Jim Connolly Marketing

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

7 Content topics to grab the attention of your marketplace

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content marketing tip

I write a lot about the importance of being useful with your marketing. A number of you have asked me if I can give you some specific examples, which you can apply to your content marketing.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done in this post.

Their needs and your products or services

Start off by thinking about the services you provide or your product range. Then, consider the following 7 topics (or theme ideas) and how you can incorporate them into your content marketing messages.

  1. People have an inbuilt need to feel connected: Share ideas to help your prospects connect with useful contacts. The Wall Street Journal wrote about how I achieved this for one of my clients – 4 Marketing Strategies That Paid Off For Small Companies
  2. Everyone is trying to succeed at something: Share ideas to help your prospects achieve their targets, goals or dreams. Obviously, as with pretty-much every topic here, if you offer a specific product or service that can help them in this area, incorporate that into the content.
  3. We all need to feel safe and secure: Share ideas to help your prospects reduce risk or feel safer.
  4. We also share a common need for a sense of belonging: Share ideas to help your prospects feel like an integral part of your business.
  5. Everyone wants to avoid wasting time: Share ideas to help your prospects maximize their time, or help them complete certain tasks faster, etc. I’m not a time management expert, but I’ve shared tons of ideas in this area, based on decades of running a successful business, without working crazy hours. The response is always excellent. So don’t be put off sharing from your experience.
  6. People want to improve and expand their knowledge: Share your industry knowledge, sure. But ALSO share your experience with them. For example, if you’re an accountant, don’t just focus on tax, profit and loss or the latest business news. They can get that anywhere. Tell them the common factors you’ve identified in successful businesses. And the ones you’ve identified in those that flounder or fail. Your experience is extremely valuable.
  7. Everyone wants to avoid unnecessary stress, especially now: Share ideas to help your prospects feel more relaxed and assured. If there’s a specific product or service you offer, which can assist them with this, incorporate that into the message or idea.

Are any of those topics missing from your content marketing? If they are, look for ways to incorporate them. Because this kind of useful, relevant information is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.

You’ll know you have the balance right, when your content marketing is SO USEFUL that people would really miss it if you stopped.

Radically increase your value. Then market it brilliantly

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2 step strategy, jims marketing blog

If you’re a service provider, your income is based on just 2 things.

  1. The value you bring. This is what determines what your clients pay you. Between the best paid and the lowest paid, can be a factor of 10x and often much more. Much more? Absolutely. My friend hired a photographer for a product shoot in London recently. The person he hired charged £17,000 for the shoot. The lowest quote for the same shoot, was just over £900.
  2. How effectively you market the value you bring. This is what communicates your value in a way that motivates people to hire you.

Each of those areas can be improved. And by focusing on both areas, they leverage one another.

Leveraged for spectacular results

That’s right. You get the financial reward of charging 5x, 10x, 20x… or whatever. Plus you’re also attracting more clients. These combine and compound. The results are transformational.

The best part?

All of this is possible, by focusing your attention and activity on improving just 2 things.

Business owners with the guts to work on those 2 things correctly, don’t just improve their results. They radically improve their lives. It’s a big deal. It’s a really big deal.

How to get the energy required for business success

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get excited, get energized, business success

I have a question for you today. An important question.

The question is this: Does your business excite you and energize you?

Well, it should do.

In fact, it HAS to!

Seriously.

Here’s why excitement and energy are essential

It’s impossible to build a truly successful business, unless that business fills you with energy and excitement.

Think about it.

  • The energy is what keeps you moving forward. It’s the essential fuel source behind every successful business owner.
  • The excitement is what fuels the energy. It’s also what the marketplace needs to feel, whenever they have an encounter with you or your business. It’s highly infectious. It’s what inspires people to hire you, buy from you and recommend you.

And that energy can be yours. If you want it.

Choose energy. Choose success!

You can choose to either create an inspirational business, or carry on like 99% of small and medium-sized business owners, in a business you love, which doesn’t love you back.

Small business owners suffer more stress, work longer hours and work harder, than they would do if they were an employee. They work themselves harder than any boss would, with none of the perks of being a salaried employee.

