Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Listen to the marketplace

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Here’s one of the most valuable pieces of business advice I ever received.  It was given to me by a retired accountant way back in 1995, a few weeks before I started my business.

It is simply this: “Listen to what the marketplace is telling you!”

He went on to explain that if, for example, you find prospective clients (your marketplace) expect the cost of your service to be lower than you quote – the marketplace is telling you that it cannot see enough value in what you offer.  This means you must either make the value of your service more obvious with better marketing or increase the value of your service by adding more benefits to it – preferably both.

No matter how well someone markets an ‘average’ service, they will always struggle.  There are thousands of business owners out there who work long hours and extremely hard, with little reward.  This is because they are trying to sell something that the marketplace sees little value in, like yet another ‘average’; accountancy service, legal service, recruitment service or web design service etc.

Business is always going to be a struggle for them, because the marketplace is attracted to value – not ‘just another average service’.

As a successful marketer you should ALWAYS be looking for new ways to add value to whatever you offer.  The more value you pump into your product or service, the easier you will find it to make highly profitable sales and you will NEVER have to sell based on price. This marketing tip will help!

WordPress.com and business blogging

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I wrote a post a while ago, saying that WordPress.com was a good place to host your business blog, if you were just starting out and wanting to ‘test the water’ as it were.

However, since then I have been emailed by a reader; who pointed out some poorly publicised, but extremely important limitations to a WordPress.com hosted business blog!

I looked into this and found 3 REALLY IMPORTANT reasons why I believe you should NOT use a WordPress.com hosted blog for your business.  Here they are:

1. WordPress.com insert ‘hidden adverts’ into your blog

Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com), inserts ‘hidden advertising’ into the blogs hosted on their servers.

Hidden?

Yes, the ads they place into your blog are hidden from you – so you can’t see what THEY are advertising to YOUR readers in YOUR company’s name! Because Automattic use Google Adwords for these ads, they could be advertisements for your competitors products or services!  This is perhaps why they feel the need to hide these adverts from their users?  Anyhow, many of their users have no idea these adverts even exist; because they will not be able to see them when they look at their own blog. The ads are only displayed to their readers!

As of last week, you can pay to have these adverts removed, the fee is currently $30 a year.  This is an improvement, as until last week you were stuck with them! However, there are two far bigger problems with hosting a business blog at wordpress.com!

2. WordPress.com won’t let you advertise anything

I have been in marketing for over 20 years and I own and run a very successful international marketing business.  I don’t know a single company, which has a commercial blog and does not use it to promote their business or market their services in some way.  The whole point of a commercial blog is commerce after all!

Although Automattic actually encourage people to host a commercial blog at WordPress.com, they forbid any form of commercial advertising!  So, if you have any desire to advertise your services in your blog; you simply can not use WordPress.com – full stop!

3. WordPress.com won’t let you link from your posts to your website

One of the major marketing benefits of having a business blog, are all the links you get from the blog to your main website.  These links can be really useful for a business blog!

For example, the newsletter button at the foot of my blog posts is a link; however, it would be BANNED from use on a wordpress.com hosted blog! Also, links from your business blog to your main website can really help with the sites Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

However, these links to your main website (what Automattic refers to as a ‘third party’ website) are forbidden on a WordPress.com hosted blog.  Their terms of service state that by making content available on your blog, you warrant that it:

“does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites

Although it is impossible to understand what they mean by ‘unwanted commercial content’ (as this is always going to a matter of opinion), the threat itself is clear.  If someone at Automattic sees that your posts link to your business website – you could have your blog suspended until it is removed!

Conclusion

Even if you pay Automattic to have their adverts removed from your blog, you are still left with a blog that:

– You cannot link from as you wish
– You cannot market advertise or promote your services on or even insert adwords
– You cannot customise fully
– You cannot advertise other people’s products or services on
– You cannot add commercially useful plugins to

A ‘free’ business blog on WordPress.com, with the ads removed, your own url added, some slight changes to its look and some extra space will cost you between $70 and $145 dollars a year.  For not much more, you can enjoy full control of a blog and (most importantly) use it to market your business; by hosting it with another provider.

