Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Opportunity is banging loudly on your door. Let it in!

By |

woman in black long sleeve shirt sitting on chair

Photo | Andrea Piacquadio.

The pace of change is accelerating faster than ever. This is creating a multitude of exciting opportunities for business owners. Including you.

Here are just a few of the opportunities you might want to explore.

New needs and wants are emerging. This means you now have masses of new prospective clients (or customers) you can serve. It also means you have the opportunity to offer more services or products to your existing clients.

New ways to access knowledge are at your fingertips… for free. With AI, you can get a detailed summary of every best-selling business book ever published. You can then question the summary, so it explains whatever parts of the book you’re most interested in learning from. As I write this in July 2024, that service is freely available from services like Google Gemini, Perplexity AI, ChatGPT and many others.

New and improved ways to work smarter are available to you. You can decrease stress whilst simultaneously increasing your productivity. That’s a huge win win.

New ways to sell your services are available to you, thanks to the newly-competitive payment provider sector. This makes it easier for clients to hire you or buy from you. Plus, it’s more profitable for your business, too.

New partnership possibilities are springing up. All this change brings almost unlimited potential for you to radically expand and improve your partnerships. Joint Venture opportunities are everywhere, just waiting for you.

It’s utterly exhilarating

I work with small business owners daily. Based on the results I’m seeing month after month, I firmly believe this is a golden age of opportunity for small business owners. I’ve never seen anything even vaguely like it, in almost 30-years of serving small business owners. It’s utterly exhilarating. Don’t let yourself miss out.

You’re better. They’re more successful. Why?

By |

marketing balance, marketing tips, marketing ideas

Photo | Andrew Draper

Today, I’d like to help you avoid maybe the most frustrating thing in business. I’m referring to watching your less capable competitors gaining more of the market, and making more money, than you do.

It all starts with understanding the following.

The most successful provider and the best provider, are seldom the same provider. In fact, it rarely happens.

That’s because being the best doesn’t automatically mean people will notice you, believe you, buy from you or hire you.

Why is that?

Commercial success requires a critically important balance.

You need to balance the development of a great service, with the development of a strategy to earn the attention, trust and business/patronage of your marketplace.

Here’s why that balance is essential.

  • If your prospective clients don’t know you exist, it doesn’t matter how exceptional your service or product is, because you’re not an option for them.
  • If your prospective clients DO know you exist, but your marketing doesn’t inspire them to trust you, they won’t hire you or buy from you.
  • And if your prospective clients know you exist, and they trust you–but your marketing doesn’t motivate them to take action, they won’t hire you or buy from you.

Without that balance in place: Trying to grow a business is extremely frustrating, as less capable competitors grab your share of the marketplace. You will already know competitors in your space, who are nowhere near as good as you, yet they’re flying.

With that balance in place: You get all the rewards your hard work and dedication merits.

Thankfully, this is directly under our control as business owners. And it’s easy. All it takes is a decision. The decision to adjust the balance, so our business attracts the volume and quality of clients we deserve.

But here’s the challenge

It’s even easier to ‘keep on keeping on’ and hope things just get better. Which is why this message is ignored by most people I share it with. It’s why there are business owners still whining about how unlucky they are 5 or even 10-years after they started their business.

It’s not luck.

It’s a decision. THIS decision.

And as business owners, it should be the easiest, most obvious business decision we ever make.

Assess. Improve. Execute

By |

marketing tips, curiosity, sales leads, sales

Photo Finn Hackshaw

Today, I’m going to share a marketing idea with you that helped me increase a client’s sales results by just over 180% in 5 months.

It can be summed up in 3 words: Assess. Improve. Execute.

Here’s how it works.

Assess

The first step to boosting your sales results is to assess your current situation. I spent some time digging into my client’s sales and marketing process and identified her company’s primary problem. It turned out they offered a superb service and when prospects learned about it, they absolutely loved it. The problem was that they were getting too few chances to demo their service. This means I needed to radically increase the number of high-quality client leads they attracted.

Once we identified the root of her problem, it was time to improve things and free my client to dramatically increase her company’s sales results.

