Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

  • Home
  • About
    • About Jim Connolly
    • My top marketing tips for 2025. Yours now, for free!
    • Privacy Policy
    • How I use cookies
    • Contact
    • Disclosure
  • Hire me
    • Let’s Grow Your Business
    • Pick My Brain for the results you need!

Improve your cash flow with this 1 important marketing tip

By Jim Connolly | April 22, 2011

Have you ever had clients, who refused to pay you on time?  If you have, you may find this post extremely useful!

Marketing and cash flow

The easiest way to avoid these low-value clients from hurting your business, is not to work with them in the first place.  I have not had a late payer in 15 years, because I don’t target those idiots with my marketing.  As a direct result, the clients I attract are people like you; professional people who don’t accept services, knowing they can’t pay for them.  If you want to attract great clients, read this!

Make no mistake, those selfish bastards will ruin you, if you decide to work with them.  The reality is that more businesses go broke because of bad cash flow, than because of a lack of earnings.

I was prompted to write this post, after a wonderful person who wanted to work with me lost her place, because of money owed to her, which was massively overdue.  She has lost an amazing opportunity, all because a major client of hers decided (yet again) that he was going to make her wait months and months and months for money he owes her.  She believes she needs his business.  I believe she doesn’t.  No one needs clients like that.

Professional marketing repels deliberate late payers

Professional marketing includes setting the scene with prospective clients, so they know what to expect when working with you.  This includes making it clear, that you are not prepared to work with deliberate late payers.  Deliberate late payers are those people, who have the funds to pay you, but elect not to; either as a power trip or because THEY think YOU are just not important enough. Let me reiterate: I’m not referring to someone, who is very occasionally a little late paying you.  I’m talking about those who believe it’s perfectly OK to deliberately withhold your money.  I have met many hard working people, who went broke thanks to deliberate late payers starving them of essential cash flow.

You don’t lose anything of value, by repelling those assholes before they can hurt your business.  In fact, it is impossible to grow a successful business, working with deliberate late payers.  They kill your finances, drain your energy and leave you unable to invest in the essential services your business needs, in order to grow.

Developing a great client base of people who value you, respect you and PAY you, is one of the best reasons to invest in professional marketing.

Just Launched: The Content Marketing Program

By Jim Connolly | April 21, 2011

Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of a brand new service, my Content Marketing Program.

The program runs for a whole year.  During our year together, I will show you how to attract high quality clients and inquiries, based on the incredible power of content marketing.  Working with you on a one-to-one basis, I will show you how to use tools like blogging, newsletters, and email marketing etc; to attract targeted inquiries from your ideal profile of client.

It works – Look!

The very fact that you are reading this right now, along with thousands of other business owners, proves how successfully you can reach the right people, with content marketing.  Notice how I knew you were a business owner? That’s because when you use content marketing correctly, as I do here on this blog, you ensure that your messages reach the right people – LOTS of them too!

What kind of tangible results are possible?

In February, I wrote a short blog post, regarding a place that had unexpectedly become available on my Marketing Mentor Program.  In less than 24 hours, that post generated 92 genuine inquiries for the remaining place!

Based on my typical conversion rate, I could have generated at least £90,000 in fees; if I had enough places to fill, just from that single post!

On my Content Marketing Program, I will show you exactly how I did that and how you can put the same super-powerful strategies in place for your business!

I will also show you how I used Content Marketing to generate almost £130,000 in client fees and product sales from this blog last year.

Just imagine what a difference that could make to you and your business.

By the way, if you are the kind of person, who prefers to attract business inquiries, rather than chase people for business, you will find this program especially valuable.

How it works: A quick overview

The program is tailored around your unique needs, resources and goals, so we start off with an initial fact-finding meeting.  This meeting is conducted like all our meetings, via Skype or phone.  We look at exactly where you are right now and then examine what you want to achieve; your goals and business targets etc.

Then, I work with you over the following 12 months, to develop a Content Marketing strategy, to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be.  I will provide you with all the guidance, coaching, support (and clarity) you need; all included in the program’s price.

That’s right: One set fee which covers everything, for the whole year.

Find out more

If you genuinely want to start attracting high quality clients, the way I do here on this blog, I’d love to hear from you.

Simply email me on jim (at) jimsmarketingblog.com (with your contact details) or call me on (+44) 1427 891274, and I will happily answer any questions you have, in complete confidence. Obviously, there are a limited number of places available, so get in touch as soon as you can, to avoid disappointment.  My full contact details are here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

3 reasons why I love helping you and your business!

By Jim Connolly | April 20, 2011

As yesterday’s post was all about content marketing, I thought today would be the perfect time to explain why I invest so much of my time, sharing ideas and insights with you, here on the blog.

Here are 3 reasons that came to mind immediately.

1.  As a fellow business owner, I respect you

Only a small minority of people have the courage to start up a business.  Whilst there is no ceiling on what you can earn when you are your own boss, there’s no floor either! It takes guts to leave the regular world of salaried employment, for the uncertainty of working for yourself.  You are my kind of person.  We both started out with no guarantees, yet we did it anyway.

It’s a LOT easier writing for people, when they have earned your respect.