I love WordPress software and the people in the wordpress.com user community are fantastic! WordPress.com servers are really reliable and very secure too.  However, if you want a commercial blog that you can advertise your services on and you want the freedom to link when and where you wish – I believe you need an analternative host.

UPDATE: Because some people are commenting here, without checking the date of the post (September 2008), I have disabled comments.

2 years later, changes to WordPress.com Terms and Conditions make it slightly more business friendly, but ultimately it is still a platform over which someone else has control.  WordPress.com these days says you CAN link from the blog to your 3rd party site (or main website) though they decide if you are OVER linking!  Any time you elect to put your time and effort into building something, which someone else can suspend or delete, you are taking a risk.  If you are happy with that risk, WordPress.com is still the best free platform out there.

Think long and hard before you build your marketing on a platform they do not control.

Jim.

Big blog update

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I have just relocated this blog; from being hosted at WordPress.com to being self-hosted professionally.  This will allow me to provide you with far more resources and remove the limitations of having the blog hosted at WordPress.com.

Mr Mark White – “Thank You!”

The entire relocation / migration process has been expertly handled for me, by business blogging guru Mark White.  You probably already know Mark from his massively successful Better Business Blogging site.  If you don’t, you need to stop reading this, grab a coffee and take a look at the masses of highly valuable information there.  If you are in sales or own a small-medium sized business you will love it!

Thanks for all your expertise Mark!

3 great Internet marketing tips

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In this blog post, I am going to give you 3 great tips to improve the amount of leads, enquiries or sales you make from your website!

But first, have you ever wondered why some of your competitors appear on the first page of Google, when you do an industry related search?

They have really average looking websites and the content is no better than yours – so how come they rank so highly and get all that lovely search engine traffic?

You ‘might’ be surprised to learn that it has LESS to do with the quality of their site and MORE to do with things like the number of inbound links their site has and how many times a day or week it has new information added to it!

Search Engine Optimisation = Google optimisation

I know people speak about Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) – but it’s really Google optimisation. Here in the UK, for example, more than 80% of all Internet searches are done via Google. So, it’s all about Google and doing what THEY say you need to do, in order to rank highly.

This means, if you seriously want to get onto the first page of Google for a common search term associated with your industry or profession – I’m afraid it’s going to cost you serious money! I know medium-sized companies today, which spend over £8,000 every month on SEO; to get as close to the top of page one of Google as possible!

Yes, those people who appear above you in the search rankings at Google, are often paying tens of thousands of pounds a year for their FREE place at the top of those search results!

A big marketing problem for small businesses!

Google created a major marketing problem for every small business on the planet, as soon as it became the dominant search provider. It’s all down to how Google decides which sites to place at the top of its search rankings. Two of the most important things Google looks for are:

1. Inbound links, preferably thousands, linking to you from relevant sites!
2. Regularly updated pages, preferably updated on a daily or weekly basis!

Obviously, most small businesses simply do not have the time to add new pages to their website every day and they lack the time and expertise, to add the thousands of links from other people’s websites too!

Google’s SEO model loves BIG companies!

Bigger companies find it extremely easy to make their way to page one of Google.com – without breaking any rules! That’s because Google is rewarding things that small companies cannot afford to provide; like a dedicated person or group of people pumping links and content into their website!

Big companies, however, simply hire a great SEO company to do it all for them (along with the dozens of other nifty techniques that SEO companies use.)

Small companies & website traffic

How can a small company possibly compete; when it doesn’t have the time / expertise to do its own SEO or the money to outspend it’s bigger rivals?

Simple: It uses a different approach to generating targeted traffic to its website! That’s what I am going to share with you, with the following 3 essential internet marketing tips!

Internet marketing tip 1: Get an SEO company to optimise your site!

