy.

Those 2 facts are not disconnected.

The trick?

Whether it’s growing a business or getting healthier, the ‘trick’ is realise that success comes from an ongoing commitment. Success comes from showing up, being there and doing the work. Not in January when the motivation is strong, but in April when the average person has quit.

Thanks

I just wanted to thank those of you who reached out, following my previous post about screwing up and losing my eyesight. It attracted my largest number of emails ever, with some of you sharing your own challenges. If you missed it, you can read it here.

Battling blindness and making mistakes

by

Please note: Today’s post includes a little about my 18-month battle with blindness.

Have you ever noticed someone making an obvious mistake, then realised YOU were making the same mistake?

Well, it just happened to me. Ouch!

Here’s what happened, along with a second mistake I’ve been making, which is why you don’t know I’ve been battling blindness for 18-months.

How I spotted my first mistake

I was watching a Youtube video. Well, I tried to. That’s to say, I needed to fast-forward almost 6 minutes, before the speaker started to talk. The video was a conference keynote. And it followed an all-too common path.

  • It started with a guy walking on stage.
  • The guy then introduced a woman, whose job was to introduce the speaker.
  • The woman walked on stage.
  • She thanked the guy who introduced her.
  • She then introduced the speaker.
  • Finally, the speaker was rolled out and started their talk.

Those first 2 people weren’t pitching anything. They didn’t have anything to say. They were there simply because they wanted to be on stage. This was especially the case with the second presenter, whose introduction was actually longer than the introduction she gave the keynote speaker. Her job title suggested she was senior enough in their organisation, to make it happen.

Here’s the thing: People who attend a keynote are there to watch or listen to the keynote speaker. Literally no one is interested in the person who presents the speaker or the person who presents the person who presents the speaker. A brief introduction to the speaker is all that was required. The 6 minutes of nonsense before the keynote was indulgent, selfish and unnecessary.

So, how did I make the same mistake?

Just as I was considering how self-indulgent the nonsense was before that keynote, I realised I do the same. Right here on Jim’s Marketing Blog. Here’s how my self-indulgence manifests:

  • There are posts I publish, because I’m motivated to share something I think you’ll find useful. That’s as it should be.
  • However, there are also posts I publish, because it’s been a few days since I published anything. Often, the value of these posts is less than you deserve.

I only realised the drop in quality of those ‘better publish something’ posts, after spending a whole day, reflecting on the blog. (I spent all of yesterday, trying to find ways to make it more useful to you in 2019).

I then identified something else, that’s been missing from my work for a very long time.

My second (and bigger) mistake

Over the past 3 or 4 years, my posts have become less personal. I use almost none of my own images or photos any more (unlike today). I use very few of my own stories. I share very few of the resources I find useful; books, videos, articles, podcasts, etc. So, the blog has become too sterile / synthetic.

This realisation came when I suddenly remembered that I haven’t mentioned, even once, a huge part of my life since June 2017.

Unless you follow me on Twitter or know me, you’ll have no idea that I’ve spent almost 18-months battling diabetes-related blindness. Actually, you won’t even know I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in May 2016. I didn’t mention that, either.

I’ve had multiple surgeries. Initially, the diagnosis was bad. Very bad. But after reversing my diabetes (my blood is perfectly normal now and I take no medication), the vision has responded well. On Christmas Eve, I had my latest eye scans done and was told my eyes are now self-healing, no additional damage is likely to occur and I should be fine.

It was a great Christmas present. Blindness is no longer on the horizon.

My point is that I regularly mention this on Twitter. But it never occurred to me that readers may want to know. And all because I allowed the blog to become too impersonal.

Moving forward, I’m going to work hard on improving those 2 areas. You’ll no longer hear from me just because ‘it’s been a while’ and when you do, I promise to make it a lot more human.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. I’ll do better in 2019!

How to create marketing that spreads and sells

by

marketing, case study, content, content marketing

Image: Shutterstock.

I have a very effective marketing idea to share with you today. I’m going to show you how to create marketing, which people will value and that’s powerful enough to inspire them to hire you or buy from you. It’s based on the work I do with some of my clients and includes a brief case study, which you can learn from.

So, let’s get started.

Receiving or paying attention?

It starts with understanding that there’s a huge difference between someone receiving your message and someone paying attention to it.

For example, TV viewers are sent targeted marketing messages (commercials) during TV shows. What do most of us do? We fast forward through them or if watching the show in real-time, we go and make a coffee. Just because they send their messages, doesn’t mean we are paying attention.

For your marketing to work, you need to get a great message in front of the right people. In order to get this correct, here’s the key question we need to ask ourselves:

If I stopped my email marketing campaign or I stopped publishing my blog posts, newsletter etc, would people really MISS them?

As a quick look at the marketing you receive every day confirms, for most people the honest answer to that question is NO! We get bombarded with dull, uninspiring sales messages all day and see them as an intrusion, rather than something of value.

Of course, for that tiny minority of small businesses who DO produce marketing, which people genuinely value and would miss if it were to stop, the sky is the limit.

I’m going to share the process required to make this work for your business later in this post.

First, we need to understand why there’s so much dull and ineffective marketing out there.

Dull is cheap. Dull is fast. Dull is easy!

It’s cheap, fast and easy to create a dull marketing message and push it to a lot of people. As a result, there’s no barrier to entry today.

