Marketing tips, marketing help and advice

How to get your products, your services and your business noticed

Image: Rupert Britton

Take a moment and imagine that you’re in a huge stadium. There are 70,000 people there. And every single one of you is dressed in bright yellow clothing.

Then someone walks in who’s dressed from head to foot in bright red. Immediately, everyone notices them. They stand out because they’re not like all the others. They’re clearly different.

Here’s why this matters to your business: If you want to get noticed, you need to be willing to stand out. To be visibly, measurably and meaningfully different from your competitors.

That’s how you attract attention.

However, the typical small business unintentionally does the total opposite!

They offer the same kind of services as their competitors, to the same kind of people, for the same kind of fees. They have the same kind of website, the same kind of newsletter and the same kind of branding. And all because they use the same kind of general, generic marketing as their competitors.

It doesn’t work, because it can’t work

Why is that?

Simple: Every time you use a general or generic marketing tactic or marketing idea, by default you’re doing what the masses are doing. You become what Zig Ziglar used to call “a wandering generality”.

And in doing so, you actually make your business less visible.

Less visible?

How can marketing make you less visible?

Easy!

Instead of helping you attract the attention of your marketplace, generic marketing tactics and ideas act as camouflage. You become just like one of the 70,000 people in that stadium, dressed in yellow – – wondering why you’re not getting noticed or attracting attention.

You need a more effective approach to marketing than that. You need marketing that takes your business from the background and thrusts it into the foreground.

With this in mind, take a look at your marketing and consider how many things you’re currently doing, which are similar to your competitors. Then seek out creative alternatives. Alternatives that will get you noticed by your ideal profile of client or customer.

The huge Google problem, which they don’t give a rat’s ass about

Written by Jim Connolly

Image: Pawel Czerwinski

This brief post is unlikely to be indexed by Google. Although it’s written for humans (like you), it’s value will be determined by Google’s famously incompetent bot. The bot needs a minimum of three hundred words in order to get a handle on what the topic is.

That’s why lots of blog posts and articles read so poorly. They’re deliberately written over-long. The author is playing the Google game. If they want search traffic, they have to add unnecessary fluff. They also need to keep repeating certain words and phrases, or Google’s bot won’t know what to rank them for.

Google’s stolen content problem

The Google game is like most games. The vast majority play by the rules. Others don’t.

My posts are stolen by criminals within minutes (sometimes seconds) of publication. They use software to publish them and submit them to Google’s index.

In many cases, their illegal copy of my copyright protected work is chosen by Google as the original ‘canonical’ version. My original is then seen as a copy. I could even be penalized by Google, for Google’s own mistake. There’s no workable recourse. The bad guy wins.

Google search is broken. And for the foreseeable future it will stay like that. They’ve trained writers how to write for their extremely limited Google bot. The bad guys know how to profit on autopilot. It costs Google nothing. So, there’s no motivation for them to put their house in order.

When an service is as huge as Google, it’s beyond reproach. Yes, if a major publication complains, Google takes immediate action. The rest of us need to live with it. We need to play the Google game and accept theft of our work. That really sucks, but they’re Google… so!

BTW: This was 299 words.

Here’s an update: Google indexing scraped content from my blog: Part 2

How to avoid fee sensitive clients and customers. Yes, it works in your industry too

Written by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

You don’t need to sell your services or products based on price. You don’t need to waste your time on fee-sensitive clients or customers, either.

In today’s post, I explain why and provide an example of exactly what I mean.

Sort by price

One of the most common features on shopping sites, is the “sort by price” filter. It lets us see products in the category we’ve searched for, listed in price order.

The reason sort by price exists, is that the marketplace demands it. When presented with 5 or 50 options for a commodity product, the lowest price wins. This is known as the race to the bottom. Bottled water is bottled water. It makes no sense to pay more for it than you need to.

Right?

Wrong!

But what about Bob?

Bob is passionate about helping people worldwide have access to clean drinking water. He then finds a water brand, which donates money from every bottle sold, to build wells in areas where there’s no clean water.

So, Bob’s happy (very happy) to pay more for his bottled water from this well-building brand. Plus, because people like Bob know lots of other people like Bob, he tells his friends. They do the same.

Water gets sold.

Wells get built.

And people get to make a meaningful difference to the lives of those who need it.

What’s the lesson here?

If you want potential clients or customers to stop caring about your prices or fees, give them something more important to care about. This means differentiating your products or services from the competition. The moment you do, you’re no longer offering a commodity. And customers are no longer buying based on price.

The good news? If you’re thinking this approach couldn’t work for you or your industry, remind yourself that it works for a commodity as common and utterly indistinguishable as water.

Does your business pass the Steve Jobs test?

Written by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

Every great business story begins with a dream. An inspiring, exciting and motivating dream. A dream that propelled the business owner AND those around them, to make amazing things happen.