If you have a business website YOU NEED A GOOD SEO PROVIDER! A website that is not optimised might as well not be there – because it’s pretty-much invisible. An optimised website, on the other hand, can be a money-making-machine for you and your business. An SEO company will make sure that your website is configured correctly, so that it is visible to search engines. They can also make sure you have enough relevant inbound links and give you some great SEO tips (like putting keywords into the headings of your pages etc.)

Get an SEO company to look after your website on as regular a basis as you can afford. This alone is not going to get you to the top of Google, but it will make sure that your site can be seen by Google and that you get a better position than you have today. Every little helps and even basic SEO is often a very worthwhile investment!

Internet marketing tip 2: Get a business blog!

Google values sites with regularly updated content. This is useless for most commercial websites, because once they are written they are pretty-much static. There’s no need to add new pages or new sections each day, even if you had the time to.

Google likes to see new content added at least once a week, preferably more often! This is why so many businesses now write a blog, which is actually woven into their main website. Each new post counts as a newly added page and also generates new links – all working toward helping your website climb the Google search rankings!

Blogs are also a great way to reach new people and to have ‘conversations’ with them; through the comments section of each blog post. This is what I love most about this blog; it gives me the opportunity to have a two way dialogue with you. Right now, you can read what I am saying and then let me and all the other readers know what you think – something just not possible on a regular website!

As I write this, Jim’s Marketing Blog is just a month old and already has over 700 inbound links. It is also starting to generate a regular flow of search engine traffic and generating traffic to my main website at jimconnolly.com

Internet marketing tip 3: Use social bookmarking

You can generate high quality, targeted traffic to your website, without a search engine!

By joining a social bookmarking or social networking website, you can attract targeted traffic and make some great contacts too – all for free! I use StumbleUpon and my personal favourite Twitter – both of which have really helped me to reach more people with my work. I have had one page of my blog visited more than 5000 times in an hour or two – after a friend from StumbleUpon recommended it to his other friends. If you want to know more about StumbleUpon click the link.

Twitter allows you to communicate directly with people, each of whom have their own network of contacts. By selectively generating a network of contacts on Twitter, you can get highly-valuable feedback and also lots of new traffic to your website. I have made some amazing contacts on Twitter and can not recommend it highly enough! You can contact me now via Twitter – my user name is @jimconnolly (say hello)

There is also Digg, Reddit, Delicious and MANY more.

In fact, if you look at the bottom of all my posts, you will see a list of buttons. These buttons allow people who read my stuff and like it, to share it with their contacts at the press of a button.

You can and should be able to generate daily or even hourly enquiries, leads or sales from your website. This brief post / article has just scratched the surface and I will be adding more information in coming posts.

I suggest you start now, by looking for an SEO company who will give you an assessment of your website and a quote, to make sure your site is fully optimised. Many SEO companies offer different levels of service, from a one-off basic review of your website – to an ongoing service, where they handle everything.

I will be covering Internet Marketing and SEO a lot more in future posts and also in the articles in my newsletter.

Marketing Blog Update

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It’s now just under a month since I launched jimsmarketingblog.com and I thought I would give you a bit of an update; regarding how things are coming along.

The emails and comments I have received have been helpful and universally positive!  It seems the information I have been sharing has really struck a chord with you.

It has also been great to be able to get conversations going in the comments sections of some of the posts.  Although I produce a very successful website and newsletter, these are one-way forms of communication.  This blog has allowed me to have a two-way dialogue and ‘get to know’ those of you who have commented here.

I already have just over 700 inbound links and amazingly, this brand new blog is already in the top 10% of all websites and blogs based on traffic! By the way, you can find ou how YOUR website or blog is doing with a useful little website called dnscoop.com. Simply enter the address (URL) of the site you want to check into the search box on their homepage, then hit the ‘check it’ button.  After a few moments you will be able to see how many inbound links your site has, it’s page rank, alexa.com rank and a few other interesting pointers.

Thank you for stopping by the blog and rest assured, I shall be working hard to ensure that this blog becomes a really free marketing resource for you and your business.