2.  I value you and what you have to say

Successful blogging is all about communication, rather than broadcasting.  It’s about the 2-way or multi-way flow of information between people.  Whilst I give a lot of valuable information away here, I receive a lot too.

Your comments, emails, tweets and Facebook messages etc, are of huge value to me.  Through them, I have met people I would never have known.  I have discovered answers and insights, that have been invaluable.  I have found fantastic websites, which I had never heard of before.  I have discovered products and services, which have been of enormous value to me and my business.

Most importantly, I have made a lot of friends all over the world.  If you are a reader of the blog and have not got in touch with me, please do so.  I reply to every email and phone call.  You can email me at jim (at) jimsmarketingblog.com

3. Blogging is commercially rewarding

Business blogging, when handled correctly, can be extremely rewarding for your business.  For instance, by focusing on providing you with as much useful, valuable information as I can, I attract valuable business inquiries all the time.

A perfect example of this happened yesterday.  Yesterday’s post was all about content marketing and at the very end of the post, I mentioned that I am launching a new, content marketing program.  That post alone, was enough for a reader to call me and get the very first place on the new program!  She loved what she saw, like the idea of attracting clients rather than chasing them, and called to book her place.  Ironically, her inquiry and subsequent decision to work with me for a year, is a perfect example of the power of content marketing!  I will be giving details on the new content marketing program in a few days.  If you can’t wait, get in touch!

If you find the blog useful, rest assured that I will continue to work as hard as I can, to be of as much service as I can, to you and your business!

How to massively improve your online marketing results, the easy way!

By Jim Connolly | April 19, 2011

Do you prefer to attract client inquiries and leads, rather than having to sell your services?

If you do, then content marketing is exactly what you and your business need.  Content marketing is where you use blogs (like this one) or newsletters, podcasts or webinars etc, as a way to deliver valuable information, which gains the attention of your prospective clients.  Then, over a period of time, you get to position yourself as an expert in your field, to thousands of prospective clients.

Content marketing is extremely effective, it costs very little and the results can be amazing, life changing even!  Moreover, the results get better and better over time, as your audience and influence increases.

In today’s post, I am going to share one of the secrets behind the world’s most successful content marketing.  To begin, I am going to answer the 2 most common content marketing questions, which people ask me.  Here they are:

  1. How much free information should I give away?
  2. What quality of information is “just too good” for me to blog about or include for free in my newsletter, webinar or podcast?

Here are the short answers to those questions:

  1. You should give away as much free information as you can.
  2. You should give away as much value as you can.

Allow me to explain!

Content marketing and me

Back in 1995, my fellow marketing professionals said I was crazy for giving away so much marketing information for free.  This was before the Internet went mainstream, so I delivered my free content marketing via; radio shows, magazine articles, public speaking and networking groups.  I then established an enormously successful marketing newsletter, before moving on to blogging.

In short: I gave and gave and gave.  Then, I gave some more.

The more I gave away, the more I was accused of committing commercial suicide.

The more I gave away, the more high quality business I generated!

Here’s one thing that has not changed, over my 16 years in content marketing:  Most people only give snippets of information away for free, or information which they believe is not good enough to charge for.  Their belief is that by giving “the good stuff” away for free, it will reduce their income.  This is the exact opposite of what actually happens!

Here’s why.

By putting a diluted version of their content out there for free, they showcase themselves as being less effective than they really are.  The marketplace positions them in their mind as an average provider, because the free information they give away is average.  They are under-marketing themselves and their abilities.  For content marketing to work, your free material needs to be good enough to inspire people to subscribe to you, get in touch with you and link to you.  It also needs to be compelling enough to motivate people to share your blog, newsletter or whatever, with their social network. People will only do that when the information they receive is valuable enough.

I have never held back information from this blog, in case it’s too valuable to give away for free.  You know what though?  I do the opposite all the time.  I often refuse to publish posts here, because they are just not good enough for you.  That’s a fundamental of successful content marketing.  Give away as much high quality information as you can, and attract the attention, interest and respect of your marketplace.  Show them what you know.

Content marketing and your business

If you like the idea of attracting clients (rather than pursuing them) and want to know more about content marketing, I have some GREAT news for you!  I shall be making a very special announcement shortly, regarding an exciting, new content marketing program.  This is NOT the typical; ebook, premium blog content and a few webinars – It’s the chance for you and I to work together, 1-to-1, on the development of the perfect content marketing strategy for you and your business. 

If you want to know more, keep an extra close eye on the blog over the coming days!

This mindset will crush your business

By Jim Connolly | April 18, 2011

Are we blocking our own success, without even knowing it?

I speak with business owners all the time, who work long hours; yet because their mindset is wrong, they make little meaningful progress.  To explain what I mean, I want you to consider the following question.  It’s a question that we all ask ourselves, usually unconsciously.  Your answer will show what your current mindset is and whether it’s likely to work for you or against you.  Here’s the question:

Do you do whatever is required, to make your business as successful as it can possibly be OR do you do less than you’re capable of and just see what happens?

The mindset that crushes businesses (and dreams)

Many business owners, most of them in fact, do far less than they are truly capable of.  They never invest their full potential into their business.