Things were very different 15 years ago. Back then, if a small business owner wanted to send a mail shot to 50,000 people, she’d have to spend some serious money.

  • She’d have to cover the cost of the mailing list.
  • Then she would need to pay for all that paper and the printing.
  • Next she would need to pay a company to get the letters folded and inserted into the 50,000 envelopes.
  • Then there’s the huge postage costs for those 50,000 pieces of mail.

All in all, it would cost many thousands. She would need to think long and hard about the value of what she put into those envelopes. Get it wrong and she would pay a hefty price.

Today, everything has changed

That same business owner today, can hit 50,000 people using cheap email software and her laptop. It costs just a little of her time. If it fails, maybe tomorrow’s one will work.

In short, it’s never been cheaper or easier to push dull, uninspired, poorly thought out, uncreative marketing out the door.

So, that’s exactly what millions of people are doing. This is why there’s so much junk in your email inbox and on your social networking accounts.

How to get it right

There is an alternative approach I want to share with you, so people welcome your marketing, share it and hire you or buy from you. It requires that you take the exact opposite approach, to 99% of the marketing you see out there. 

It’s about shifting the focus of your marketing, so that it’s primarily of benefit to the people who receive it and secondarily of benefit to you.

It’s about producing content (audio, video, blog posts, newsletters, social networking updates etc), which provide independent value to those who receive it. This means they get genuinely valuable or useful information from it, independent of them needing to spend a penny with you.

An example of how this works, based on one of my clients

Imagine you are a dog owner and after a trip to the vet, you subscribe to their dog owner’s newsletter. It gives you useful tips and ideas, to help you keep your dog healthy, fit and happy. At the bottom of each email are their contact details, so you can call them when you need a vet.

You find this free information so valuable and interesting, that you send it to 10 of your dog-owning friends.

  • They subscribe and then do the same.
  • Then these new subscribers share it too, and on and on it goes.
  • The amazingly valuable, highly-targeted readership just keeps on growing!

Soon, that vet (a former client of mine) was talking to thousands of local dog owners and positioned themselves in their marketplace, as THE place to take your dog for all its veterinary needs.

Their newsletter was eagerly anticipated by it’s readers. Yes, people wanted to hear from them and valued what they had to share.

Compare that vet’s approach to the typical marketing messages we see.

  • That vet doesn’t need to run expensive radio ads.
  • They have no need to waste time on Facebook. They own the communication channel with their prospective clients (by using email)!
  • They have no need to buy mailing lists.
  • They don’t need to waste valuable hours at networking events.
  • They certainly don’t need to pester people on social networks or ask strangers for recommendations on Linkedin.
  • They don’t need to invest in anything, other than the creativity required to produce a genuinely valuable newsletter, with useful content.

That example shows how a business can grow a massively valuable marketing asset, by sharing real value, rather than pushing unwanted messages. If you switch to this kind of value-driven marketing in 2019, it will improve your business beyond recognition.

Now what?

I’ve got you covered! I’ve created a massive, free marketing guide (over 4000 words) that’s packed with marketing tips and ideas you can use. Here it is.

Success 101: No one starts at the finish line

by

no one starts, finish line

Image: Shutterstock.

It’s true. No one starts at the finish line.

But that’s perfectly fine. Because our task as business owners is to cross the finish line. Not start there.

Yes, it’s essential to get started. But it’s not enough. Anyone can start a project, work on an idea or set a goal.

However, success comes to those who:

I often hear from business owners, who are excited about an idea they have. When I speak with them a few months later, they’re excited by a new, idea.

Their previous idea was abandoned, when the initial excitement was replaced with the reality of the focused work required, to bring their idea to fruition. So, they’re now excited about their new, new idea. And a few months later still, it’s the new, new, new idea that has their attention.

(Tip: Read this – Steve Jobs and The Power of Focus).

Before we start anything, we need to commit. We need to commit whatever is required to cross the finish line.

Because ultimately my friend, our commercial success will be determined by the things we finish. Not the things we start.

Business and Timing: How to know when the moment is right

by

marketing timing

Photo: Shutterstock.

A reader shared some interesting news with me. It contains a valuable lesson, which could really help your business grow in 2019. So with her permission, I’d like to share it with you.

Georgia said she is almost ready to launch a new business. Everything is in place. She’s just waiting for the right time.

An excerpt from her email: “[…] I’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on this project since 2014 but things have been hectic to say the least. I’m hoping things settle down now, so I can get started.“

The perfect time to start

The problem with waiting for the perfect moment is that it never comes. Perfection is elusive and fleeting. That’s because life is a series of challenges. So, as one challenge passes a new challenge arrives. And even if you were to find a magical moment where everything was just perfect, one unexpected phone call or some unexpected news and everything changes.

The decision to wait for the perfect time is simply a stalling tactic. An excuse. Albeit a super-effective excuse.

Super-effective?

Yes, it gives us permission to do nothing, indefinitely, because the perfect time never comes.

If you’re going into 2019, with a project you know you should have shipped a long time ago, take control of the situation.

  • Do the research.
  • Check the numbers.
  • Seek out the advice and feedback you need.
  • Put a plan together.
  • Then set a launch date.
  • … and stick to it.

Because as I wrote here, in business the winners get moving!

FREE marketing tips

Get new articles direct to your inbox. Just add your email below. I respect your privacy.