To make it in sales – fish for whales!

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When I started my first sales job, over 20 years ago, my boss gave me a piece of sales and marketing advice that has helped me generate millions of pounds worth of sales – and I am going to share it with you right now!

“To make it in sales, fish for whales!”

I asked my former boss what his comment about fishing for whales actually meant.  He explained:

“Jim, if you go fishing and you catch 10 goldfish, you won’t even fill a cup – but if you catch 10 whales, you will fill half the beach!”

Sales leverage

With that simple explanation, he taught me how the amount of time and effort required to win a £50,000 sale, was not a great deal more than it took to win a sale of £5,000.  This simple idea totally blew my mind!  It was my introduction to what I know today as leverage.

I immediately realised that if I wanted to succeed in sales, I needed to prioritise my sales efforts and focus on where I could deliver most value as a salesperson – because that’s where all those whales are!

If you want to dramatically improve your sales figures, make sure your time and energy is invested wisely – fishing for whales and not goldfish!

How to get your fees or prices right in 3 steps!

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One of the most common marketing mistakes I see small businesses and consultants make, is that they set their fees or prices too low. They claim to offer a valuable, high quality service, but then lose credibility (and sales), by offering that service for a bargain basement fee.

In this blog post, I am gong to give you a superb three step guide to make sure you get your fees or prices right every time.

Marketing and mixed messages

When your marketing messages promise a high quality service, but your fees are suggesting a bargain-basement service, you send out a damaging mixed message.  In marketing, these mixed messages are to be avoided at all costs, because they create uncertainty and they lose you business.

If someone is uncertain or confused about something – and you ask them to make a decision, they will always (well 99% of the time) simply say ‘no!’

A mixed message makes us feel uncertain, so in business, rather than risk making a mistake, the natural human response is to walk away from the deal.

It’s about value and NOT about being ‘cheap’

Your future clients are looking for value! They want to get as much ‘bang for their buck’ as possible and they already know that ‘cheap’ products and services offer very poor quality.  When the economy is weak, people are even more focused on value than usual.  Businesses and consumers will eliminate anything from their outgoings, which they think is not offering them great value.

Three steps for setting your prices or fees perfectly

  1. I always suggest to my clients that they start by researching their competitors; to see what the average price or fee for their industry is and to see what kind of guarantees or promises they are competing against.  Here’s a great free guide to show you how.
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  2. Next, after researching what your competitors are doing, you should aim to go one better.  Look for ways to pump more value into your service, so that it’s MORE VALUABLE to potential clients than what your competitors are offering.  Can you stay open later?  Can you offer a unique guarantee?  Give yourself enough time to really examine all the opportunities to increase your value.
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  3. Finally, you need to set a price or fee that accurately reflects an attractive proposition for your new, highly valuable service.  You achieve this by using the exact same technique used by all marketing professionals – Test, measure, test measure.
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    Test your new price / fee and measure the response you get.  Then, adjust the fee until you hit ‘the sweet spot’ – the fee that allows you to make a GREAT profit AND gives your clients GREAT value!  I have written a great free guide for you, which will show you what to do – it’s here.

Make sure your prices match your promises.  It will not only make it far easier for potential clients to see the true value of your services – it will make your business far, far more profitable too.

Avoid toilet paper web design

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Marketing is all about developing trust.  This is why I am always totally amazed, when I see an apparently legitimate company, using the exact same ‘toilet paper web design’ as used by online criminals, scammers and con artists!

What is a ‘toilet paper web design’?

I coined the phrase ‘toilet paper web design’ a year ago.  It refers to that ugly, hard-sell design style, where web pages are fairly narrow BUT REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LONG!  They just roll on and on like a long narrow roll of toilet paper (hence the name!)

Usually, these over-long pages use lots of different font colours and font sizes, plus pictures of expensive cars, piles of money or sometimes both!  There’s way too much use of underlined words and highlighted text – they look like a total mess!  Some even show fake copies of financial records and fake testimonials about whatever scam they are trying to fool you into signing up for.