Their mindset, is that they should hold back.  They often work long hours, but they work those hours doing the stuff they are comfortable with.  Only during times of crisis, are they prepared to crank it up a gear or two.  Then, once the crisis is averted, they go back onto autopilot.  In essence, these business owners only work with the correct mindset, when they have a problem.

The mindset of success

A far smaller group of business owners, decide to do everything they can in order to succeed.  They are curious to learn just what they are capable of.

Their mindset, if that doing just enough is never enough.  They constantly wonder; how far can I take this? Their passion and energy is contagious.  It not only powers them forward, it encourages others to join them and invest in their ideas.  This mindset is shared by every high achieving person I have ever met.

The fear of failure guarantees failure

It’s often said that the fear of failure is what stops people from really giving their all.  I have never understood the logic, but it suggests that by not putting everything we can into our business, we can console ourselves by saying; “well, I wasn’t REALLY trying!”, if that business then fails.

Here’s the problem with that approach:  The odds on us just coasting along, then suddenly being interrupted by success, are zero.  We must invest everything into our businesses, even the things we find challenging, if we want our business to deliver the rewards and lifestyle, which we want for our families and ourselves.  No one coasts their way to success.

Today, choose to give your business everything you can.

Then tomorrow, do the same.

If you are going to get stuck in a rut, make it this rut!

Hope!

By Jim Connolly | April 17, 2011

Here’s a message of genuine, authentic, real-world hope:

Everything you have right now, from the tangible to the intangible, is there because of who you are.  To change your circumstances, you need to change yourself.

The lesson here is magical.  It offers us real hope.  No matter how bad things are, this fundamental truth assures us that by becoming more than we are, we can have more than we have.  But the process always starts with us.

I know from the emails I receive, that many of you are going through extremely tough times right now.  Please, never, ever give up.

If you are going without in any area of your life right now, the answer is to look within.

Grow your business with this beautifully simple idea!

By Jim Connolly | April 16, 2011

Everything you do or neglect to do, has an impact on your business.

The impact is always positive or negative.  Nothing in business is neutral.  A casual remark, the decision not to attend a meeting, a quick email or social media update  – All of these will impact your business, to a lesser or greater extent.  Everything counts.

Here’s what my mentor, Jim Rohn, used to say:

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

The simple things you do every day are far more likely to influence your eventual outcome, than the less frequent major decisions you apply so much thought to.  Get the basics right and repeat them every day.

So simple.

So magical.

So easy to do.

So easy to ignore.

Twitter: How I attracted more traffic and more followers by doing less

By Jim Connolly | April 15, 2011

As a marketing guy, I am always testing ways to make things more effective.  What follows is my experience, after a simple 5 day Twitter experiment, which was just a bit of fun, yet led to some interesting results and totally changed the way I use Twitter!

Here’s what I did and what the results were:

I elected not to tweet any links to this blog and then see what impact it had on my traffic.

Here is what happened.  By the way, you can join me on Twitter here.

Traffic from Twitter

Before I started, I expected to see a slight drop in traffic from Twitter.  Surely, if I am not Tweeting links here, fewer people would know about my posts – right?

Wrong!

Instead, traffic from Twitter increased by close to 300% over those 5 days.  This is reflected in the diagram later in the post.  Now, on the first few days, I sent a tweet out, which alerted people that I was not tweeting links to new posts here.  Obviously, those tweets had no links in them and didn’t generate additional traffic, as I monitored real-time traffic from Twitter and there was no measurable increase.  The reason was simply to let people know that nothing was wrong .

So, why the increase in traffic?

It seems this blogs readers and my Twitter “followers” picked up the slack!  Knowing I wasn’t tweeting links to my posts here, they did it for me.  Now, I am not sure how this would pan out if I carried the experiment out over 6 months, but certainly over the 5 days, my online network were a lot more active in promoting my posts.  I also saw lots of new faces showing up in my Twitter stream; people sharing my posts, who I had never heard of or seen previously.

Tuesday saw the highest traffic day to this blog in its history.  This was the result of several factors, ranging from some well connected Facebook and Twitter users sharing that days post, (which ironically was how to get more traffic using Twitter) and that post being featured on a number of popular sites, including webpronews. I have looked to see if these events could be traced to the experiment and it’s impossible to say yes or no with 100% certainty.

I am not a big believer in coincidences and I believe it’s entirely possible that with so many new people sharing my posts this week, it brought my blog to the attention of those publishers, Twitter users and Facebook users.

Here’s what happened to traffic as a result, compared to the past 6 months:

Blog subscriber numbers

One of the challenges with using Twitter to inform people of your latest posts, is that you eliminate the need for your followers, to subscribe to your blog.  In essence, you are training them not to subscribe to your primary social hub! If they decide to stop using Twitter or you decide to drop it for the next big thing, you can lose a lot of readers, very quickly.

For me, this alone is a good reason NOT to train people to use Twitter as the way to subscribe to your blog.

Some caveats

This was just a fun experiment, carried out over a very short time-scale; rather than the kind of marketing research I would carry out to get the heavy detail required for a fully-fledged project.  You should NOT use these conclusions as the basis of a change in your own Twitter use!

