Jim Connolly Marketing

A selfish request from a stranger

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email marketing, jim connolly

I receive important marketing emails every day. I know you do, too. Of course, none of these marketing messages are important to us.

They are not even of interest to us.

The vast majority are not even relevant to us.

They are only important to the people sending them.

I’m referring to the special offers that aren’t even remotely special. The poorly targeted offers, which are totally irrelevant to you and your needs. And the outright spam from strangers.

Whilst sending unwanted information via email requires a very small publishing investment, the cost to the sender’s reputation is far higher.

An unsustainable, short-sighted approach

There’s a limit to the number of times a business can pester their prospective customers, before it hurts the business commercially.

For example, if enough of their marketplace consider them pests, their reputation will take a damaging hit. That’s really bad for business. If enough people block their email addresses or report the emails as spam, the sender will find their emails start getting stuck in junk email filters, including legitimately important emails.

An effective and proven way forward

We know from the ongoing, outstanding results enjoyed by successful businesses, that there is a far better alternative.

It’s simply this: We should wait until we have something to say, which is worth listening to. Then share it with people who have given us permission to contact them. People who are interested. People who will have a potential requirement. The kind of people we had in mind, when we decided to offer the product or service in the first place.

Pestering people with unwanted email is cheap (in every sense of the word), easy and only takes a matter of minutes. However, an interesting message, sent to people who want to hear from us, is vastly more effective than a selfish request from a stranger.

How to be lucky in business. Plus 4 other nuggets

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marketing, business, luck, lucky

  1. If you hear yourself wishing for better luck, remind yourself that what you really need, is a better strategy.
  2. It’s getting harder and harder to sell average stuff, now that everyone has a social media megaphone.
    • The best providers get their message amplified in public.
    • The average providers get their message minified in public.
    • Below average providers get their message vilified in public.
  3. A business succeeds when there’s congruence between what the business owner wants… and what the business owner does. Failing to provide a business with what it needs, is like refusing to water your plants. Only a lot more expensive.
  4. Everything your business does is marketing. Yes, everything.
  5. Never complain about the economy or other outside factors. Adapt. Adjust. Put your success in your own hands.

Now go and make it a great day, my friend.

He speaks with great authority, on things he knows NOTHING about

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bad business advice

Image: Medienstuermer

Some people are excellent communicators. The way they deliver words is compelling and their ability to motivate those they speak with is exceptional.

Which is usually great. If the person sharing ideas with us is a subject expert, we gain mightily from their guidance.

The challenge comes when they speak with great authority, on things they know nothing about. When they voice an opinion as if it were a fact. When they’re as compelling as ever, yet they motivate us to do something that’s absolutely wrong.

I was thinking about this earlier, when I received an email from a reader. I thought you might find it useful, so here’s what happened.

When things go wrong

My reader recently had a legal issue with a web designer, regarding a site they’d developed for her business. She wanted some advice on what to do and spoke with a business adviser, who had previously helped her with (great) general business advice. My reader took his advice and sent an email to the web developer, using the wording her business adviser suggested.

Nothing happened.

So she spoke with a lawyer to see if she could “get things moving”.

The lawyer read the email and sadly, the email content has ruined any chance of her getting the resolution she hoped for.

This is from my reader’s email, published with her permission:

“In the past, his advice has always been excellent. That’s why I called him. […] He speaks with great authority, on things I know very little about. I now know he also speaks with great authority, on things he knows nothing about“.

Note: I made a similar mistake myself (2 actually), when I started in business. I wrote about it here.

Obviously, we need to remind ourselves to only take advice from people with relevant experience / qualifications. It’s also a good idea to consider who we currently rely on for advice, and whether their advice is working for us or not. Daily, I see the damage caused when business owners take bad marketing advice from general business advisers and generic online courses.

Yes, expert advice will come with a fee attached. However, that fee is usually way lower than the price we pay for taking bad advice.

Answers, insights and ideas: 12 Things to focus on

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marketing ideas reality

There’s an old saying that assures us, if we want better answers we need to ask better questions. Good quality questions cause us to think differently and often give us extremely useful answers, insights and ideas.

With this in mind, I’ve compiled some questions, which I hope will help you to identify opportunities to help your business thrive.

In no particular order.

  1. What lessons can I learn from the most successful person I know… and conversely, what can I learn from the mistakes of the least successful people I know?
  2. What’s the biggest challenge currently facing my clients (or customers) and how can I help them overcome it?
  3. What’s the biggest challenge currently facing my marketplace and how can I help them overcome it?
  4. How can I make my services meaningfully different?
  5. Am I regularly using the 6 Idea Trick?
  6. What is currently the weakest point in my marketing and how can I improve it?
  7. How many non-essential fields can I remove from my contact forms, in order to increase the number of enquiries I get?
  8. If I charged 300% more for my services, what extra value would I be able to deliver to my clients… and why don’t I build this as a new, highly profitable, premium version of my services?
  9. Who let the dogs out? (Okay, just checking to see if you’re still reading along with me).
  10. What’s the best thing about my services and how clearly do I communicate this compelling advantage to prospective clients?
  11. How might it benefit my clients and prospects, if I slightly adjust my business hours so they’re a little different from others in my industry, and better suited to the needs of the clients I serve?
  12. Is my face also the public face of my business or do I / we mainly operate behind a logo… and if the latter, why?
  13. Who are the top 5 people I need to connect with and what’s my strategy to make this happen?