They then end with a super, limited offer; for you to get a ‘bundle’ worth 299.99, for just 24.99!  The bundle is either membership of something or a photoshop image of a box, which looks like a 1970’s soap powder box!

Legitimate businesses should use legitimate marketing!

When someone visits a website, they immediately form their all-important first impression of that website and the person or business behind it! If they see you using the same online marketing style as a scammer, you are really in trouble!  Your image will be warning them NOT to go within a mile of you – that’s not good for your marketing!

Unbelievably, some of the most common users of toilet paper web design are legitimate business coaches, trainers and consultants! This con artist template is fine for con artists.  However, if you have a legitimate business with a legitimate product or service, it’s crazy to try and emulate what criminals do.

Whenever I have spoken to legitimate businesses, who use the toilet paper web design approach, they always say they did it after either reading some ebook or after seeing a site that claimed to be successful, using the same approach.

An ebook can be written and posted to the Internet in minutes and a scammer will never admit their site is not working!  They usually have dozens of sites and rely on each one finding enough vulnerable people to make a small profit!

If you know a legitimate business that’s using this approach – point them to this article and help them avoid being wrongly associated with Internet scumbags!

How to test and measure your marketing

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As any marketing professional worth their salt will confirm, successful marketing is based around a process, where you ‘test, measure, test measure’ everything you do, until it’s as effective as you can get it.

Here’s how testing & measuring works!

You test (or try) a new idea and then you measure the results you get. If your business uses mail shots, test a new headline and measure what feedback you get.

If, for example, your new headline generates a 10% increase in enquiries or sales – keep the new headline and dump the previous one.  Then, test a different offer or guarantee in the mailing.  If the new offer or guarantee increases your response rate by 20%, keep it.  If it reduces the number of positive responses you get, dump it and test another offer or guarantee.

Over a relatively small number of mailings, you can dramatically improve your results.

This constant tweaking, based on testing and measuring, is how you improve your marketing results. However, you never start off with perfect marketing.

Your aim is to leverage your marketing, so you get the best possible return you can. This means it is always a work-in-progress – never perfect!

Paralysis by analysis

I spoke with the owner of a small business last week, who had some really exciting ideas for marketing her services.  The problem is, she has had these great ideas for over a year and still done nothing with them!  When I asked her what was causing the delay, she replied; “I’m a perfectionist.  Everything has to be just right before I begin.”

Ironically, the perfect way to begin your marketing is to decide what you what to do and then JUST START! Once you know you have a good idea or you see a good marketing opportunity, get to work immediately!  One of the reasons many small businesses fail to achieve the sales success they want, is that they suffer from ‘paralysis by analysis.’ 

By  examining everything in too much detail and then waiting for every condition to be just perfect, they either do nothing at all or take so long that the opportunity has gone!

Only change one thing at a time

When you use the test / measure approach in your marketing, it’s really important that you only ever test one thing at a time.  If you change more than one element, it’s impossible to see what caused the change in your feedback.

So, if you currently run an advertisement in a magazine or website, only change one component of that advertisement then measure the difference in the response you get.  If you change the size of an advertisement and also the wording or design, you will not know what created the increase or decrease in your results.

Measure everything!

It’s extremely important to measure your feedback accurately and fully.  This means you need to measure the negative response as well as the positive.  An email marketing exercise that generates 10 replies, from people who do not become clients, is NOT a zero response rate!  It is proof that 10 people read your email and were motivated enough to call or email you.

If you sent that email to 5000 people, it’s also proof that 4990 people DIDN’T feel motivated enough to call or email you – and that’s just as valuable!

What they say in their response to your marketing is also really important. For example, if they say that they expected your fee or price to be lower than you quoted – they are telling you clearly that you need to pump more value into your marketing message! Measure everything and then, when you test the next time, use that feedback to improve your results.

Start now – Look at your existing marketing for an opportunity to test and measure.