It is also extremely important to mention that the results would have looked VERY different, if I did not already have lots of great people, who regularly share this blog with their followers.  In addition, Twitter accounts for a tiny amount of my daily visitors here, behind; Google, RSS, Facebook, back links and Stumbleupon.  Once my largest source of traffic, Twitter has grown slower than all my other marketing channels.  In other words, I wasn’t risking much.

As I hope I have made very clear, this brief experiment was intended to see what the short-term results would be, by not using Twitter to share my new posts each day.  I had no idea that the results over such a short period, would be so interesting; which is why I intend to change my Twitter use over the longer term now, as I explain in a moment.

I find it interesting that the past 5 days coincided with my best traffic day ever and a sharp increase in follower numbers, see below.  Note, the numbers were increasing fastest from the 13th, not the 12th, which was the heavy traffic day.

Conclusions

For now, I have decided to only share posts on Twitter, which are related to Twitter (like this one) or posts that I believe have particular relevance to the people I connect with there.  Previously, I shared every post on Twitter twice: Once in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening.

I’m really curious how the numbers will look, over a longer period.  Any marketing professional worth their salt will tell you that you need good data to reach accurate conclusions.  On something like this, you need to be working with a larger set of data.  I will, of course, share my findings with you.

So, for the foreseeable future, I will be using my Twitter time primarily to share YOUR great posts and connect more with you.

IMPORTANT:  If you usually catch up with my latest posts via Twitter and don’t want to miss anything, subscribe to the blog or get new posts delivered direct to your inbox, using the “Free Updates” box at the top right of this page.

Turn your frustrations into pure gold with this really simple step

By Jim Connolly | April 14, 2011

How hard do you look for the gold, in the challenges that face your business?

Most people experience a problem and then dig around until they get it resolved.

Smart people experience a problem and then get the help they need to quickly solve it.  This is faster and the solution is usually far better too.

Super-smart people experience a problem and then get the help they need to quickly solve it.  They then look for the gold. It’s this final step, looking for the gold, which makes all the difference to their results!

Commercial gold dust

There are very few, if any, business problems, which do not come with some kind of valuable lesson.  When we look for the lesson and then learn from it, it’s like finding gold.  These lessons are of enormous value and combine to help us develop a golden reserve of essential knowledge.  This knowledge can then be invested into helping us make better and better decisions, which is the starting point of our commercial progress.

Compare that approach to those whose businesses reach a plateau, because they keep repeating the same errors.  They make no real progress, because they fail to learn.  They don’t look for the golden lessons, they prefer to blame their luck and other people, for their lack of success.  For example, they blame lousy customers for being a pain in the ass to work with, rather than looking at why their marketing attracted that lousy customer and why they were unable to see that the person was unsuitable.  It’s never their fault, so they learn nothing and repeat the same frustrating errors.

All the time we are learning, we have the opportunity to improve; to be more than we are today.  That’s where the gold is!Photo: Brian Giesen

Supercharge your marketing with this unsexy concept

By Jim Connolly | April 13, 2011

Whenever I announce some kind of major breakthrough result, I always get people asking me:

“What’s the secret Jim?”

Sometimes they ask this on Twitter; expecting me to be able to condense an extremely powerful marketing strategy, into 140 characters! (Yes I am serious)

When I answer these questions, I explain that the breakthrough came as a result of smart marketing and hard work.  The response then is usually:

“But was there one key thing you did that did the trick?”

At that point, my hand slaps my forehead as I witness yet another person, who is still wasting their time, waiting for magic fixes and silver bullets to turn their results around!  They are waiting for the sexy answer, not the right answer.

You increase your sales figures, boost your profits and achieve the quality of life you want, by successfully marketing a great product or service.  You can waste a lot of money and years of your life, believing in the concept that some miracle business generation scheme or magical trick will transform your sales results.  You have to be smarter than that.

If you are genuinely serious about making your business work, you need to know what to do and how to do it correctly.  In other words, you need professional help.  You can contact me, you can call someone else, but don’t just carry on wasting time.  The clock is ticking.  There are only so many days someone can waste, before it’s too late to turn things around.

You achieve the magic, by NOT using tricks

The trick is that there are no tricks.  I don’t have any silver bullets, but with great marketing and mentoring, my clients see real magic. That’s because in real life, the people who achieve stunning, bankable results don’t use tricks or quick fixes.

For example, one of my clients earned more last month, than in her best 6 months before she worked with me.  That’s truly magical.  Another client has seen his training business increase it’s income by 300% and his profits by closer to 450%, at a time when his competitors are going broke!  That’s truly magical.  No magic tricks, just the result of us working together, and me providing a clear plan, which I coach them through; giving them clarity, focus and progress.

The bottom line:  Avoid the schemes and the silver bullet merchants and do the right things, correctly.  That’s what we do and it works extremely well!

Get more traffic from Twitter with these 6 great headline tips

By Jim Connolly | April 12, 2011

So, you have all those followers on Twitter and yet when you tweet a link to your latest blog post…..nothing much happens!

Why did so few of those hundreds (or thousands) of your followers click your link; after all, it’s a great post?

Your headline let you down!

People will ONLY click your links and read your content, if the headline or title is compelling enough.  If just a small percentage of your followers are clicking on your links, it’s because the headline isn’t selling that link to your followers.  It’s not compelling them enough, to make them want to click through to your site and find out more.  Unless they do that, they will never know how great your posts are, which is why headlines are easily the most important element of your content.