And that’s nuts!

New clients often tell me they would see other business owners, who were brimming with energy, enthusiasm and ideas, and wonder how those other business owners managed to be so motivated.

Usually, they blame themselves for not being a very self-motivated type of person.

Thankfully, they’re 100% incorrect.

ANY business owner can become highly motivated and fully energized. However, it isn’t going to happen while they’re working in a business that’s zapping their energy or failing to inspire them.

Business owners are intelligent people. They’re not going to feel highly motivated and energized, working in a business that isn’t fulfilling them.

Clarity is the key

All that energy only comes, when you are crystal clear about what you want from your business AND how to achieve it. This massively improves the way you think and feel about your business. That’s because you know what you want, know how to get it and can see progress toward your dream / goal / target. I see the impact this has on business owners every day. I’m telling you, it’s transformational!

That kind of clarity and direction is all that separates you from those supercharged (and highly successful) business owners.

The challenge you need to overcome, if you want to access that energy and excitement, can be summed-up in one word: Settling.

Settling: The destroyer of dreams

Most small business owners have spent so long with their daily grind, that they unconsciously start to settle for things the way they are. Sure, they hope things will improve. Occasionally, they’ll try something new. But they find themselves with the same core problem. So they (wrongly) blame themselves for lacking the self-motivation or energy.

To turn this around, you must refuse to settle.

  • Stop LOWERING your lifestyle goals, so that they fit around the limitations of your under performing business.
  • Start INCREASING your effectiveness, so your business provides everything you need, and more.

Here’s the best part.

You are in control

You don’t need to settle for ANYTHING.

You’re the boss. That’s the whole point of being a business owner.

You get to build whatever kind of business you want. You choose how enjoyable your “work” is. You get to decide what you earn, where you work, where you live, the number of hours you work and the quality of your clients. You get to choose how interesting and fulfilling your work is.

You get to choose it all, my friend. Because YOUR business is directly under YOUR control.

Success doesn’t care

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success don't care

You offer a great product or service. You’re passionate about what you do. You work hard. And you work smart, too.

So, why are some of your less capable competitors doing better than you?

We know it’s not the industry we’re in, because others are doing great right now. We know it’s not the marketplace, because others are doing great right now. And we know it’s not the government, for the very same reason. So what’s the answer?

Here’s the l-o-n-g answer:

  • They might get the same number of leads as you, but they’re trained at how to turn prospects into paying clients.
  • They may have a better way of attracting more referrals from their clients, contacts and friends.
  • Their marketing messages could be professionally developed, so they get tons more enquiries or leads.
  • They might have developed a massively more compelling reason for people to hire them.
  • They may sell the result of what they do, rather than sell the service they provide.
  • Perhaps they’ve taken time to learn what keeps the best prospects awake at night worrying. And then, marketed their service as the answer.
  • Their email marketing could be expertly created, generating red-hot leads on a regular basis.
  • They might have learned the essential keys to persuasion.
  • They may be building a reputation as problem solvers, and earning the trust of your marketplace, via their newsletter or blog, etc.

In fact, it could be one of over 300 other, proven marketing strategies / tactics. Like those I use with my clients to help them rise to the top of their marketplace, so they have the perfect plan for what they want to achieve.

Note: I talk about it here – and it’s spectacularly effective.

Here’s the short answer:

  • Success doesn’t care.

That’s it.

Here’s why!

Success… and combination locks

If a 2nd rate competitor decides to do the things required for sales success, revenue growth and higher profits, their business will succeed. This is true if they’re less able than you.

Think of it like this.

Imagine a door, which has a combination lock. If you use the correct, 10 number combination, the door will open for you. If I use the correct combination, it will also open for me. That’s because the door doesn’t care. Press the correct numbers in the right order and you’re in!

Business success is the same. If you do the right combination of things correctly, you’ll succeed. That’s because success doesn’t care.

Success doesn’t care. It simply responds to what you do. And dabbling with a combination, hoping one day to get lucky, is a terrible strategy.

