Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

How to break the cycle that’s holding you back

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You have a business problem. However, you’re not ready to talk about it with an expert.

You now have two problems.

Those two problems soon combine to create additional problems. These additional problems do the same.

The cycle begins.

Break that cycle

Advice and support from an experienced expert equips you to eliminate the problem, fast. This also protects you from the follow-on problems.

  • It breaks the negative cycle.
  • A new, positive cycle is created.
  • Everything improves.

Whatever your business problem is, erase it. Ask an expert for the solution and free yourself to move forward with clarity, enthusiasm and confidence.

The story you’re telling yourself that’s blocking you from getting expert advice, needs to be called out for what it is. It is not working FOR you. It is working against you. Causing you to waste time, lose momentum and miss out on opportunities.

Jim Rohn used to tell us that failure is so common because it’s so subtle. Another day on the wrong cycle doesn’t seem to matter much. But that day soon becomes a week, a week becomes a month, a month becomes a year, and a year becomes yet another year… or it doesn’t.

You can absolutely decide right now to break that cycle and thrive. But, as with solving every major issue in life, it starts with you taking that first step.

Elon Musk and price anchoring

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price anchoring, anchor price, marketing

Soon after taking control of Twitter, Elon Musk announced that he was going to allow anyone to have a verified Twitter account, for a monthly fee of $20. He knew he was never going to charge that much. He was simply using a very powerful marketing tactic known as price anchoring, which I am about to share with you.

Here’s how price anchoring works

Price anchoring is where an initial, high price is attached to a product or service. This becomes the anchor price. Then, a subsequent and much lower price is given as the actual price. Having focused on the $20 price Musk originally announced, the actual $8 price, in contrast, looked more attractive.

As is often the case, the late Steve Jobs provides us with a perfect example.

Jobs used price anchoring when he launched the first Apple iPad. As he gave his presentation, he said that the pundits suggested a retail price of $999. Jobs went on to say that his team had managed to produce it for a retail price of just $499. The rest is history. Note: You can watch the price anchor segment of Jobs’ presentation here. It runs for just over a minute and a half and is a masterful example.

Just about any product or service can be marketed using this tactic. The key is to determine your anchor price correctly. It needs to be high enough to seem realistically expensive. That’s what makes your actual price feel like such amazing value in comparison.

Price anchoring works equally well for products or services, and it’s equally effective when used in marketing or as part of a sales presentation. If you’re not currently using this tactic as part of your marketing / sales mix, I recommend giving it a try. It can significantly improve your sales conversion rates and increase the profitability of each new sale you make.

With change comes opportunity

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When times are rough it’s tempting to wait for things to change.

But waiting is a really bad idea.

Why?

Look around you. Change [lots of change] is already happening. It’s everywhere. And you’re right in the middle of it.

Here’s what we know: With change comes opportunity.

This means there are opportunities everywhere and you’re right in the middle of them.

Stop waiting.

Start looking for the opportunities. They’re coming at you faster than ever.

Unleash the power of vigorous, written marketing

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vigorous written marketing

Most of the written marketing I see is at least 75% too long. Overlong marketing lacks impact. It also lacks clarity and totally fails to motivate prospective customers or clients.

I want to help you avoid this expensive mistake.

And it starts with one of the best-known quotes on the subject.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.

Professor William Strunk Jr. – The Elements of Style.

The vigorous writing referred to here, is writing that is strong and full of energy. That’s the kind of writing that moves people to take action; to contact you, buy from you or hire you. It’s the kind of writing that gets the results you need.

How can you and your business benefit from the power of vigorous, written marketing?

The answer comes from understanding why the problem exists.

Google usually gets the blame

That’s because Google’s search algorithm needs overlong, written content. It prefers 2500 words to 250. So, for over 20 years, online marketing writers have been rewarded for high word counts. That’s certainly not what’s needed for vigorous, written marketing.

But Google isn’t responsible for the wider problem.

Email marketing and off-line media is just as ruined by overlong content. Neither of those formats have ever required the writer to dance the Google dance.

The problem exists because most written marketing is created by people who lack sufficient training. It’s either written by business owners who ‘dabble’ or by below-par marketing writers.

The solution?

The business owner wishing to switch to the vigorous, written marketing they need has two options.

  1. Learn how to do it effectively.
  2. Pay someone who already knows.

How to decide?

  • The cost (in time) of learning is considerable. It takes years of practice. However, you’ll start seeing improvements relatively quickly.
  • The cost of hiring an expert is lower. And it’s a lot faster.

The price you pay for starving your business of vigorous, written marketing is far higher than either of those options. So pick one of them and run with it.

Are you marketing a fridge or a mobile phone?

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high impact marketing

No, that title isn’t a play on words. Yes, this post starts off a little weird. But it will all make sense and help you improve your sales results. So, bear with me.