Your headlines or titles are what open the door to your content.  To succeed, your content has to be effective too, but nothing happens until people actually READ what you have written and your headline is what either encourages them to read the first line of your material – Or not.  Get the headline wrong and you make it very hard for your content to get noticed.

6 headline secrets behind yesterday’s post

To show you what I mean, I will use the example of yesterday’s post, which was extremely successful.  It’s title was: Build a great client list with this 1 simple idea.  Here are six of the secrets behind it.

The headline didn’t try and do everything.  There was enough information in that headline to explain what the post was about and get the reader curious.  To discover what the “1 simple idea” is, the reader has to click through.  The more curious you can make someone, the more likely they are to take action; in this case click a link.

The headline was relevant to my readers. It was a marketing related headline and my friends on social networks connect with me because they are interested in marketing.

The headline made a compelling promise.  Every headline makes a promise to the reader.  The promise of that headline, is that if they click that link, I will give them some valuable information, which will help them with a huge problem; attracting better clients.  The post content delivers on the promise, which is essential if you want people to come back!  A great headline, which points to a post that fails to deliver on the headline’s promise, will cause people to feel cheated and stop them trusting your headlines and links in future.

The headline let people know it was easy. Part of the headline’s promise, is that they will learn this valuable information, quickly and easily.  It’s just 1 simple idea.  This requires little time investment from the reader, with the potential to learn some valuable business information.

The headline didn’t keyword stuff. Some people seem to believe that the only way to attract search engine traffic, is to stuff their headlines with keywords.  This is flawed for 2 reasons.

  1. You can SEO your posts, by making the version of the title which people see, different from the version which search engines see.  If you use WordPress, there are plugins that allow you to do this.  If, like me, you use the Headway WordPress Theme, (affiliate link) you don’t need to mess around with plugins, it’s there out of the box (along with a ton of other great SEO features!)
  2. Your content, including titles, should be written for people, NOT search engines.  If you try and write posts that appeal to search engines rather than people, even if someone does find your site on Google or Bing etc, it will read poorly and therefore fail to convert them into subscribers, clients or customers.

The headline wasn’t clever. Some people write clever headlines, which lack any compelling reason for a busy person to click their link.  They are often abstract or cryptic, rather than interest grabbing and inspiring.

Headlines are important so give them the time they deserve

There are very few things in life, which come with a guarantee, however, I can guarantee that if you make your blog post titles more compelling, you will definitely get more traffic from social networks and feedreaders.

Invest as much time as is required, to get your headlines as attractive as possible and just watch the increase in your blogging results.

Build a great client list with this 1 simple idea!

By Jim Connolly | April 11, 2011

Some people just don’t get it.

You know the people I mean, right?

  • They know there’s a heatwave coming days in advance, yet they wait until it arrives before they shop for a fan.  They then find empty shelves, as they go from shop to shop in the blazing sun.
  • They know the best theatre seats always sell first, yet they book their theatre tickets late and end up with the worst seats.
  • They know garden centres are packed solid on a spring weekend, but they refuse to visit them midweek.  End result, they waste an hour or more doing what they could have done in 10 minutes after work, midweek.  They also miss the healthiest plants and the best deals, as these are always sold first.

When my mentor, Jim Rohn, started out, he told himself;

I will get everyone in this room to understand my message, even if it kills me.

He then confessed;

I had to stop.  I almost died!

No matter what line of business you are in, you have to learn to live with the fact that a subset of people will never “get it.”  In my experience, you are better off leaving those guys to your competitors.  I know what you are thinking; it’s OK for Connolly saying that, but I can’t afford to be so choosy!

Wrong! You can’t afford to waste your time and resources, trying to sell to people who are not interested.  It’s the lowest leverage form of marketing and the most expensive way to acquire clients.  It’s the total opposite of targeted marketing, where we deliberately look for the right profile of client.

Target your marketing toward people who have the need, resources and intelligence to work with you.  If you are reading this, I know you are an intelligent business owner, who understands the value of marketing – otherwise you wouldn’t be here!  That’s because my marketing is targeted, so that I only get inquiries from people like you – The kind of people I love to work with and who “get it!”  If you want to know how I target my marketing so effectively, read this as I explain everything!

To get the best results, your marketing needs to focus your resources on the right section of the marketplace, based on your ideal client profile.  Small business owners just don’t have the time to waste, chasing the wrong people.

My New Twitter Project

By Jim Connolly | April 10, 2011

As part of a social media marketing experiment, I will not be sharing posts from Jims Marketing Blog via Twitter for the next 5 days.  If you want to keep up with the content here on the blog, and you currently use Twitter to do so, please use the Free Updates box on the right or subscribe to my RSS feed, using the link in the header.

twitterI will still be using Twitter just as regularly, (I love Twitter) but with Twitter click through’s as low as they are (just 2% of my traffic comes from Twitter and Twitter apps combined) I’m going to monitor what difference it makes by not tweeting this blog’s posts.  I am hoping the difference will be marginal, as I am starting to get really bored watching people ReTweeting their own posts and I am sure others feel exactly the same.