Let me know how you get on.

Marketing 101: Greed, need or deed?

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marketing tips 2021

Today, I’m going to show you how to avoid creating an incorrect, damaging impression of your business. This is critically important, so let’s dive in.

You’re a professional. You have a superb business. You offer an excellent service. And you care passionately about your clients.

My question for you today my friend, is this: How clearly does that message come across in your marketing?

Greed, need or deed?

Think for a moment about the marketing messages you receive, from emails and social media updates, to advertisements, cold calls and direct mail, etc. Every marketing message is based on one of the following three motivations.

  1. Greed motivated: I want your money. Buy my stuff.
  2. Need motivated: I need you to buy from me. Please, please buy my stuff.
  3. Deed motivated: There’s something that I believe will help you, so I created it for you.

Greedy marketing repels people. Greed is one of those universally disliked attributes. It’s ugly. It’s selfish. We avoid greedy people and greedy businesses.

Needy marketing also repels people. As soon as the marketplace thinks a provider desperately needs sales or needs money urgently, it sets alarm bells ringing. “What if they’re going broke!?!” These alarm bells make people way less likely to buy from them.

Deed driven marketing attracts people. It makes us feel positive toward the person or brand behind it. It’s an easy message to connect with. Deed driven marketing is about sincerely wanting to help the people in your marketplace with the products or services you provide. It attracts their attention, makes them feel good about you and creates a powerful connection between you.

IMPORTANT: Here’s where the challenge comes in. Many small and medium-sized business owners who are deed focused, have no idea how greedy or needy their marketing looks. And it’s seriously hurting their business.

A couple of very common examples

One common example is the use of freebies, such as free initial consultations. These are widely used by service providers, who dabble with their marketing and have no idea how much damage they’re doing to their reputation.

When you attach zero value to your time, you send a damaging, toxic message to prospective clients. The marketplace knows that the best service providers are busy professionals, who have no need to give their time away for free. So, if they see a provider offering freebies, it tells them that the service provider is under-employed, getting too few referrals, in need (needy) or all three! This keeps the service provider in a negative loop, as the best clients are repelled and freebie hunters (who grab anything that’s free), are attracted to the free consultation like moths to a flame.

Another common example is special offers.

These can also come across as needy or greedy when handled incorrectly. And that’s exactly how the vast majority of small and medium-sized business owners handle special offers. They put their offers together, outside of a professional marketing strategy. In doing so, they can cause the marketplace to think there’s a so-called fire sale going on. Equally, the use of special offers can train your marketplace to wait for the next special offer, which makes it hard to sell anything at the regular price. This eats profits and it’s totally avoidable.

In short, it pays to be highly intentional regarding how you market your business. Always look at the bigger picture from an outside perspective. Make sure you’re projecting yourself as eager to help, not greedy or needy.

You don’t have any clients or customers

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Exceed expectations

Image: Juli Moreira

You don’t have any clients (or customers).

You also don’t have any subscribers, contacts or followers.

And neither do I.

We don’t have them. That’s to say, they’re not our possession. Instead, we borrow them.

We need to earn and then re-earn whatever connection / relationship they have with us.

Client retention planning

That’s why a client retention plan is critically important. Yes, delivering the best service possible is essential, but that’s what our clients expect. We retain our clients by exceeding expectations in key areas.

For example.

  • We need to engage out clients regularly. Many providers only engage with their clients when they’re working together on something or when they invoice a client. But very, very few will maintain regular contact with their clients at other times, such as sharing useful resources with them; articles, event invitations, newsletters, ideas, etc.
  • We can also connect them with useful people. Very, very few providers will proactively introduce their clients to valuable contacts.
  • And we can look for opportunities to help our clients develop their businesses. Very, very few providers will proactively recommend their clients to potentially suitable prospects.

Those are just a few examples from what I do with my clients. Obviously, you’ll need to adapt, adjust and develop your own ways to exceed expectations, depending on the services or products you provide. The key is to exceed in an appropriate, valuable way.

The solution?

I recommend you consider developing a simple, client retention plan. I’ve used them for years and they’re invaluable. Start simple. Set reminders for each client; to collect and share useful, helpful and insightful resources and connections with them. This is a powerful and proven way to go far BEYOND what’s expected, so you get the opportunity to re-earn the privilege of serving your clients.

I’ve spoken to countless hard working business owners, who have lost clients purely because of unintentional complacency. They worked hard to do everything the client expected. They genuinely believed that would be enough. They then discovered it wasn’t.

In short, without a deliberate plan to retain our clients, even the best businesses and brands can become a little complacent. And as they say, a casual approach causes casualties.