Marketing tips, marketing help and advice

Does your marketing look needy? Find out now

June 4, 2021 by Jim Connolly

Image: Alexis Fauvet

No one wants their marketing to be seen as pushy or needy. It turns people away and hurts their brand. Why then are we constantly bombarded by that exact kind of marketing?

The answer is that it almost always happens by accident! In this post, I’ll explain why, PLUS I’ll show you how to avoid making the same mistake.

Marketing messages fall into one of the following broad groups.

Pushy: I want you to buy my stuff. And I want you to buy it now.
Helpful: You have a problem, and my product or service can solve it for you. This is how it works.

Here’s the challenge

Lots of great business owners who are in that second group, accidentally market their services, as if they were in the first group.

In other words, their marketing looks needy or self-serving, but that’s NOT what they are like! They’re great people. Dedicated, hard-working professionals and they genuinely want to help you.

So, why does this costly confusion happen?

Here are the 2 main reasons I have identified, plus how to avoid this from happening to you.

Misunderstood passion

When you’re eager to serve your marketplace, your passion can easily be mistaken as needy. You’re ready, willing and extremely capable. However, because you really want to help, because you really want to make a difference, your motivated message can wrongly appear to be self-serving. Maybe even desperate.

The irony in this scenario, is that the same passion that prospective clients value so much, is now actively working against you.

The way to avoid this from happening, is to be very intentional regarding your marketing messages.

Go through your marketing. But read it from the perspective of your marketplace. Think about the words you use. Make sure that everything is “them focussed”.

Tip: I give 2 examples here, which explain exactly what I mean.

Copying the wrong approach

Many, (perhaps most) small and medium-sized business owners use the wrong marketing strategy and tactics for their industry. This example from one of my readers gives you a powerful insight into how devastating it can be. It demonstrates why you need to be really careful about the tactics you use. It also shows you the specific, and common, errors that were losing her a fortune. I strongly recommend you read it.

There’s no shortage of marketing tips and advice out there. As you’d expect, the quality ranges from rock solid, to average, to toxic. And even when the advice is rock solid, it needs to be in harmony with your industry, your reputation and your business development goals.

I hope you find those ideas useful. More importantly, I hope you do something with them.

Steve Jobs, money and success

June 3, 2021 by Jim Connolly

It’s an interesting fact that very few of the world’s most successful businesspeople, set out with money or success as their primary target.

They aimed to be valuable.
They aimed to make the world or the marketplace a better place.
They aimed to make a difference.

However, money or success was not their primary focus.

Here’s how they did it!

Steve Jobs famously said:

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money”.

If Jobs was focused primarily on the money or success, he’d have been able to cash in when he was in his 20’s… super rich and exceptionally successful.

When Einstein said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”, he showed where his focus was. Again, it was about the value. Einstein carried on working until his death, even though he could have quit decades earlier with his reputation set in history forever.

To understand how the most successful and wealthy business owners achieved their success, we need to look at why most business owners struggle.

In it just for the money

You can usually tell pretty fast, when you encounter someone who is primarily in it for the money. That’s because it’s both obvious and extremely unattractive. And this makes it very hard for them to succeed.

Here are some examples we see all the time, which you will recognise instantly:

They are the salespeople, whose eyes light up like a wolf when they spot a potential sales victim.
They are the ill-informed marketing gurus, who STILL say the money is in the list, because they haven’t figured out the value is in the community.
They are the affiliate marketers, who leave spammy links and comments on blogs and Facebook.
They are the pests, who send us unwanted spam email.
They are the pushy business owners, who corner us at events. The ones who pretend they want to know about us, when we know it’s just an old, cringe-worthy networking tactic.
They are the struggling restaurant owners, who use slightly lower quality ingredients and hire slightly lower quality chefs, and end up with a low quality restaurant that no one recommends.

They are the kind of business owners you thought of, as you were reading those examples!

The way forward for smart business owners

Focus on value. Create products or services that are meaningfully different from the competition. Solve better problems. Create work you are proud of. Offer remarkable service and outstanding quality. And delight your customers at every opportunity.

Persistently create value and use marketing to make it visible. People are extremely attracted to value and they pay a premium for it too. Just ask the owner of any high priced Apple product, the owner of a luxury car or the client of any leading service provider.

Get this right my friend, and the money and success will surely follow.

I hate selling

June 2, 2021 by Jim Connolly

It’s interesting how many small business owners feel awkward, when it comes to proactively selling their services. If this is something you struggle with, here’s a very effective way to overcome it.

The facts

You know for absolute certain that you provide an excellent service. You know that you’re ethical. You know that you always put your clients (or customers) first. You know that you’ll be there when your clients need you. And you know you’ll deliver exactly what you promise.

Now consider this.

You have no idea what kind of service your competitors will offer. You don’t know if your competitors are ethical. You don’t know if they put the needs of their clients first. And you don’t know if they’ll deliver on the promises they make.

This means

The only way you can possibly know for certain that your marketplace will be well looked after, is if they hire YOU!

All it takes for the worst providers in your marketplace to thrive, is for ethical people like you, to quietly work hard in the background, unnoticed.

Be sure to remember that, the next time you feel awkward or uncomfortable about marketing your services.

Improve 10 essential areas of your business, with enthusiasm

June 1, 2021 by Jim Connolly

That’s not just a catchy headline. I’m going to share an idea with you that can help you improve your results, starting pretty-much instantly.

It starts with a really important question. How enthusiastic are you about your business?

Here’s why your answer to that question is so important: People can tell almost immediately, if you’re enthusiastic or not. And that matters! It matters because is has an immediate impact on how they feel about you, your business and the service you provide.