It’s only this blog’s content that I will not be sharing.  I’ve always much preferred using twitter to listen and learn from others.  Obviously, if you find something here which you want to share with your friends on Twitter, please do so.

I will let you know what my results are as soon as I have enough information; which I believe will be around 5 days time.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Why people fall for blindingly obvious “get rich quick” scams

By Jim Connolly | April 9, 2011

One of the most common questions I see people asking online, is why do some people fall for those scam ebooks, which promise to make them rich?  They are clearly bullshit, so how come people buy them?

There are 2 reasons these books sell, even though they are obviously bogus.

1. They are not aimed at you

Those ebooks are designed to convince people, who are a lot less savvy than you.  People like you don’t buy those books, because you can see through the BS.  However, like all successfully marketed products, those get rich quick books have their marketing designed to appeal to a niche, target market.  Their target market is people who are desperate and ill-informed.  Thus, their marketing message is designed for people like them, not people like you, which is why you can see right through it.

2. They offer hope

Those books offer hope, albeit false hope, to people who are often in hopeless situations.  When people have debts, with no sign of money on the horizon and a family to look after, they will often act irrationally.  In an effort to find a way out, a $30 ebook promising to make them rich or give them a few grand a month, is suddenly an option that they will consider.

Once they are in that frame of mind, there’s a very good chance they will buy the book.  They see the fake testimonials and fake bank statements and actually want to believe them.  At that point, they are looking for reasons to proceed, so that’s what they see.  They need hope and the ebook offers it to them.

It’s easy to be harsh on people who waste their money on these scams, but sadly there are a lot of people out there right now looking for a way out of debt and financial hardship.  Being broke is bad enough, but the feeling of being broke and knowing you just wasted another $30 on a scam must feel awful.

The best we can do, is share some free education (like this post) and hope it helps people think a little harder, before they part with their money for crap, at a point when they can least afford to.

Quick blog update regarding my HTC post

By Jim Connolly | April 8, 2011

I wrote a post on Wednesday about the poor customer service experience I had with phone manufacturer, HTC.  In the post, I promised that I would update you and let you know if HTC responded or not.

Despite that post making it to the first page of Google, for anyone in the UK searching for HTC customer service, and me pinging / tracking back to their website from the post, no one from HTC has been in touch.

As the core issue I had with them was directly related to the way they communicated with me online, it’s not that surprising that they either don’t monitor mentions of their brand online, or that they simply chose not to communicate.

Thanks to everyone who responded to me, both on that post and via social media, about the wider topic of the value of good customer service.  It’s great that something positive has come from such a disappointing experience.

Lessons from a lavish wedding and a bad marriage

By Jim Connolly | April 8, 2011

A guy called me once and asked:

“Jim, we want to market our new service with a huge launch event.  Can you help us?”

I answered:

“I think what you want is to successfully market your new service?  I can certainly help with that, but to simply build a huge launch event would be a waste of your money and my time.”

Like many business owners, he was looking for the right answer to the wrong question.  He was focused on making the launch as big and attention grabbing as possible, rather than looking at how his new service could be marketed as successfully as possible.  He had sidelined an amazing 60% of his annual marketing budget, for the 24 hour launch period.  That’s not a wise move!

Why?

Because the success of his business will not be determined by how much money he spends on the launch day.  Whilst the coverage he could buy with that money might make him feel better, as Seth Godin explained, it’s not necessary.  Blowing all that money on day one is extremely unlikely to have any lasting impact on his business whatsoever; other than robbing it of essential funds during it’s toughest year.

When I explain this process to people, I often compare it to a lavish wedding!

A good lesson from a bad marriage

Think about it: Many failed marriages start off with an enormous, extravagant wedding day.  However, it’s not the big day, which determines the success of the marriage or now.  A marriage succeeds or fails based on what happens AFTER the confetti has been swept up and everyone has gone home.  Business is just the same.  It’s what happens on a day to day basis that will determine its future.

Certainly, it’s a good idea to celebrate the launch of a new project and ask people you respect if they want to join in and share the news.  But to blow so much money on that one day, makes little sense.

You can count on these to help you succeed

By Jim Connolly | April 8, 2011

If you want to make real progress with your business, you need to know where you are right now in all the key areas.  This means studying the numbers.  The challenge here, is that whilst many of us know what the numbers behind our business are, we don’t always know what they represent in real terms.

We need to add context to the numbers if we want to benefit from what they are telling us.

2 is a small number, sometimes!

I remember hearing a friend tell me that there were only 2 things that she didn’t like about her job.  When you think about it, that sounds pretty impressive.  After all, there are hundreds of elements to a job, right?

She then told me what those 2 things were and it painted a very different picture.  The 2 things she didn’t like were:

  1. The people she worked with
  2. The company’s products

Numbers need context

Small business owners often obsess about their numbers, without focusing on the context and what the numbers actually mean to them.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  I’ve often heard people brag about the Google Page Rank of their company website or blog, without looking to see what that Page Rank number actually means for their business, in real terms.  For instance, a high Page Rank, on a site with a poorly targeted readership, who seldom make business inquiries, is nothing to brag about.  It’s actually a problem in urgent need of fixing.

