Marketing tips, marketing help and advice

Exposed: The great workaholic lie!

March 11, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Workaholics are never really workaholics.

It’s not work, which the so-called workaholic is addicted to. Instead, they’re hooked on the feelings that come from doing something they love. That passion and joy is what inspires them… all day, every day.

When you do something you love, it’s natural to want to keep doing it.

It’s why Nile Rodgers still creates and performs. (Read this).
It’s why Arnold Schwarzenegger is still making movies.
It’s why Bill Gates is still making a difference.

Nile and Bill are in their 60’s – Arnie is 72. None of them need the money. What they do need, are the feelings associated with their “work”.

Conversely, someone who finds their work frustrating, boring or stressful, pays to go on vacation… to get away from work. They spend a tiny amount of time each year, doing what they love. They have the equation completely the wrong way around.

No one is addicted to meaningless work

If you get paid for doing what you love, you may be a passion-aholic. You could be a joy-aholic or even a pleasure-aholic. But you’re not a workaholic. No one is addicted to working, just for the sake of work.

Work without meaning is a way to pay the bills.
Work without meaning is stressful.
Work without meaning is empty.
Work without meaning leaves you doing things you don’t want to do, for the majority of your adult life.

If work feels like work for too many days in a row, take action. Find what you love and make that your “work”. Transform your business from something you work in, to something that fills you with joy and passion.

Can you do it?

Yes, yes you can.

I know, because I’ve helped business owners worldwide to make it happen and experienced it in my own life, every day, since 1995. All you need is the right strategy and the help required, to put it into place.

One massive home run

March 9, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

A little while ago, someone emailed me with a problem. His email opened with; “I need a major breakthrough, Jim!”.

In short, he wanted me to personally introduce him to someone who’s very wealthy and a friend of mine. The unknown emailer apparently has a proposal, which he’s sure my friend “will want to be in on”.

Let’s ignore the fact that the person he wants me to introduce him to is not a friend of mine, just an acquaintance.
And let’s also ignore why on earth I would recommend a total stranger to anyone.

Instead, let’s look at the mindset the emailer is using.

Because although his email was certainly unusual, a lot of business owners adopt a broadly similar approach.

Allow me to explain.

The thing about major breakthroughs

When looking for a major business breakthrough, the temptation can be to focus on a massive home run… a home run, which will save you years of effort and land you in the big time.

“If I could just get 20 minutes with (insert name of famous billionaire), maybe they would back my idea”.

That’s one way to succeed.

However, major business breakthroughs don’t tend to happen like that. There will be exceptions, but they’re called exceptions for a reason. They’re exceptional.

Instead, major breakthroughs are almost always the result of lots of mini breakthroughs. The process usually follows the same, proven path.

You decide exactly what breakthrough you want to achieve and put a plan together.
You chunk your plan down into a series of steps (mini breakthroughs).
You then apply intelligent activity to each step.
You carry on taking steps forward, until you’ve achieved your major breakthrough.

Recommended reading: How to know if you have a winning idea.

It’s far less glamorous than scoring lunch with Jeff Bezos or Mark Cuban and being handed their full financial backing. But it’s far more likely to actually work.

You’re probably doing it wrong

March 6, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Did you know, the massive majority of small businesses are built the wrong way round?

It looks like this:

The business owner decides the type of service they’re going to offer.
They then try to find clients for their service.

That’s nuts!

It can’t work in any meaningful way.

Why? Because it’s literally (yes literally, not figuratively) the wrong way round.

The most effective business owners do the exact opposite.

It looks like this:

They decide the kind of clients they want to work with. For example, clients who appreciate quality, clients who are happy to pay a premium fee for a premium service, clients with the right mindset, etc.
Then, and only then, they decide what services to offer. The service is based around the things, which their ideal profile of client will value and desire.
They then market this service exclusively to these high value clients. They shun everyone else.
And it works spectacularly well.

If you struggle to attract the right kind of clients, consider reviewing your current strategy.

Focus on the kind of clients you most want to work with. Then, consider rebuilding your services so that those ideal clients will find extremely attractive. Delight these ideal clients and they’ll tell their friends.

It’s way more effective, than trying to sell people a service that:

Wasn’t specifically built around their needs.
Is similar to what your competitors are offering them.

I built my business around this model. As a result, I work with fantastic clients every day and get 93% of my new clients, via client referrals.

The problem with knee-jerk reactions

March 4, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

…is that they often leave us looking like a jerk.

And more importantly, they can seriously damage a business.

In today’s post, I give a very recent example of how nasty a knee-jerk reaction can be, along with a strategy to avoid it happening to you and your business.

Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, a business owner responded angrily to a customer complaint on Twitter. The customer replied. A very heated argument ensued. The business owner then deleted his angry tweets, aware of the damage this could cause him.

Problem solved, right?

No.