I updated the operating system on my Macs yesterday. While they were updating, I decided to see if my 2014 Surface Pro 3 PC still worked. I loved that device and took it everywhere. However, I haven’t used it in years. Anyhow, I plugged it in, grabbed a coffee and started to get some work done. In fact, I decided to use it all day and see what it was capable of.

I discovered that it was able to do everything I needed it to. This included; writing a newsletter, then writing a marketing email for one of my clients. I used it for Basecamp and Slack and also did my Zoom calls with it. Had I wanted to, I could also have hand-signed documents with it, streamed video or music while I worked and even some light design work and lots more.

Why am I telling you this?

Marketing can be powerful. Really powerful!

The hardware companies need us to upgrade our mobile devices every year or two. The challenge is that we don’t need to upgrade that often. This means they had to change things and decided to invest in high-impact marketing, to motivate us into a totally unnecessary rapid upgrade cycle.

The results have been utterly spectacular.

We still don’t need a new device every year or two. But now, millions and millions of people want one. Remember, it was iPhone sales that made Apple the world’s richest company — not computer sales.

What happened?

High-impact marketing!

Through the effective use of high-impact marketing, hardware companies are able to make that amazing device they sold us a couple of years ago, seem like a total dinosaur. Our new phone, laptop or tablet device makes a statement. It tells every other member of the ‘shiny new thing’ tribe that we’re one of them. We have the hot new thing. We’re in. As a result, even though our 2 or 3 year old device still does everything you need, we upgrade.

In short, people want to upgrade… and that want is born of marketing. Not of necessity.

To see how counter-intuitive that is, consider this.

Imagine if we used that same approach to buying, when we bought a refrigerator. Every 12 months, fridge manufacturers would release a new model, which is slightly thinner, or slightly lighter than the previous one. And every year or two, we’d feel the need to junk our perfectly good fridge, and buy a new one.

I know. People don’t buy fridges that way.

But back in the 1990’s, they didn’t buy their phones that way, either! That’s how powerful, high-impact marketing is. It’s also why smart business owners insist on it.

Thankfully, any business can deploy high-impact marketing. Here’s a tiny example of some I’ve worked with; accountants, lawyers, online retailers, software companies, high street retailers, training providers, designers, coffee-shops, photographers, dance schools, charities, freelancers, comms agancies, PRs and lots, lots more.

High-impact marketing and you

This begs the question: Are you marketing your business like a fridge or using high-impact marketing like a mobile phone company?

Because if you’re marketing isn’t high-impact, by default it’s low-impact. That’s a bad idea in any economy.

In the current economy, low-impact marketing is unsustainable.

Customer experience: An essential of effective marketing

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customer experience, marketing

Without doubt, customer experience is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. Here’s a look at why, plus some examples to help your business create an outstandingly valuable experience for your customers.

Let’s go!

Isn’t it just another name for customer service?

Customer experience is a term often used incorrectly. Some use it interchangeably with customer service, but they’re very different things.

  • Customer service is about the quality of service you provide to your customers.
  • Customer experience is about the feelings your customers experience when they do business with you.

When deployed correctly, your customer experience becomes a powerful marketing asset. It’s an experience your customers will value enormously. An experience they’ll talk about and share with their friends and contacts. And an experience that will make them fiercely loyal customers.

That’s why I strongly recommend you embrace it and optimize it. To get your creative juices flowing, here are a couple of very different types of business, who provide an equally wonderful experience for their customers.

Customer experience in diverse businesses

1. A vinyl record store: When you visit a store that sells vinyl records, you notice something. Customers don’t simply walk in, ask for what they want and leave. No. It’s an experience. Customers connect with the staff and other customers, who are also fellow vinyl lovers. They talk about new releases, decks and cabling, etc. They listen to music.

It’s where they buy music and related hardware. But it’s so much more than that. It’s an enjoyable experience.

2. My dentist: Yes, it applies to every type of business, including dentists. I enjoy visiting them for my check-up. I look forward to it because it’s an excellent experience. The staff are friendly, welcoming and clearly love working there. The premises are creatively designed to be relaxing, but also to make it easy for patients to chat. The ambience is outstanding. Utterly unlike any other dental practice I’ve ever used.

I’ve lived in my area for over 20-years and I’ve never seen them advertise. Their patients do that for them, willingly, for free.

If visiting a dentist can be that great a customer experience, yours certainly can.

Your customer experience

I’ve seen amazing examples in every industry and profession. It works in your line of business, too.

What next?

Here’s a useful way to get started. List all the providers that you enjoy the experience of doing business with. Then look for what makes it so good. Write it down. Unpack it.

Now work on how to apply the very best from those experiences, in order to create an amazing customer experience of your own.