Similarly, a business owner with a large social network may have the numbers to impress people, yet get little real value from their thousands of followers and friends.  If they focus on the numbers, rather than the people behind those numbers, they miss everything that matters.

When context is applied, a person with a small, well connected social network may well be getting massively better results, than the “social media rock star” with thousands of people, who are distant and seldom connect with them.

The numbers are a vital part of business.  In fact, without knowing all the important numbers, you can not succeed.  This is why I believe we all need to set some time aside to learn what the message is, behind all the key numbers in our business, from the most obvious numbers; profits, turnover, cash flow etc, to the less obvious.

Win more clients with this 1 great idea

By Jim Connolly | April 7, 2011

The next time someone asks you for a quote, remember to give them the full answer.  This means covering the following 2 areas:

  1. Tell them what your fee or price is.
  2. THEN tell them the value you bring.

Here’s why this matters

  • If you simply give them the first answer, they will see the cost of hiring you or buying from you.
  • If you give them the first and second answer, you are no longer a cost, but an investment.

For example, an accountant may decide to quote her fee to a prospective client, at which point the client looks at the fee and compares it to the other fees they have had quoted.  Alternatively, that accountant can quote her fee, and demonstrate how she saved a client 20k in 12 months.  Now, the accountant is showing the value of investing in her services specifically.  You’d be crazy not to hire her!

In short:  Never quote a fee, with a list of generic benefits.   Always show your prospective clients what they get in return for working with YOU.  This way, you become an investment and make it a lot easier for people to see your amazing value.

If you want more free help in getting your prices or fees right, read this post!

What everyone ought to know about special offers!

By Jim Connolly | April 7, 2011

Do you provide special offers to people, as a way to encourage them to make a purchase?  If you do, here are some things you really need to know in order to get the best results possible and avoid some common mistakes!

Special offers: Training the marketplace to wait

The first challenge with using special offers, is that if you get it wrong (and most small businesses I see do), you will be training the marketplace to wait, so they never pay the full retail on anything you offer.  Here is an example, from a former client of mine.

This guy runs a seminar business and he always used special offers as part of his seminar marketing strategy.  He used a newsletter for the marketing of his events and would start with an early-bird discount to encourage people to book early.  These super-eager people who booked early, would have booked at the regular price anyway, they didn’t need incentives, as I later proved.  Then, as the date of the seminar got closer, he always offered an x% “last minute” discount on the remaining places.

All he was actually doing, was training his best prospective clients to wait for his offers, before they booked.

Hardly anyone paid the actual price to attend one of his seminars, yet that fee was what all his planning was based on.  As a direct result, he was losing an incredible, unsustainable, 40% of the profits on every event he held!  By reviewing his marketing and goals, we were able to increase his profitability by over 260%, whilst offering some amazing deals – NONE of which required him lowering his seminar fees.  Booking numbers and fees increased.

Special offers: The big brand approach

When big companies use special offers, we see something very different from the way most small business owners use them.

Big brands mix the timings of their offers, so they are only available when they know from extensive research, that business slows down during a certain period.  They also develop their special offers, based on sound advice from their financial directors, accountants and marketing directors; so that a healthy profit is always part of the sale price.  They never lose.  Ever.

The discounts are usually only available for genuinely limited periods and often, only when the customer spends a certain fee (what we call a trigger fee) or buys in greater volume than usual.  These are carefully planned, strategic offers.

Special offers: The all year round “sale now on”

We have all seen companies, who always seem to have some kind of sale on.

This marketing strategy is actually quite different from the use of special offers.  The use of back-to-back “sale now on” messages, is typically used as a way to position a brand as a budget / value provider; because we learn to associate their brand with there being a “sale now on.”

This approach is widely used in the business to consumer market and is especially prevalent in the household goods, fast food and automotive industries.

Special offers: Make your offers work

Special offers should be used to increase your revenues and profits; not lower them.

Offering special offers is a skilled area of marketing and can sink a business, when used incorrectly.  This is because they can not only lower the value of each transaction, it can also reduce the number of transactions too; as people keep on holding out for your next deal and then find a better one elsewhere.  The net result can be fewer sales at lower profitability.

Here are some tips to help you get it right:

  • Genuinely special.  They need to have real world value.  Look to add something extra, rather than lower a price.  Increase the value by adding, not subtracting.
  • Scarce.  They are most effective when there is an element of scarcity.  Offers that are only available for a limited time or where there is a limited number, work best.
  • Targeted.  They need to be used to gain you sales you would not have made at your usual price.
  • Timed.  They need to be timed in such a way, that people are not expecting to see them on a set date.  Don’t train your marketplace to wait for the next offer.  This hurts cash flow, lowers profits and lowers sales volume.  That’s a lose, lose, lose!

I hope you found those ideas useful.  Special offers are a superb marketing tool, which can produce amazing results when used correctly.  Before you do your next; reader-only deal, early-bird discount, 2 for 1 offer or 20% off – Stop and think about what you want to achieve.

HTC customer service: My experience and maybe a lesson too?

By Jim Connolly | April 6, 2011

As a very happy user of the stunning HTC Desire Android phone, I was wondering what my first experience of HTC customer service would be like, after I required their help a few days ago.  Sadly, it was poor.  However, I do believe there’s a powerful marketing lesson here, which is what I want to share with you.

