Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Marketing Essentials: Start with the end in mind

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marketing, focus

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?

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race to the borttom, marketing, price drop,

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.

Bon courage or good luck?

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bon courage, good luck

Photo: Shutterstock.

I’ve never really liked the phrase, ‘good luck’.

I get the idea behind it. I also know people say it with the very best intentions. But to me, especially when related to business, it really isn’t particularly useful. That’s because it places things totally outside the person’s control.

My wife speaks, reads and writes in French. When we first met, she taught me a French alternative to good luck: Bon courage! I find bon courage far more relevant and useful than good luck. Especially when it comes to business. And that’s what this brief post is about.

Bon courage

There are a couple of ways to interpret bon courage. One of them is that you want the person to have the strength or courage required for (whatever).

Here’s how bon courage stacks up against good luck:

  • Bon courage is internal: You summon the courage.
  • Good luck is external: You hope that good luck will appear.

It’s impossible to achieve meaningful success in business, or anything else for that matter, without courage. Courage is required to stand out, when it’s easier to blend in. Courage is required to zig when your competitors zag. Courage is required to launch a new idea, when it feels safer to just do more of the same.

In fact courage is required for every major move we make; renting / buying our first home, falling in love, starting a family, starting a business, etc.

The next time you want a friend to succeed, try wishing them bon courage. If they ask you what you mean, explain it to them.

And next time you notice yourself wishing for better luck, find a way to summon bon courage instead. It really is hard to overstate what you can achieve, when you have a great plan and the courage to see it through.

Mistakes, birthdays and billionaires

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marketing, think different

Photo: Shutterstock.

I have an idea to share with you today, from a weird combination of sources. It involves mistakes, birthdays and billionaires.

My friend Amy has a landmark birthday today. One of those birthdays with a zero at the end. She said she was now “officially old” and that it’s the first time she’s not felt like celebrating a birthday.

I offered her another way to look at things, as she was clearly feeling down.

  • Imagine you’re just a penny away from becoming a billionaire. Nothing really changes on the day you earn that final penny. You were already pretty-much a billionaire and probably extremely wealthy for decades. You may feel different now you have that extra penny, but you’re just a penny richer than the day before. That’s all.
  • Landmark birthdays work the same way. You may feel very different. In reality, you’re just a day older than yesterday. That’s all.

What does this kind of thinking have to do with business?

Every year in business, you make countless decisions, have thousands of conversations, give numerous presentations and send lots of proposals… it’s an almost endless stream of activity.

  • When you make a poor decision, it’s just one decision.
  • When you have an unproductive conversation, it’s just one conversation.
  • When your proposal is rejected, it’s just one proposal.
  • When a meeting doesn’t go the way you want it to, it’s just one meeting.

In the same way as the final penny doesn’t make you rich, and the day your age has a zero on the end doesn’t make you old, a negative commercial outcome must be seen in context.

  • When you make a poor decision, learn from it and make better future decisions.
  • When you have an unproductive conversation, unpack it and make the next one more productive.
  • When your proposal is rejected, look for ways to make the next one stronger.
  • When a meeting doesn’t go the way you want it to, review what happened and improve.

A recent failure does not define us as failures. The last penny doesn’t make us rich. And I hope Amy now has a very happy 20th birthday.

Stability through impact

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marketing impact

Photo: Shutterstock.

There are 3 broad ways you can guide the direction of a business:

  1. You can aim for stability.
  2. You can aim for impact.
  3. You can aim for stability through impact.

Here’s how those 3 options pan out, and why one of them gives you the best chance of fully achieving your maximum potential.

Primary focus on stability

Business owners with a primary focus on stability, plan and act with a safety-first mindset. This often blocks them from making the improvements they need, even when their business isn’t growing. If something ‘kind of works a little’, they’ll hold onto it tight. They do, this rather than try something new with an infinitely greater potential to help them.