Improve

There were a number of areas in my client’s marketing that were under-performing. This is why she wasn’t generating the volume of high-quality enquiries she needed. She knew her marketing wasn’t working the way she needed it to. But like many business owners, my client assumed the enquiries they attracted were about average in number and quality. She was wrong on both fronts. A common mistake, which had been needlessly losing the company a fortune.

By making a small number of essential improvements at the very beginning, we were able to considerably increase her results. And fast. Really fast.

I remember the easiest adjustment I made, was to improve the focus of their sales message. It had previously focused on what their business did, how great their service was and how amazing their team was. It’s a common mistake.

If your marketing has a similar focus, it’s a bad, bad idea!

And here’s why.

No one buys a service or a product. They buy the result. For example, you don’t buy exercise equipment. You buy looking good and feeling great. So, sell the result of investing in your service.

Anyhow, we then dug a little deeper and uncovered a series of similarly untapped, windfall opportunities.

One of them was for me to transform their website into a lead generating machine, by improving their marketing copy. I needed it to make prospects on their site feel massively more curious.

Curious? Why curious, Jim?

Think about it. Every client or customer enquiry you have ever had, or will ever receive, only happened because that person needed to know something. So, if you want your marketing to attract massively more leads, it needs to create more curiosity… and answer fewer questions.

Previously, their website tried to answer as many questions as possible. I rewrote their marketing and made sure it provided just enough information.

Just enough information to inform the prospect and ignite their curiosity.

Just enough information to compel, to motivate and to inspire eager prospects to contact them with a high-quality enquiry.

We wrapped these ideas into a plan, along with half a dozen other tactical improvements. Now we were good to go!

Execute

Oh man! Without doubt, this is the stage that excites me most. This is why I do what I do.

It’s where we execute on the newly-improved marketing and measure the feedback. There’s something wonderful about the energy I get from clients, as they see their business performing the way they always wanted it too. And often far, far better.

Assess. Improve. Execute. Focus like a laser on those 3 steps and watch your business grow.

From? To?

By |

marketing tip, business journey

Photo: Nick Fewings

Today, I’d like to share a very powerful marketing strategy with you, which few, if any, of your competitors are aware of.

Every business provides a product or a service, which solves a problem for the customer. In order to solve their problem, it needs to create a change. To move the customer from something to something.

For example.

  • From worried to confident.
  • From vulnerable to safe.
  • From broke to wealthy.
  • From discomfort to comfort.
  • From bored to entertained.
  • From struggling to succeeding.
  • From confused to clear.
  • From sad to joyful.
  • From scruffy to glam.
  • From lonely to connected.
  • From loss to gain.
  • From ignorant to informed.
  • From stressed to relaxed.
  • From pessimistic to hopeful.
  • From lost to guided.

Now, here’s the part very few business owners get right.

You need to figure out the change your prospective customers are looking for. Their ‘from what’ and their ‘to what’.

Warning

The biggest danger here is believing the answer is obvious. It almost never is.

Seriously.

For instance, no successful coffee shop focuses on changing you from thirsty to quenched. None of them.

They change you by creating an attractive atmosphere. An atmosphere, where you can go from stressed to relaxed, or from tired to restored, or from lonely to connected, from stuck to creative or from bored to entertained.

The world’s top coffee shops know this. It’s what their marketing focuses on. It’s why we see very little emphasis placed on the coffee beans used, yet huge emphasis placed on the welcoming, positive atmosphere.

Here’s another example.

The world’s most expensive restaurants don’t focus on taking you from feeling hungry to feeling full. You can go down the street and get the same number of calories from a burger joint for pennies. Instead, these restaurants focus on their exclusivity. They take you from feeling normal to feeling like a star.

You get the idea.

Your product or service

Determine what change or changes your prospect is truly looking for.

Focus on the ‘from what’ part. Your marketing message needs to meet them right there. It needs to talk to their current situation. It needs to address the discomfort they’re feeling. This means your message will be on the very same wavelength that they’re on. This dramatically and profoundly increases the sales impact of your marketing

Then focus on the ‘to what’ part. Your marketing needs to illustrate how your product or service transitions them to their end point. To the very thing they desire.