He’s after you! And that sounds scary

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writiing short, writing for business

Imagine it.

You find a Twitter account and it has a very short profile message. It’s just 3 words long.

It rather menacingly says: I’m after you!

This was a genuine Twitter profile from a marketing adviser.

So, what happened?

The profile’s owner intended the message to suggest, that he puts everyone before him. However, it read very differently.

His unsmiling profile photo only added to the likelihood it would be interpreted in the literal sense. That he’s pursuing you. That you are his intended prey.

The person in question is one of my newsletter subscribers. He explained that he was trying to write short, having just read one of my articles. Apparently, it was only after he noticed an increasing number of abusive tweets, which made no sense to him, that he figured out his mistake.

He went on to say that the offending profile message had been live for well over a month, and he’s still suffering the reputational damage. (Screenshots of his original profile have circulated in his local area).

Writing short

Writing short is about impact. From a word-count perspective, this means using as few words as required, but no fewer.

And writing for business in general, requires attention to detail. This includes looking for possible misinterpretations. Especially those that could be embarrassing or, as with this case, embarrassing and highly toxic.

Scaling your way to success

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What’s the best way to scale your business for success? 

Here are my thoughts.

marketing tips, Jim Connolly

But first, I have a very quick question for you.

What do the following all have in common?

  • Kindness.
  • Honesty.
  • Caring.

The answer is that they’re attributes that are valued, extremely highly, by everyone. We are attracted to people who are kind, honest and caring. And given the opportunity, we prefer to do business with people (and brands), who are kind, honest and caring, too.

Now. Hold that thought.

Scaling your way to success

One of the BIG buzzwords right now, is ‘scaling’. Business owners are being told that it’s a cornerstone of commercial success. And that the best way to scale their business, is to automate pretty-much everything.

For example.

  • To let AI chatbots handle first-line customer service enquiries.
  • To have call trees handle incoming phone calls; especially customer service calls.
  • To automate their social media accounts.
  • To create impersonal, email / forum-based, drip-fed versions of their services.

In short: To cut back on the human touch as much as possible, whenever possible and wherever possible.

The huge limitation with that approach is clear. Automation software is…. well… software. And as such, is incapable of the human characteristics of kindness, honesty and caring.

The reason for the growth in automation-based scaling, is that it promises a lot and is extremely simple. It requires almost no effort. And it’s sold by the gurus pushing it, as a magic way to cut your overhead back to the bone; both in time and money.

Here’s the snag with automated scaling

As more business owners embrace automation-based scaling, prices and fees in their industries are being driven down and down. It’s a race to the bottom for those who’ve bought in.

Paradoxically, it’s also a race, which no one actually wants to win. This is why we hear these same business owners complaining about attracting fee-sensitive clients and how hard they find it to stand out and get noticed.

They’re discovering that it’s extremely difficult to build a successful business, with the most fee-sensitive clients, wafer thin profits and a customer base who will drop you in an instant, for a lower priced competitor.

Shrug!

Another way to scale… that actually works

While some business owners embrace the race to the bottom, where the winner is the cheapest provider, others have identified a far more profitable way to scale.

It’s a different race. A race to profitability and success. A race, where the winners attract the best clients, work on the best projects and earn the best fees.

You see, it turns out that kindness, honesty and caring, scale. In fact, they scale to infinity. People tell their friends about remarkable service. So, the word spreads. And they remain loyal to providers, who go the extra mile to look after their needs. So, they keep their clients for way, way longer too.

Yes, the cheapest prospective clients in your marketplace will always shop for the bottom dollar provider.

That’s perfectly fine.

Because every marketplace has a large and massively profitable niche, who eagerly pay a premium fee for a premium quality service. People hate automation and only opt for it as a last resort.

And even the bargain basement crowd seldom remain with an impersonal service for long. They often realize their cost-cutting error, once they’ve tasted the frustration and expense, of suffering with a problem, which can’t be resolved by automation software and requires a person. And there’s no person available.

So my friend, I suggest you scale your business for kindness, honesty and caring. It’s an excellent foundation on which to build a sustainable, valuable business.