Jim Connolly Marketing

The HER strategy. Something to get excited about!

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marketing

As long-time readers will know, I tend not to write about the specific work I do with my clients, or how effective / exciting some of the strategies I use are.

Today, I’m going to show you behind the scenes. You’re going to discover an amazingly powerful marketing process that I use daily, but haven’t written about in over a decade!

I call it the Highest Ethical Return (HER) strategy. If you followed my work back in the 1990’s, you’ll remember this as a foundational part of my marketing ethos. It’s also how I earned an international reputation for results, despite being one of the youngest, independent marketing professionals out there.

Here’s a very quick look at how the Highest Ethical Return strategy works. You’ll also get an idea of how I, as a Marketing Mentor, work with my clients.

The Highest Ethical Return strategy

I use this term to describe a strategy where you ethically achieve the highest possible return from every element of your sales and marketing activities. To achieve the Highest Ethical Return, you optimize multiple different marketing activities, so they compound on one another.

You start, by taking one marketing element and optimizing various, high return aspects of it. I’m going to use the example of email marketing because it’s so widely used.

  • You choose to optimize the subject line of the email and manage to increase open rates by 20%. (I’ve achieved increases of hundreds of percent)
  • You choose to optimise the timing of your distribution, so it arrives at the optimal time on the optimal day of the week. You increase open rates by another 5%.

At this point, you’ve increased the number of prospective clients or customers who will see your marketing by 25% and it hasn’t cost you a penny.

It hasn’t increased your risk. It hasn’t taken much effort. And you’ll benefit from these improvements again and again and again!

Naturally, you don’t stop there

  • You choose to optimize the content of your email and your CTA (call to action) so that it’s more compelling, and increase your sales rates by 15%. (Again, this increase can be 10x or 100x higher – depending on your baseline).
  • You choose to optimize your marketing proposition (offer) by pumping more value into it, and your 15% increased sales rate grows to 25%.

At this point, you’ve increased open rates by 25% AND you’ve also increased your sales conversion rates by 25%. This means you’re reaching 25% more people with a prospective need for your services AND 25% more of that bigger number are hiring you or buying from you.

Depending on the size of your marketing list and the lifetime value of your clients, you may have just increased your income or revenues my thousands… On just one mailing.

Continue improving it, and thousands can become tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

Did you notice something?

All that additional revenue and profit came from using your same old list, but using it to achieve the highest possible return.

No additional money was required, there was no additional risk and very little additional time required. Extremely high return. Extremely low exposure. Exciting eh?

This is a tiny example – a quick glance of a few optimizations, of just one marketing activity. There are tons more things you can deploy, to further increase your email results. (For instance, think how you could ramp up your sales numbers by getting the Highest Ethical Return on your email follow-up process. That one additional step compounds on the others to radically increase your results).

Remember: You’re still only getting started. Even after you’ve fully optimized email marketing, there are numerous, additional (and more profitable) marketing activities to apply the Highest Ethical Return strategy to.

The strategy is only fully utilized, when you’ve applied it to every element of your sales and marketing. Consider how this could improve your revenues and profits, if you choose to use it correctly.

I mean that. Ponder on the idea.

Acres of high profit, easy business wins!

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endorsed relationships, joint ventures, jvs

On a purely commercial level, something has continued to baffle me since the start of the pandemic.

It’s simply this:

Why have so few small and medium-sized businesses collaborated with one another?

There has never been a greater need for businesses to collaborate or a greater opportunity for commercial collaboration. Reaching out to another business, which offers a complimentary, non-conflicting service to yours is so easy. Joint ventures, endorsed relationships and many other forms of mutually beneficial opportunities are available.

Yet at a time when so many business owners are really struggling, they’re isolating themselves from acres of exceptionally profitable, easy wins.

I don’t know all the reasons why this is happening, but I believe it’s partly caused by focusing so much on survival, that business opportunities are not on their radar. If you’re hunkering down until things go back to ‘normal’, your mindset is all about how to survive, when it should be on how to thrive.

I’d like you to consider that thriving right now is not only possible, it’s highly probable, so long as you do the right things correctly.

Commercial collaboration in action

If you’d like to very quickly start attracting great new clients (or customers), try this.

  • Consider for a moment who your ideal client is.
  • Now think about non-competing providers who have access to your ideal profile of client AND who offer a service that in some way compliments yours.
  • Do some research and identify those who have a professional reputation. And reach out to them.
  • The way you reach out will depend on your industry or profession, whether you’re both local businesses, whether you’re members of the same association or group… and a ton of other things. There’s no one size fits all approach.
  • Find a suitable way to get the ball rolling. And roll with it!
  • Now identify the next collaboration partner and repeat the process.

If you’re not proactively developing commercial collaborations you really should. The opportunities are there. Just waiting for you.

Steve Jobs, money and success

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It’s an interesting fact that very few of the world’s most successful businesspeople, set out with money or success as their primary target.

  • They aimed to be valuable.
  • They aimed to make the world or the marketplace a better place.
  • They aimed to make a difference.

However, money or success was not their primary focus.

Here’s how they did it!

Steve Jobs famously said:

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money”.

If Jobs was focused primarily on the money or success, he’d have been able to cash in when he was in his 20’s… super rich and exceptionally successful.

When Einstein said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”, he showed where his focus was. Again, it was about the value. Einstein carried on working until his death, even though he could have quit decades earlier with his reputation set in history forever.