This marketing strategy is designed to directly address the wants or needs of your prospects and position you as the answer. Almost no small business marketing does this and amazingly few medium-sized businesses.

How to create a new, high profit service

By |

Here’s a tried and tested way to create a new and highly profitable service that will be irresistible to your marketplace.

It’s based on an easy to follow, 3 step formula.

new profitable service

1. Identify their major problem

Identify the biggest challenge facing your clients and prospective clients. If you think you’ve identified it, BUT it isn’t a big enough problem to keep them awake at night, you haven’t found it yet.

So keep looking!

That may sound dramatic, however, there’s a direct link between the size of the problem you solve and the success of your new, high profit service.

2. Create the solution

Create a solution that will overcome the challenge.

Yes, you’ll need to get creative here. If the solution was patently obvious, it wouldn’t have an entire marketplace suffering with it.

Thankfully, big problems don’t always require a big or complex answer. However, the solution to such pressing problems can require some extra creativity.

With that in mind, here are a couple of tips to help you find the answer you need.

  • Look outside your industry for the solution. Problems in one industry (or region / country) have already been solved in others. The most famous example of importing a solution from a totally different industry, is from The Ford Motor Company. They developed the automotive production line, based on how Chicago’s meat-packing plants worked.
  • Ask others for their ideas. By encouraging people you trust to provide their input, you multiply your chances of cracking the problem. It’s possible one of them will figure it out. It’s also possible that one of them could propose a solution that doesn’t work… but which sets you on a new direction that leads to the answer.

And finally.

3. Market your highly profitable new service

Create a marketing strategy that will inform and convince your marketplace, that you have the answer they need.

When marketing your solution to existing clients, you should find a massive level of interest.

Once you’ve provided an extremely valuable service to enough existing clients, the word usually spreads and spreads.

This then leads to a consistent flow of high quality client enquiries. Initially from your local area, then spreading into new locations; opening up an ever-expanding market.

Obviously, if you don’t have any existing and / or former clients, you have a trickier task at hand. Existing clients already know you and trust you. It’s very easy to share an idea with them.

When you’re contacting strangers it’s a very different proposition. There’s no one-size-fits-all marketing approach. The way forward for you will depend on multiple factors. Note: If you’re in this position and want some alternative strategies and ideas, I strongly recommend you read this: 10 Reasons your business isn’t growing and how to fix it.

The most valued service providers are those who solve the biggest, most serious problems, and then market their solution effectively. By using that 3 step formula correctly, you can become amazingly valuable to the market you serve.

People will tell their friends about you.

Your reputation will sky-rocket.

And you’ll attract the very best clients, whilst enjoying the rewards that come from your new, highly profitable service.

The content marketing your prospects want from you

By |

Marketing, list writing

I regularly write about the importance of creating marketing that’s useful to your prospects. So, here are some specific examples, which you can adapt and apply to your own marketing.

Let’s go.

Their needs and your products or services

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following topics or ideas and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing messages.

People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: Share ideas to help your prospects connect with useful contacts. The Wall Street Journal wrote about how I achieved this for one of my clients – 4 Marketing Strategies That Paid Off For Small Companies.

People also have an inbuilt need to belong: Share the opportunity to become part of your community. Lots of content marketing fails to address this. Newsletter creators talk about their ‘list’. Podcasters and Youtubers talk about their ‘subscribers’. These are all self-focused. Instead, do as I have done and build a community.

For example, when one of my community hits reply to my newsletter, they can email me direct. And they always, always get an answer from me. No AI. No automation. Just me. I make it very clear that I’m part of the same community as you… the small business owner community. Your prospects value that kind of connection. They’re less attracted to being part of an impersonal list.

Everyone is trying to succeed at something: Share ideas to help your prospects achieve their targets, goals or dreams. Obviously, as with pretty-much every topic here, if you offer a specific product or service that can help them in this area, incorporate that into the content.

We all need to feel safe and secure: Share ideas to help your prospects reduce risk or feel safer.

Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: Share ideas to help your prospects maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks faster, etc. I’m not a time management expert, but I’ve shared tons of ideas in this area, based on decades of running a successful business, without working crazy hours. The response is always excellent. So don’t be put off sharing from your experience.

People want to improve and expand their knowledge: Share your industry knowledge, sure. But also share your experience with them. For example, if you’re an accountant, don’t just focus on tax, profit and loss or the latest business news. They can get that anywhere. Tell them the common factors you’ve identified in successful businesses. And the ones you’ve identified in those that flounder or fail.

Your specific experience is extremely valuable. It sets you apart from all your competitors. And in doing so, you make it far easier for prospects to feel a sense of connection with you.

We also want to avoid unnecessary stress: Share ideas to help your prospects feel more relaxed and assured. If there’s a specific product or service you offer, which can assist them with this, incorporate that into the message or idea.

Aim for unmissable

Are any of those topics missing from your content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Because this kind of useful, relevant information is the cornerstone of successful marketing. You’ll know you have the balance right, when your content marketing is so useful that people would miss it if you stopped.

A new beginning or oiling the keys?

By |

content marketing topics

In business, things have changed more in the past 4 and a half years than they did in the previous 2 decades. The ‘old’ way of marketing, which many have patched up and tried to repair is not fit for purpose in 2024. It’s too irrelevant to be adapted.

It’s like oiling the keys on a typewriter, in an attempt to compete against the productivity of a laptop.

Here’s a proven, vastly better way forward.

Give your marketing a fresh beginning

What I did with massive success for my clients during the pandemic, and have carried forward since, is to start their marketing again. A totally new beginning. I started by asking them to answer the following question.

If you were marketing your business for the first time, based on today’s economic realities and marketplace expectations, what would your marketing need to look like?

By answering that question, you rid yourself of the toxic baggage that’s holding you and your business back. You give yourself the freedom to perfectly match the needs and wants of your prospective clients or customers. You free yourself of the legacy mistakes that are currently working against you.

That type of radical improvement is simply not possible, when all you’re doing is oiling the keys.

Go!

So, go on. Imagine you are marketing your business for the very first time. Take a look at the all-new landscape your business is surrounded by. Now, match your marketing strategy, your marketing tactics, your marketing messages, your promises, your guarantees, etc., so that they’re exactly what your prospective clients want and need.

I can tell you from experience, get this right and the results are spectacular.

Make 2024 your best year ever, even if you’re struggling today

By |

Business results, reflection, take action

Next week marks the 2nd half of 2024. If you want to finish the year strong, no matter how things are going for you right now, today’s newsletter is exactly what you need.

What follows is based on almost 30 years of experience, helping small business owners achieve their best results. It’s a very straightforward approach. And it works in every industry and profession.

And it starts with us taking a look at how our business has performed over the first half of 2024.

Reflection and action

If we reflect on our progress and discover we’re on course to hit or smash our 2024 targets, we need to take action.

  1. To stay focused.
  2. To persevere.
  3. To carry on doing the right things, correctly.

If we reflect on our progress and it looks like we’re not on course, we need to take action.

  1. To accept the urgency of the situation.
  2. To decide that more of the same is not an option.
  3. To get strategic. Important: Most business owners don’t know what an effective strategy is. Here’s a short, brilliant explainer video, by Professor Roger Martin.
  4. To make better decisions.
  5. To take better actions.
  6. To finish strong and turn things around.

And here’s the GREAT news

Whether we’re on target or off target, we can still make this a very successful year. Equipped with the right strategy and support, our decisions will improve, our actions will improve and our results will improve.

The key is to act. And to act in accordance with the results we’re currently experiencing.

Lots of small business owners get this wrong. Many of those who are off target today, will stay focused, persevere and carry on… with more of the same. They’ll stick with what they’re doing and hope that things will improve.

Over the years, I’ve helped thousands of businesspeople to transform their results. In every case, their turnaround success started after they took that number one step above. They accepted the urgency of their situation, which inspired them to make the required adjustments. 

Yes, I do this same exercise myself

On a personal note, the only reason my own business has been successful over the years, is that I have learned to review my progress, or lack of progress, and then to act accordingly.

