Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business
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If you ever find yourself struggling with a business challenge and want to get it resolved, here’s one of the fastest and most effective ways to do it. I use this daily and have taught it to thousands of people.
It’s about making a list… but not just any old list. I’m specifically referring to what I call an every list.
If you’ve never used an every list before, here’s a quick look at what they are and how they work.
In this example, let’s imagine you want to improve your email marketing open rates. You’d start with a list called something like:
Every way to increase my email open rates.
Then, you would begin writing every possible way to increase your open rates.
When you start, you find the first things on your list come easy.
Then it gets trickier, because you’ve listed the most obvious things. However, you still find some more.
Now things get really tough. You’ve already listed the obvious and the less obvious ways to increase open rates. Plus, you now have a number of options to look at, so it can be tempting to start working on those.
It causes you to dig deeper. Because you know there must be more possibilities. This additional commitment to keep going, even though it can be extremely frustrating, pushes you to the edges. And it’s at the edges where we find the innovative, creative answers.
So, you keep going. And find one more possibility.
The example used here is based on a marketing professional I’ve mentored, and her experience using the every list technique with one of her clients. In this case, the 2 things that created 75% of her client’s improvement was cleaning the email list… and the very last possibility; examining historic open rates and looking for clues.
Had they stopped after the first 8 or 10 items on their list, they’d have missed the answers they needed. And they wouldn’t have massively increased their open rates.
When we’re faced with a pressing challenge, we need to invest the time and energy required to solve it. And the every list helps us do just that.
Einstein famously said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Well, he was “so smart”. He was a genius. Yet his core point is solid. If a man like Einstein is willing to dedicate more time and dig deeper, when solving problems, then surely we should too.
Use an every list and keep looking for ideas even when (especially when), you think you’ve exhausted the possibilities. Because you almost certainly haven’t.
In no particular order.
Stay safe.
Things are moving fast. We’re already a few days into April 2021, the so-called bounce back year.
If you’re one of those business owners who has some ideas you’re waiting to deploy or a project you’re almost ready to launch, today’s post is especially for you. It’s based on an email I received from a reader and contains a very valuable lesson.
The reader said that they were almost ready to start a new business. That everything is in place and they’re now waiting for the right time.
Here’s an excerpt from the email: “[…] I’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on a new business since 2014 but things have been hectic to say the least. I’m hoping things settle down now so I can get started. I’m a perfectionist so things need to be just right.“
Now 7 years later, that new business is still just an idea.
The problem with waiting for the perfect moment is that it never comes. Perfection is elusive and fleeting. That’s because business, and life in general, is a series of challenges. Challenges that we need to overcome. As these challenges are resolved, we learn from them and are better equipped to resolve the next one. And even if you were to find a magical moment where everything was just perfect, one unexpected phone call or some unexpected news and everything changes.
Whether people are aware of it or not, the decision to wait for the perfect time is a stalling tactic. An excuse. Albeit a super-effective excuse. Super-effective? Yes, it gives us permission to do nothing, indefinitely, because the perfect time never comes.
Here’s what we know: The most successful people in business are those who take action. Not the talkers, not the tellers, but the doers. That’s great news. Why? Because whilst many things in business are out of your control, taking action isn’t one of them.
So.
And stick to it.
One of the cornerstones of successful marketing, is to retain as many great clients (or customers) as possible. Otherwise, growing your client base is like trying to fill a bucket that has a hole in it.
When I started out in business, I identified 2 things that guaranteed a new client project would start off, and progress, in the best possible way. I’ve used them with every client since. These 2 components create a super strong foundation for outstanding client retention and marketing results.
When I share this marketing idea with clients, I begin by introducing them to the 2 friends I bring with me to every project. Their names are; availability and willingness.
It’s essential to have enough time available to absolutely delight your clients or customers.
Many business owners work on too many projects simultaneously. They overload themselves. This approach fails the client. It fails the business owner too. In fact, it fails all round. When a service provider is unable to respond to the needs of their clients in a timely way, the client is left waiting. When a service provider has too little time to provide the level of service required, the quality of the service plummets. The reputation of the service provider plummets, too. This leads to low levels of client retention. And very few, if any, referrals.
The most successful business owners know how to avoid this from happening. Here’s what they do.