They want things to improve. Of course they do. But they want things to improve, without them making any meaningful changes. Change equals risk. And risk feels scary. Too scary.

Primary focus on impact

Business owners with a primary focus on impact, plan and act with a mindset that’s driven by the desire to make a meaningful difference. They have a vision of the impact they seek to create and are motivated by the desire to see that vision become a reality.

Within this broad group are business owners who are well-prepared, with a thoroughly researched idea, which they are passionate about. However, this group also contains business owners who have a deep belief in their idea, but their idea hasn’t had the necessary rigour applied. There’s no market for it. The numbers don’t stack up.

We see this all too often, when a new business opens with an expensive launch, lots of bold claims and in no time, they’re gone. It’s heartbreaking.

Focus on stability THROUGH impact

The business owner whose primary focus is stability through impact understands something, which the vast majority of people totally miss.

They’ve figured out that a balance needs to be achieved.

They know that hunkering down, avoiding change and hoping things will magically improve is a terrible strategy. You can’t hope your way to the top. Or even the middle. At best, you’ll go broke slowly. (which is a lot more painful than going broke fast, as it traps you for years in a stressful, under-performing business).

They also know that stability is essential. If you’re only focusing on making an impact, without ensuring you have a stable foundation, you’re very likely to fail. Nothing of value can be built on flimsy foundations. You need that stability. It’s a must.

So, what do they do?

They decide what impact they want to create. In other words, they choose the thing that they want to be known for… the difference they want to make to their marketplace (or the world). Then they do the research and put a plan together. A realistic, costed and robust plan.

Then, they work the plan.

With the stability of working to a solid plan, and fuelled by the motivation of making an impact, you can fully activate your maximum potential.

Hold on to what’s working. Let go of what isn’t

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Marketing, let go, improve

Photo: Shutterstock.

A friend of mine sometimes appears on business news programs. She called me yesterday with a question. You may find my answer useful, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Here’s the question: “Jim, I need a piece of business advice, which would work as a super-short sound bite. I’m live on air in just over 30 minutes. Can you help?“.

Honestly, that’s not the kind of thing I would usually be able to do with so little time. Especially as she specifically wasn’t looking for a famous business quote.

Fortunately, I had been working the day before with one of my clients and shared something, which he found really useful. I figured it might be what she was looking for. She loved it and used it. It was this:

“Hold on to what’s working and let go of what isn’t”.

Allow me to explain.

Habits, holding on and letting go

Much of what we do in day-to-day business is habitual, at least to a degree. Here are just a few common examples.

  • We have certain providers we go to for particular challenges.
  • We rely on key people for professional, expert advice.
  • We use specific software and hardware for certain tasks.

Over the months or years, these providers, people and technologies become a key part of how we operate our business.

I’ve found that the most successful business owners review these habits regularly. They keep their eyes open for better alternatives all the time. They know that meaningful improvement is only possible by looking closely at what you do, holding on to what’s working (or what’s optimal) and letting go of what isn’t.

Is it working or not?

The challenge with adopting this approach is that we can get comfortable with what seems to be working. And after all, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it! The thing is, we can only be certain that something isn’t broken if we check for better alternatives.

A laptop you spent a fortune on a decade ago, that’s now too slow, too heavy and has terrible battery-life, didn’t become antiquated overnight. If you’d just carried on using it, assuming it wasn’t broken because it was still powering-up, you’d be at a huge commercial disadvantage today.

The same is true of the providers we rely on. Their service may have been outstanding a year or two ago, but better providers and better-suited alternatives enter the market all the time. In many industries and professions, what was outstanding a few months ago is just average today.

And what about the assumptions we make? For instance, consider the assumptions we make about the market we serve. Are these assumptions working for us? If not, we need to let them go and make better decisions with better data.

Why not take some time to review the things you’re currently holding on to. Especially those you are comfortable with, but haven’t reviewed in a long time. Check if they’re still optimal.

If they are, hold on. But if they’re not, let go.