If I was using the same approach to my business in 2024 as I was using even a few years ago, my own business would be contracting today.

We all need to reflect on where we are, and then act accordingly. So please take time to see where your business is today, look at its direction of travel, and make the required adjustments.

Photo: Richard Stachmann on Unsplash

Nothing can stop you now. Nothing!

By |

focused young female student doing homework using netbook sitting near cute cat

Everything you need in order to achieve every goal you have for your business is now available to you. The contacts you need, the clients or customers you need, the financial backing you need, the answers you need, the advice you need… everything.

For example.

More great contacts than you’ll ever need

Thanks to social networks, especially LinkedIn, it’s easier than ever for you to find the exact profile of business contacts you need. But that’s not all. Once you find your ideal contacts, connecting with them is really easy.

The financial cost of all this? Depending on the network you use and approach you use, it’s either free of charge or very inexpensive. What an amazing opportunity.

More clients or customers than you’ll ever need

Not only are there more clients out there than you’ll ever need, there are also more people out there, who already have trusted, direct access to your prospective clients.

Once they recommend you to your prospective clients, a hefty subset will quickly hire you. Far more than you can handle, though. So, only accept enough of them to smash your targets.
Note: I wrote about this at the start of the year, including how it works.

Seriously. Too many clients, too fast, can create big problems.

More financial backing than you’ll ever need

The money is out there and you have multiple ways to access it. Yes, the banks are full of money. The thing is, there are a lot of wealthy people right now, who are getting uninspiring returns on their investments. And a healthy subset of these people are very open to opportunities to invest.

Here’s what I k now about these wealthy investors. They have deep pockets, brave hearts and they’re smart. Smart enough to help you avoid mistakes. In other words, they’ll often invest their knowledge and experience into your business, too. This is often of greater value to you than whatever financial investment they make.

Every answer you’ll ever need

Regardless of what challenges you’re facing, there are people out there with the answers you need. These experienced professionals can save you years of wasted time and years of wasted opportunity. They’re also easier to find and connect with than at any time in history.

And there’s AI. You now have free or low-cost access to AI. So you can find answers and conduct research on just about everything, from the comfort of your preferred device. This is something previous generations were only able to dream about.

But it’s yours. Right here. Right now.

Every challenge now has a solution

Many business owners are unaware just how quickly they can fully-resolve any ongoing, stressful problem. One of the reasons for this, is that they haven’t yet noticed the plethora of solutions at their fingertips. Problems with everything from cash flow, sluggish business growth and lack of investment, to taxes, HR, recruitment and premises issues… just about anything you can think of, are now available to you.

Keep that in mind, if you’re worried about, or frustrated with, tough challenges right now.

Focus on the solutions, my friend. Because the exact answers you need are all around you — you’re swimming in them!

Photo: Sam Lion Pexels.com

10 Proven ways to get free publicity, starting now!

By |

marketing, free publicity

People will happily share your message for free. Below are 10 proven examples. Look for those that you can adapt, to gain free publicity for your products or services.

  1. If it makes them look clever. This is why social networks are packed with Einstein quotes.
  2. If it makes them look compassionate to their contacts or community.
  3. If by sharing it, they believe they will benefit directly or indirectly.
  4. If they care about you and they believe sharing your message will help you.
  5. If it says something they aren’t brave enough to say for themselves.
  6. If they believe it’s helpful or valuable and that their friends need to know about it. My newsletter is spread by people who find something useful in it, which they want their contacts to benefit from.
  7. If they think it will make them look ahead of the curve or well-informed.
  8. If it’s remarkable. Extremely satisfied customers tell their friends when they receive an amazing service.
  9. If it makes them appear generous to their friends.
  10. If they are part of your community and want others to join them.

Buying or attracting?

As I tell my clients, you can hire salespeople and buy advertising, or you can use a little creativity and build a growing crowd of advocates. That’s a crowd who have the attention and trust of the people they’re sharing your message with.

Trusted people, spreading your message with their friends, for free, is an exceptionally effective way to grow your business.