They charge a fair fee / price, which allows them the time needed, to provide the availability and quality of service required, to delight the client. They then develop outstanding client relationships. They enjoy exceptionally high client retention and are inundated with great referrals.
That approach sounds obvious. But just look at how few service providers get it right!
Being available is absolutely essential. But it isn’t enough.
We need to inform people of our willingness. And then demonstrate it. After all, a disinterested person who contributes nothing to a project is technically available. We call those people RHINO’s… Really Here In Name Only.
What’s the best way to establish our willingness?
I’ve found the most effective strategy is to let everyone on the project know you’re willing, from the start. Right at the beginning. So don’t keep it a secret. Tell them you’re eager, motivated and happy to help.
Here’s a very recent, real-world example of what this looks like.
I joined a new client’s Basecamp group this morning. The very first thing I did was introduce myself to the team and encouraged them to bring me their problems and ask me questions. There’s no ambiguity there. I made my genuine willingness clear, so they can feel 100% comfortable asking me anything.
As things progress, we demonstrate our ongoing willingness to delight our clients by being consistently proactive.
Many service providers are reactive. They wait until a client contacts them. Some even see it as a win, if they don’t hear from a client for a long time! That’s a short-sighted approach to building a successful business.
If we haven’t heard from a client in a while, we need to reach out. I do this by sharing useful information with them or simply ‘checking in’ to see how things are progressing.
In short, availability and willingness don’t get mentioned much. But they’re essential components for delighting your clients and developing a highly respected, successful business.
A number of readers noticed something ‘weird’ in a recent post and got in touch. They all had the exact same question too. Here’s the post. I thought I’d share it with you, along with my answer and a powerful marketing lesson.
Their question?
They wanted to know, how come a fellow marketing professional was attending, and asking me questions, at a marketing talk I gave to business owners. After all, she already knows how marketing works and we’re competitors. Right?
When I started my business in the mid 1990’s, I chose to adopt a zero-competition approach to my local marketing counterparts and embrace them instead. That’s to say, I intentionally decided to be as useful as possible to them.
More than this, I also chose to proactively seek out opportunities to help them flourish, to open doors for them, to share new ideas and strategies I’d developed with them, to connect them with useful people, etc.
I was only in my 20’s at the time. Many said I was young and naive.
I saw it differently.
My approach to marketing from day one, has been to help business owners achieve outstanding results, using creative marketing ideas… not marketing money. As a new business owner from a very poor background, I had no way to out-spend established marketing providers. If I wanted to get noticed, I needed to do things creatively. I needed to be meaningfully different. I needed to zig, when the ‘competition’ was zagging.
Amazingly quickly, too.
The local marketing community was soon talking about me and talking with me. They were very aware that I’d only been around for 5 minutes, yet had gained a lot of what we used to call ‘buzz’. They wanted to know what I was about. What I was doing. Why I was doing it. Soon, this new kid on the block was being invited to speak at events by local banks, accountancy firms and government agencies. The clients quickly followed. Around 6 months after starting my business, it had reached my year 3 income goal. Without a penny spent on advertising. Without a single competing provider.
Throughout my career, massively more marketing professionals have hired me and recommended me, than people from any other industry. They’re also, by far, the biggest share of my readership. They can see that I do things very differently. For instance, they notice that I don’t use SEO in my blog posts. They notice that I don’t have (or need) a Linkedin account. They notice I don’t do guest blogging, attend industry events or send sales emails to my subscribers.
Marketing professionals notice all the signals. They notice them, because they’re trained to. They can see me walking the walk. So they follow my work, they ask me questions and the super-smart ones hire me.
There are as many creative ways to market your business, as their are stars in the sky (well, maybe not quite that many, but I love the image it paints).
Throwing money at advertising is easy, but it’s expensive in a number of ways. Yes, there’s the cost of the advertisements. But there’s also the cost of suddenly losing your advertising sales leads, when agile competitors identify where you’re advertising, then wipe you out, with better ads or more ads. It’s very easy for them to do and you won’t know it’s coming, until it’s happened.
And as many of you will have already discovered, general marketing advice available via webinars and online marketing courses doesn’t work. It can’t work, because everyone’s already using those same general strategies and ideas. You’re simply camouflaging yourself amongst the millions of others.
That’s the exact opposite of gaining attention. It’s the opposite of what you need.
Why?