As often happens, someone took a screenshot of the business owner’s angry tweets and shared them. Then more and more people shared his tweets. The problem escalated fast. He was soon being attacked by lots of his customers for the way he handled the original complaint, and his attempt to cover his tracks.

4 minutes

Knee-jerk reactions happen fast. Those offensive tweets were sent over a period of just 4 minutes, yet they’ve created a considerable marketing problem for the company concerned.

Marketing problem?

Yes!

Many of the company’s Twitter followers are customers. Some tweeted to say they were going to switch providers. What’s not known is how many other customers saw what happened and will simply leave. However, he also has a longer-term problem to deal with. Tweets are indexed by Google. Any prospective customer researching a new provider can easily stumble upon what his angry customers are saying.

That’s a heck of a marketing problem to overcome.

He’ll need to try and rebuild his connection with his customers. He’ll also need to earn their trust again. Some in similar positions have needed to invest in a rebrand. Others have needed to appoint a new CEO or leadership figure.

All because of 4 minutes of angry tweeting.

I believe the best thing we can learn from situations like this, is to develop a strategy that stops us making the same mistake.

Here’s the strategy I use. I hope you find it useful.

Pausing our knee makes us less of a jerk

Knee-jerk reactions only happen, because we react almost instantly… when emotions are running high.

Just as it’s hard to solve a problem using the same kind of thinking that caused the problem, it’s hard to respond with *love, when you’re still feeling angry or irritated.

*Yes, love. If we don’t love the community we serve, we’re in the wrong job.

So, my strategy when someone puts me in a toxic frame of mind, is to press pause before I respond. This inserts a time cushion between the incident and my response. I find 15 to 20 minutes is ideal. When possible, I use that time to go for a walk. I find a change of scenery makes my thinking even clearer. Either way, I’m able to respond in a much more thoughtful, measured fashion.

That approach has not only helped me professionally, but been enormously useful in general. After all, no one likes a hothead.

The key is to find an effective strategy, before you need it. If mine doesn’t work for you, keep looking until you find one that does. It’s so much easier to avoid knee-jerk problems before they happen, than to have to deal with all the damage afterwards.

Marketing Essentials: Start with the end in mind

March 2, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Small business owners come to me regularly, asking for something they don’t need. I’m sharing this with you, because it’s a symptom of a serious problem. A serious problem that loses business owners a fortune.

Here it is… plus how you can avoid it.

First, here are some examples of dangerously misleading statements. I receive these pretty-much every day from small business owners:

I need more leads for our sales team.
I need more enquiries from my website.
I need more social media followers.
I need more traffic to my website.

They’re wrong. One hundred percent, provably wrong.

More sales leads, additional client enquiries, bigger social networks and more website traffic are not their desired outcomes. That’s because they’re not end results or ultimate marketing goals. What they actually need, is more customers, higher profits, bigger contracts, higher revenues or more sales, etc.

The challenge with searching for the wrong thing, is that it will lead you down the wrong path. You’ll ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers and end up with the wrong outcomes.

Think about it

If fewer sales leads, BUT from high spending, profitable customers is exactly what’s required, you’ll never find it by asking the wrong questions.

If you can quickly (and massively) improve your profits / revenues, by developing new products for your existing customers, you’ll never find it by asking the wrong questions.

If you want to escape from the feast and famine cycle, by developing a reliable source of profitable new clients, you’ll never find it by asking the wrong questions.

So, start with the end in mind.

Get specific. Decide what your desired marketing outcome is: In other words, determine exactly what you need your business to achieve. Then, focus on that like a laser. This will help you get your marketing on the right track and ensure you’re aiming for the correct targets.

Are your prices too high?

February 28, 2020 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

They could be.

Alternatively:

You could be marketing to the wrong people.
Your marketing could be reaching too few of the right people.
You could be asking people to make a decision, before they have all the information they need.
Your marketing promises could be too similar to those offered by your lower priced competitors.
Your marketing could be failing to clearly demonstrate enough value, making your prices seem high.
Your marketing could be suffering from Toxic Complexity. This is dangerous and extremely common.
You could be responding to enquiries too slowly (or too quickly).
Your branding could be positioning you (in the mind of your marketplace) as a lower priced provider than you actually are.

And there are tons of other reasons. None of which have anything whatsoever to do with your prices.

Here’s the thing. Lowering your prices can be tempting. It’s a quick and extremely easy way to make your products or services seem better value.

However, it’s a terrible strategy.

It kills profitability. And it engages you in a pricing race to the bottom, where the cheapest provider wins. They ‘win’ the worst possible slice of the marketplace… low profit customers, who’ll leave as soon as a cheaper provider turns up.

A far better alternative is to find out what’s actually causing people to think you’re too expensive. And to then focus on improving your marketing in those key areas.

If you’re not sure where to start looking for answers, that brief list above is a useful place to begin.