HTC customer service frustrations

I eventually found the answer I needed, after being given incorrect information by one of HTC’s customer service team, over a series of extremely frustrating messages that spanned 2 days.  I wasted hours of my time, needlessly.

However, anyone can have a bad day (or 2) and this could have been that I caught the particular customer service person at a bad time.  No, my real issue was with the over complicated process, which made a bad situation worse.

HTC customer service hurdles

For example, I had to dismantle the phone, to get a code, before they would allow me to submit a very simple, generic question.  They could have answered my question with just a model name.

Unbelievably, although they replied to my tech support questions via email, they did not allow me to reply to those emails via email!  Seriously!  Every time I needed to ask a question, it meant I had to leave the email program, visit a URL, enter a long series of numbers, enter my email address and then type my message out.

All that information was already on ALL the emails they sent me, so simply by replying, they would have had all the info they needed.

The impression I got, was that HTC didn’t want it to be easy for me to get in touch with them.  It felt that they were placing hurdles in front of me.  I may well be wrong and if I am, I welcome HTC to respond.  It could be that they are genuinely unaware what a total pain in the ass it is, to deal with their tech support in the current way.

Hopefully, if HTC monitor mentions of their brand, someone will see this and maybe mention it to someone who has the power to fix it.  Then, their customer service might match their amazing products.  Just to confirm, the phone itself is the best I have ever used. This may be why I was so disappointed at the horrible customer service experience I had, from start to finish.

If HTC contact me, I will of course let you know.

Here’s the thing: Until that poor customer service experience, I had been evangelically recommending their HTC Desire and Desire HD phones to everyone.

Today, I don’t!

I no longer recommend the brand, because I don’t want people to experience the same customer service frustrations that I encountered.

Word of mouth recommendations are incredibly powerful.  In the week I owned my HTC Desire, prior to this customer service incident, I helped them sell around a dozen HTC Desire phones, via my recommendations to friends and contacts.  Had I blogged about them, the way I did when Dell customer service exceeded my expectations, who knows how many of you would have considered buying an HTC phone when you next upgrade.

In fact, in 3 years this is only the 2nd time I have ever named a brand in a negative light!  As I showed with that Dell post, I always prefer to focus on the positive, yet the marketing message here is too important for me not to share the learning with you.

HTC customer service: The marketing lesson?

If you were ever in any doubt as to the strong connection between customer service and marketing, this example makes the point extremely well.  Just as your marketing promises need to be backed up with great products, they also need to be backed up with great customer service.  No matter how good our products or services are, we can turn passionate advocates away and send them packing to another provider or brand, if we let them down when it comes to the customer service experience.

My negative customer service experience, both with the person who was “looking after me” and their HTC tech support system itself, has seen me go from being a passionate advocate of great HTC hardware, to a frustrated user of HTC customer service.  To turn someone away like that makes no sense at all.

UPDATE: 28th December 2011

It’s now 8 months since I wrote this post and have still not had any reply from HTC.

It’s not my intention to turn this post into a place where people can slam HTC or their products. It was always intended simply to showcase an example of an amazing product let down by pretty poor online customer service procedures and offer suggestions on how it could be fixed. My issue was exclusively around the inability to reply to tech support emails, and have to go through a lot of hassle via a website, in order to reply.

As a result, I am closing comments on this and suggest future complaints are directed to HTC.

As HTC have taken no notice of this post whatsoever, it’s unlikely your problems will get an answer from them here.

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • …
  • 115
  • Next Page »

FREE marketing tips & advice

Get my best marketing tips, advice and ideas delivered direct to your inbox. Just add your email below.
I respect your privacy.

Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help small business owners to increase sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. Read more here.

Featured by

marketing advice, marketing help

Site sponsor

packaging consultancy

Categories

  • Blogging (406)
  • Business development (479)
  • Copywriting (303)
  • Email marketing & mail shots (186)
  • General marketing (1,663)
  • Professional development (534)
  • Social media marketing (355)

Hosting provider

20i hosting

Search

Recent posts

  • The feels? July 11, 2025
  • Give it away July 8, 2025
  • The false assumptions that destroy your results June 30, 2025
  • Here’s how the best paid service providers earn the highest fees June 25, 2025
  • Hard work isn’t enough (here’s what is) June 24, 2025
  • Make your marketing totally unmissable. Here’s how! June 19, 2025
  • Discounts: The full cost to your business June 17, 2025
  • Rapid, massive business growth: With MBRs June 9, 2025
  • For next-level success, swap your fears. Here’s how! June 6, 2025
  • It works better than advertising June 2, 2025
  • It’s the most valuable question in sales! May 27, 2025
  • Grab. Focus. Urgency: How to vastly increase your sales May 20, 2025
  • Attract. Don’t sell May 14, 2025
  • Marketing gold: The follow-up May 10, 2025
  • How to make more sales, in uncertain times May 8, 2025
  • 17 Tips to help you grow a stronger business May 6, 2025
  • How to increase your prices May 2, 2025
  • Your economy April 27, 2025
  • From rags to riches? April 26, 2025
  • Tiny tweaks. Huge wins April 21, 2025
  • Home
  • About
  • Hire me

Copyright © 2025 Jim Connolly