To start with, it’s very hard to copy. It sets you apart for all the right reasons. It gets people talking about your business, so you don’t have to. It stops you from needing to sell based on price. It gets you noticed. There are many other great reasons, but you get the gist.
And importantly, it’s also a spectacularly enjoyable way to build a fan-frickin-tastic business.
As a business owner, there are many compelling reasons to write regularly. For example, newsletters and blogs can be hugely valuable marketing tools. The same is true of contributing articles to services like Linkedin, Medium and Facebook.
But you already knew that.
Here are 4 extremely valuable benefits of writing regularly, which seldom get mentioned. Here they are in no particular order.
By the way, if you’re uncomfortable about publishing what you write, here’s a suggestion. Don’t publish anything! Just write for yourself. You’ll still enjoy the first 3 of those 4 benefits.
Photo: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
When it comes to being a pushy business owner, there are two ways to do it.
One of them works extremely well.
The other one doesn’t.
Allow me to explain.
Pester them with cold calls.
Interrupt them with selfish requests.
Spam them.
Try and close the sale the first time you speak to them.
Hassle them for referrals at networking events.
Hound them on social networks.
Expand your knowledge.
Refuse to settle for less than you truly want.
Do what’s right, even when it isn’t easy.
Do what your competitors avoid, because they think it’s too tricky.
Leave your comfort zone… regularly.
Focus on what you want rather than what you fear.
In short, when you push yourself, you move forward. When you push others, they push you back. All the way back.
Choose wisely my friend, and then push.
Today, I’m going to share a strategy with you that I use with some of my clients. It’s designed to help them solve problems and get the answers they need. It can do the same for you.
Although this strategy can be used on just about any business challenge, the example I’m using here is, how to get more referrals?.
Ready?
Lets go!
When we get a client referral we always know why it happened.
We earned it.
We exceeded our client’s expectations and provided exceptional customer service. We were consistent. We turned up. We cared. This combined to make us extremely referable.
When business owners consistently get too few referrals, they usually can’t figure out why. From their perspective, they’re working hard, caring for their customers and delivering solid customer service. Often, they will blame someone (their customers) or something (their industry). This then places the problem outside their control and allows it to persist.
The answer?
When I solve this type of challenge for business owners, I start by doing some ‘what if?‘ thinking with them. It looks a little like this.
Important: Using specific ‘what if?’ questions, based on my client’s exact situation, leads to massively more effective answers, than the very general examples above.
The idea behind ‘what if?’ thinking is to allow us to imagine a scenario, where there is room for improvement. And remember, it can be used for ANY area of our business, not just referrals.
‘What if?’ thinking lets us put distance between the challenge (too few referrals), and our belief that we’re already doing everything we can. It opens our thinking up to new possibilities. Possibilities that simply aren’t there if we blame external factors.
All of the important challenges we face, in life as well as in business, need to be solved from the same starting point: Accepting we have a problem. And if we want to find the best answers, we need to acknowledge that we’re not already doing everything perfectly.
This is truly great news.
It means there’s always room for our business to improve, because there’s always room for us to improve.
It means we can achieve more, because we can become more.
I was talking with an amazing group of entrepreneurs earlier. During our session, I mentioned that I hadn’t sold my services to anyone in well over 20 years. I went on to explain that thousands of people have hired me or bought from me. But I hadn’t sold anything to anyone.
That’s not just word play.
It’s a way of operating!
And if you want to attract more customers, no selling required, you need to know about it.
It starts with something that my first ever boss told me. It’s simply this.
“Everyone loves to buy things, but no one likes being sold to”.
And she was right.
Most small and medium-sized business owners do not ‘get’ this. Their marketing is little more than a series of needy pitches. They turn up when they want you to buy something. And it’s rightly ignored by the vast majority of prospective customers, because no one likes being sold to.
The smartest business owners focus on engagement. They look for opportunities to give. They seek out ways to be useful to their customers, prospective customers and the wider marketplace. They build relationships and earn trust. In doing so, they attract attention and create meaningful connections.
In short, those very different approaches look something like this.
Smart marketing is more effective, develops greater trust and builds better relationships. And it works in every industry. Because regardless of what line of business you’re in and what marketplace you serve, people love to buy things.
Bring your seed, my friend. Before you know it, your business will blossom in a wonderfully predictable way. No selling required.