Steve Jobs famously motivated top people to work for him, by sharing his dream with them. The most famous example was when he asked John Scully to leave Pepsi and join Apple.

Jobs said.

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

It’s hard to reject an offer like that! That kind of compelling dream literally changes how people feel. Feelings are what precede actions. As such, it massively increases the chances of people wanting to take action and invest in you, hire you or buy from you.

Just think about that for a moment.

The power of a compelling dream

In contrast, the ambition behind the typical small business is predictable. It’s pretty average. Here’s the thing: an average ambition won’t attract the best clients, customers, investors or partners. It won’t compel people to want to share a business’s vision or talk about them, either.

You end up working just as hard, but without the power of a compelling dream, the ceiling on your potential is unnecessarily limited.

This begs the question; how do you know if the dream behind your business is motivating enough? In my experience, there are 3 very good indicators.

One way to know, is by how enthusiastic and driven you feel regarding your business. Compelling dreams bring energy and optimism. Average ambitions bring frustration and pessimism.
Another powerful indicator is the way people react when you share your dream with them. If you’re on track, people will sit forward. Eyes wide open. Focusing on what you’re saying.
And finally, you’ll find that other people pester you to become a part of your dream. They want to be on your team. Either as a customer, client, investor or advocate.

If your business isn’t energizing you, or isn’t attracting the people or attention it needs, check how compelling your dream is. Look at how motivating your plans are. Determine if you’re settling for less than you truly want.

Because it could be time to level up. It could be time to create a compelling dream that’s worthy of you, my friend.

Embrace the low risk and maximum potential mindset

Written by Jim Connolly

Image: Harnoor Dhaliwal

It’s impossible to completely eliminate risk from your business. But you can have the best of both worlds, with low risk and maximum potential.

Let’s start by looking at risk and why you can’t (and shouldn’t) totally eliminate it from your business.

Think about it: Even if your results are fine right now, and you decide to just carry on with whatever you’re doing, you’re at enormous risk.

Really?

Yes, really!

You risk losing clients (or customers) to your agile competitors, who continuously seek to improve and target your client base with compelling offers. Sure, small and medium sized business are the most vulnerable, but even massive brands can be wiped out by the just carry on attitude. Remember; Blockbuster Video, Toys R Us, My Space, Palm Inc?

The question is, how do we get the best of both worlds; less risk and massively more potential?

I’m glad you asked.

Mastering the risk / potential balance

In seeking to eliminate risk, you also block yourself from every great opportunity. That’s because every genuine opportunity for your business comes with an element of risk.

So, no risk = no progress.

Therefore, rather than regard risk as something to avoid, consider the potential pluses as well as the potential minuses. Research the positives as well as the negatives.

And challenge your beliefs!

Challenging your beliefs is critically important, as one of the biggest barriers to your success are your inaccurate preconceptions. This is a perfect example. And I see equally damaging thinking with business owners all the time.

A well-balanced approach to risk and opportunity is behind every successful business. It reduces your exposure to risk, whilst simultaneously allowing you to fully benefit from the genuine opportunities your business must have, in order to grow.

I hope you found this useful. More importantly, I hope you do something with it.

Target the unhappy, not the uninterested

Written by Jim Connolly

Image – Andre Hunter

I want to share one of the foundations of effective marketing with you today. It’s something that can help you dramatically (and quickly) increase your sales or client acquisition figures. It can also help you save time, money and focus your marketing far more effectively.

Are you ready?

It starts with understanding the following.

People who are happy with the products or service they get from one of your competitors, are not looking for whatever your business is offering.

Satisfied people are exactly that. They’re satisfied. They value their current provider. And like you, they ignore marketing messages when they’re not interested in a new (whatever).

This remains true even when:

You’re providing amazing value.
You are less expensive.
You are faster or more reliable.

Despite this, most marketing from small and medium-sized businesses tries to be relevant to as wide an audience of prospects as possible.

Yes, it’s certainly true that you can change someone’s world-view or mindset. But it takes time. Lots and lots of time. It also takes a great amount of effort. Even then, the conversion rate is low.

That’s why I recommend you adopt a more effective approach.

Focus on the unhappy. Avoid the uninterested

Yes, it’s important to build an awareness of how great your product or service is. You need people to know where to go, when they’re looking for whatever you provide.

But what if you need to quickly increase your sales figures or attract new clients? Then my friend, it’s time to adjust the focus of your marketing. If you want to have the full attention of the most motivated buyers, (people ready to make a purchasing decision right now), focus on the unhappy, not the uninterested.

The ‘unhappy’ are actively looking for what you offer.

They’re eager and ready to proceed.
They already have a budget allocated.
They’re highly motivated to take action right now, and buy from you or hire you.

To profoundly increase your sales numbers or client acquisition rate, your marketing needs to talk directly and exclusively to these red hot prospects. And as a bonus, you’ll also attract very few, if any, time-wasters.

That’s the kind of double win that many business owners really need right now.