Allow me to explain.

Enthusiasm makes things happen

When you speak (or write) with enthusiasm, people feel more positively about you. Enthusiastic business owners exude confidence, which is essential. Think about it — we only hire people or buy from them, if we have confidence in them.

Someone once told me that their definition of making a sale, was: ‘The transfer of enthusiasm’. That’s a great example of just how essential enthusiasm is to the success of your business.

And when you speak with enthusiasm, people listen more attentively, too. They’re drawn in. You sometimes notice their body language change, as they lean forward because they’re paying attention. And this happens in seconds.

All these benefits of enthusiasm, and more, combine to create an immediate, positive impact. In a moment I list 10 areas where this can help you improve your results.

A lack of enthusiasm makes things happen, too

When enthusiasm is lacking, people are less motivated by you. They pay less attention to what you say, because your lack of enthusiasm is talking louder than the words you use.

I experienced this recently, talking to a business owner. She was saying positive things about what she wanted to achieve with her business, yet she was clearly lacking in enthusiasm. And it sucked all the confidence and impact from her words. I honestly can’t recall much of what she said. Just her total lack of enthusiasm.

Unleash your enthusiasm

Here are 10 ways you can improve your results, by letting your enthusiasm shine through everything you do.

It will generate more sales, as you ‘transfer your enthusiasm’.
It will improve perceptions of you, your business and the service you provide.
It will encourage the people around you. This super-valuable trait is common to every great leader.
It will inspire confidence in you and what you do.
It will attract opportunities that you wouldn’t have previously been offered.
It will attract the best clients, too.
It will position you in the marketplace, as ‘one to watch’.
It will energize you and everything you do.
It will motivate people to recommend you to their friends.
And it will make you happier with your business, which further boosts your enthusiasm, and amplifies all those great benefits, (and more)!

Okay. So, not everyone reading this is brimming with enthusiasm right now.

This begs the question…

What if you’re not feeling enthusiastic?

Think of it like this. You’re the business owner. So, you’re in control. This means you have the freedom, starting right now, to build a business that enthuses you. A business that excites you on every level.

Remember, you choose where you work. You choose who your clients or customers are. You even choose what you charge. This means you get to decide where you work, who you work for and how much money you make.

So, if your current business doesn’t cause you to feel enthusiastic, build it into a business that does.

You can do it, my friend.

I know, because I see it happening every day with my clients.

Here’s 1 word that can ruin your results. And 12 better alternatives

May 30, 2021 by Jim Connolly

When it comes to creating successful marketing, the word ‘new’ is overrated. Moreover, it can critically damage the effectiveness of your marketing, losing you sales or client enquiries in the process.

There are 2 main reasons this happens.

A new product or service is always seen as a risky bet. Untested. Less robust. At best, it’s a bigger gamble than the existing solution. At worst, the customer feels like a paying guinea pig. Ouch!
A new product or service is seldom, if ever, the best. It lacks the improvements that come from years of customer feedback.

Yes, when you have an announcement to make (like moving to new premises), people expect to see ‘new’ and they understand the context.

The challenge comes when a key part of your marketing message is that you offer a new way to do something. Even some big brands struggle to sell ‘new’ to people, despite multi-million dollar marketing campaigns.

Thankfully you can totally avoid this problem.

Use better alternatives

Instead of relying on ‘new’, offer your marketplace something more compelling. More secure. More attractive. More motivating. And a great deal more appealing.

For example, rather than offering your prospects a ‘new’ way to (whatever), look at the core benefit of your product or service. Then market that benefit to them instead.

Here are 12 alternatives that I have used successfully over the years.

A faster way.
A secure way.
An enjoyable way.
A greener way.
A stylish way.
A stress-free way.
An original way.
A premium quality way.
A proven way.
An ethical way.
A guaranteed way.
A cost effective way.

The key is to intentionally use words that paint better mental pictures. Pictures that build trust and inspire people to take action. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen this simple adjustment lead to radically better marketing results.

How to make your marketing totally, utterly unmissable

May 29, 2021 by Jim Connolly

What do the following have in common?

The trailer for a movie, which is part of a franchise you really enjoy.
A radio interview with a musician, whose music you’ve always loved, talking about their new album.
A Facebook post from an author, whose books you collect, announcing their new title.
A newsletter from a brand you like and trust, announcing an exciting new product.

The answer is that they are all examples of marketing you value. Marketing you wouldn’t want to miss. Marketing that doesn’t even feel like marketing.

How to create unmissable marketing

So, what was it that made those marketing examples unmissable?

You gave permission for the marketing message to reach you. You tuned into the TV station or radio channel. You liked them on Facebook. You subscribed to their newsletter.
The product being marketed (movie, album or book etc.), is something you’re interested in.

Without your permission, the marketer is being a pest. No one wants to be pestered with unsolicited emails, off-target advertising or unrequested social networking messages.

Without your interest, the “offer” is just another annoying, time-wasting, badly targeted sales pitch.

Making your marketing unmissable

Firstly, make sure you only market to people who want what you’re offering.

Secondly, earn their permission.

How?

Here’s a strategy that works:

Think about the brands you have given permission to contact you.
Write them down.
Next, ask yourself why you did it. Why did you subscribe to their YouTube channel, their newsletter or their podcast? Why did you like them on Facebook or connect with them on Linkedin? Why did you ask them to send you their catalogue or email you their updates?
Finally, see what you can learn from their strategy, which you can adapt, to earn the permission of your prospective customers.

It takes more effort to create unmissable marketing. However, it will massively improve your results.