The marketing power of association

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It’s a fact; before someone becomes a client or customer of your business, they need to trust you.  One of the fastest ways to create an image for your business, which people in the marketplace will trust (and desire), is to make “the power of association” a part of your marketing mix!

Marketing and short cuts

People are programmed to look for short cuts when it comes to making decisions!  This is why the recommendation of a friend is so powerful.  If there are 10 equally good print companies in your area and you need to pick one, the one that has been highly recommended to you by half a dozen of your friends will win your business every time!

The recommendation of your friends quickly and powerfully reduces the level of risk you feel about using the recommended company.

In marketing, you can ‘leverage‘ the power of association to create a similar decision making short cut in the mind of all your prospective clients!

The marketing power of association

If your prospective clients associate you or your business with a highly respected person or organisation, they mentally link you and them together.  This instantly elevates your reputation in the marketplace!

For example, an unknown designer can make a fortune, simply by having Brad Pitt say he loves wearing their clothes!  Yesterday, he or she was an unknown designer – today they are a super-cool designer to the stars!   Their designs are no better or worse than they always were, but their new association with Brad Pitt means there will now be massive demand for their work.

Brad Pitt’s praise created a short cut, by showing people these designs were ‘cool.’  His comments would also generate a stack of invaluable free publicity. That’s the power of association!

How the power of association helps me

If, for example, someone has never heard of me, they might be cautious about using my free marketing advice.  However, when they learn that I have contributed to The BBC or CBS or their favourite newspaper – they instantly see me in a different light.  My work takes on a totally different perspective, because of my associates.

How the power of association can help YOU!

More importantly, the power of association can be used to massively improve YOUR results!  If you want to benefit from the power of association, you need to do two things.

  1. Firstly, you must be extremely selective about who and what you associate yourself and your business with.  You need to deliberately target people and organisations that will increase your reputation in your marketplace.
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    For example, phone your local radio station and ask if they need a newspaper reviewer for their early show.  (That’s how I got my first coverage on The BBC!)Think of the people and organisations that are most respected in your profession and form associations with them.
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  2. Secondly, you must make sure that everyone knows about your high calibre associations!  It’s not enough to be linked to some great people and organisations; you need to make sure the marketplace knows.

The power of association can also work AGAINST you!

I spoke with an accountant recently, who told me he had wasted over £1,000 sponsoring a business event.  The event was a free-to-attend lunch and seminar; hosted by a well-known UK business development organisation.

Although he got a handful of leads from the event, they were a total waste of time.  He explained; “they just picked my brain for free accountancy advice!”

The reason his sponsorship could never have worked is simple.  He had just associated his accountancy practice with an organisation well-known across the UK for providing free, low quality business advice! Also, the people attending the event were those who are looking for FREE, generic advice.  These are the very worst people to market his premium accountancy service to, because advice from a qualified accountant is neither free nor low quality!

So, it’s extremely important to be selective, regarding who you associate your business with.  The right associations will attract business and the wrong associations will lose you business even faster!

Avoid this common problem

As I mentioned earlier, a personal or professional recommendation CAN be a wonderful source of new business.  The problem here, is that very little is ever said about the DAMAGE that can result from having your business recommended by people who lack credibility or are unprofessional!

For example, I was emailed by one of my newsletter subscribers, who runs a small law firm.  He had been a member of one of those networking groups; which meet for breakfast once a week to swap referrals.  To remain a member of this network, you have to provide leads every week.

He found that a few of his fellow networking associates were using the same ‘high-pressure techniques’ to generate leads for him; as they were using to generate leads for their own direct sales businesses.

Two years later, his law firm’s professional reputation is still tarnished; because of the hard sell approach used by his former networking associates!

What next?

Every association you have is either helping you gain credibility and trust within the marketplace or it’s bringing your reputation down!  Take time to list and then evaluate the credentials of everyone whose name or logo you use in your marketing.

Next, decide which side of the scales they are on!  Are they helping you or hurting you?

If they are not improving how the marketplace views your business, you should seriously consider disassociating from them immediately.