To understand how the most successful and wealthy business owners achieved their success, we need to look at why most business owners struggle.

In it just for the money

You can usually tell pretty fast, when you encounter someone who is primarily in it for the money. That’s because it’s both obvious and extremely unattractive. And this makes it very hard for them to succeed.

Here are some examples we see all the time, which you will recognise instantly:

  • They are the salespeople, whose eyes light up like a wolf when they spot a potential sales victim.
  • They are the ill-informed marketing gurus, who STILL say the money is in the list, because they haven’t figured out the value is in the community.
  • They are the affiliate marketers, who leave spammy links and comments on blogs and Facebook.
  • They are the pests, who send us unwanted spam email.
  • They are the pushy business owners, who corner us at events. The ones who pretend they want to know about us, when we know it’s just an old, cringe-worthy networking tactic.
  • They are the struggling restaurant owners, who use slightly lower quality ingredients and hire slightly lower quality chefs, and end up with a low quality restaurant that no one recommends.

They are the kind of business owners you thought of, as you were reading those examples!

The way forward for smart business owners

Focus on value. Create products or services that are meaningfully different from the competition. Solve better problems. Create work you are proud of. Offer remarkable service and outstanding quality. And delight your customers at every opportunity.

Persistently create value and use marketing to make it visible. People are extremely attracted to value and they pay a premium for it too. Just ask the owner of any high priced Apple product, the owner of a luxury car or the client of any leading service provider.

Get this right my friend, and the money and success will surely follow.

Unlock the secret to breakthrough results

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Marketing breakthrough, home run

Image: Jametlene Reskp

The breakthrough result you’ve been waiting for is closer than you think. Here’s a trusted and proven way to make it happen.

I was prompted to write this, after someone emailed me with a request. His email opened with; “I need a major breakthrough, Jim!”.

In short, he wanted me to personally introduce him to someone who’s very wealthy and a friend of mine. The unknown emailer apparently has a proposal, which he’s sure my friend “will want to be in on”.

  • Let’s ignore the fact that the person he wants me to introduce him to is not a friend of mine, but an acquaintance instead.
  • And let’s also ignore why on earth I would personally recommend a total stranger to anyone.

Instead, let’s look at the mindset the emailer is using.

Because although his email was certainly unusual, a lot of business owners adopt a broadly similar approach.

Allow me to explain.

The thing about major breakthroughs

When looking for a major business breakthrough, the temptation can be to focus on a massive home run… a home run, which will save you years of effort and land you in the big time.

“If I could just get 20 minutes with (insert name of famous billionaire), maybe they would back my idea”.

That’s one way to succeed.

However, major business breakthroughs don’t tend to happen like that. There will be exceptions, but they’re called exceptions for a reason. They’re exceptional.

Instead, major breakthroughs are almost always the result of lots of mini breakthroughs. And the process is tried and tested. It follows the same, proven path.

  • You decide exactly what breakthrough you want to achieve and put a plan together.
  • You chunk your plan down into a series of steps (mini breakthroughs).
  • You then apply intelligent activity to each step.
  • You carry on taking steps forward, until you’ve achieved your major breakthrough.

Recommended reading: How to know if you have a winning idea.

It’s far less glamorous than scoring lunch with Jeff Bezos or Mark Cuban and being handed their full financial backing. But it’s far more likely to actually happen.

Exposed: The great BIG leadership lie!

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Leaders leadership

Leaders lead. That’s what they do.

They don’t tell us they are leaders. They don’t self-proclaim to be leaders in their social media profiles or on the about pages of their websites. Instead, they lead.

Leaders are easy to spot

When everyone else is flapping, looking for someone to lead the way, the leader is the one who steps up. The leader commands our respect.

We all know leaders and in every instance, they don’t need to tell us they are leaders. They literally lead by example.

Leaders are courageous. They stand up for what they believe in. They inspire others by what they do. They’re massively valuable and extremely rare.

Fake leaders are even easier to spot

Instead of leading, the fakers tell us they are leaders and hope no one notices. But we do notice. We see them acting like sheep; sharing leadership quotes on social sites, having their photo taken with leaders… yet never actually leading.

For fake leaders it’s about telling, not showing. It’s about talking and bluster, not action. It’s about self-proclaimed titles, not the respect of their marketplace or community. It’s about following the flock, not leading.

Don’t fall for the great leadership lie

The lesson here is simple. Be suspicious of anyone who self-proclaims that they are a leader. Instead, decide for yourself based on what a person does and what they fail to do.

Leaders lead.

They don’t talk about it.

They do it.

Making the required effort

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marketing lies, liars

… is underrated.

However, it’s essential. Regardless of what the gurus tell you about life-hacks, success-hacks, growth-hacks and marketing-hacks, no one can succeed without applying the required effort. That’s why it’s required.

Work smart.

Work efficiently.

Work carefully.

And rest!

But be sure to do the required work and the required hours. Because when you do, you’ll find yourself making more progress, and faster, than the person who wastes their time seeking elusive short-cuts to success.

Just think

Interestingly, when we look at the work output of the gurus selling the hacks, we find they’re working their butts off!

The videos they shoot, their always-on social media presence across multiple platforms, their podcasts, their interviews, the book they’re writing, their newsletters, their speaking engagements, etc., etc… these combine to create a massive workload.

Do what’s required.

Avoid what isn’t.

Because short-cuts to success are almost never short-cuts and they never lead to success.