Jim Connolly Marketing

Where will your next client come from?

By |

business development, biz dev

There’s a world of opportunity out there, just waiting for you to embrace it. Those are not simply optimistic words. Allow me to explain.

This morning, I was working with some great clients in Brisbane, Australia. Yesterday, I worked with a wonderful, long-time client in Nebraska, USA. Tomorrow, I’m working with an exciting start-up in Hamburg, Germany.

All this, without leaving my studio in England.

The nature of business is changing

Barriers that once restricted who we could work with have been removed. For many, perhaps most service providers, geography is no longer a limitation.

We live in the age of low-cost (and no-cost) global, digital communications. We can video conference, call, screen-share, email and provide our expertise with clients, anywhere on the planet. This means; designers, coaches, copywriters, content providers, marketing professionals, illustrators, software developers, business advisors, PR consultants, therapists, translators and countless others, can now work worldwide. As such, the growth potential of your client base is pretty much limitless.

The opportunity in front of you is something, which past generations of small business owners couldn’t have dreamed of.

And the best part? It’s yours. Right now. If you want it.

Are you bridge building? You should be. Here’s why

By |

marketing tips, marketing blogs

You offer an amazing service.

Your customers love you.

The challenge is that your prospective customers have no idea how wonderful your business is. They’re unaware of how your service runs rings around their current provider. They just don’t know how much they need you.

The answer is to build a bridge. You need to bridge the gap between your prospective customers and your business. With a bridge in place, you can connect with prospective customers, explain why they need you and motivate them to buy from you or hire you.

Make sure bridge building is a high-priority part of your marketing mix.

How to be an overnight success

By |

marketing blogs, marketing help

Here are some proven examples, of how to be an overnight success.

  • Angry Birds creator Rovio became an overnight success, after 51 less successful games, 8 years of hard work and almost going bankrupt.
  • Harry Potter author JK Rowling, became an overnight success in 1997… though she started writing fantasy stories as a child, more than 20 years earlier.
  • The Beatles become an overnight success, after playing more than 1000 small gigs. They were paid just £5 for their first gig.
  • The fastest book ever to reach its Kickstarter target, was written by Seth Godin. Most people say it took around 3 hours to break the record. It didn’t. Godin said it took around 8 years. That’s how long it took him, writing blog posts almost every day, to build a big enough community to reach his Kickstarter target in 3 hours.

The overnight success formula

So, here’s how to be an overnight success in 2 steps:

  1. Choose the date you want your overnight success to happen.
  2. Work hard for years, leading up to that date.

Shortcuts to success are seldom shortcuts and they never lead to meaningful success. Be extremely cautious of anyone suggesting otherwise.

How to raise your business to a whole new level

By |

If your business is growing slower than it should be, this post is just for you.

To get your business moving forward, there are 2 things you need to focus on. I have set them out as 2 questions. Oh, and don’t worry, I’m going to help you find your answers too!

So, here are the questions:

  1. What do you want to achieve with your business?
  2. Are you willing to pay the price?

What do you want to achieve with your business?

Many small business owners lack sufficient clarity, regarding what they want their business to achieve. When I ask them, they will often tell me things like; I want a profitable company, I want a thriving consultancy, I want to retire in comfort. They hardly ever give me anything specific.

The challenge here, is that without knowing what your ultimate business target or goal is, you have no way to measure if you’re on track or not.

This lack of clarity about what you specifically want to achieve, means it’s extremely easy for you to make poor long term decisions. It’s what causes hard working business owners to spin their wheels.

It’s like the old saying, “When you don’t know where you’re going, every road will take you there”. As a result, we find many hard working small business owners taking costly detours.

The key is to get specific. To describe, in detail, what you want to achieve with your business.

Here’s how to find your answer!

A great way to get really focused on what you want from your business, is to ask yourself this question:

If my business was perfect in every way, what would it look like?

Then, start writing your answer down in detail!

Avoid vague terms and use specifics. Include numbers in your answer whenever possible. For example, include things like:

  • What you want to generate in revenues and profits over the next year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.
  • What you want to earn from your business.
  • What you want your business to sell for, if your exit route is to cash in at some point.

You may also want to describe the type of clients you want, what your working day would look like, where you’d locate your business, etc. Make sure to include everything that matters to you.

Once you have a clearer picture of exactly what you want to achieve with your business, it’s time to answer that second question.

So, are you willing to pay the price?

You will seldom find a small business owner, who doesn’t work hard. That is not what this question is about.

The question is about whether we’re prepared to do everything required, to make that clear image of our future business a reality. The question asks us if we are prepared, time after time, to leave our comfort zone.

Success requires us to pay the price in advance. This means committing to do 100% of what’s required, rather than avoiding the necessary tasks, which we’re uncomfortable with. Hard work alone is not enough. If hard work was the key to success, our grandparents would have all been millionaires!

Success also requires laser-like focus. We need to put our evergy and efforts into a small number of areas – – rather than try and be everywhere. For example, choose one or two places to put your content marketing. I use a blog and a newsletter. I couldn’t have built this site or my newsletter list, if I’d split my time between Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube, podcasting, Snapchat and Clubhouse, etc.

What next, Jim?

Once you have got clear about what you want and you have decided to do what’s required in order to achieve it, it’s time to take action.

The best place to start, is to take a look at your current business activities and investments. Then, eliminate everything that is not taking you toward your business goals (or targets).

Next, replace the activities that were taking your business nowhere, with ones that are consistent with your new, clearer picture of the business you want.

This is the starting point of creating a great strategy. If you need help getting your strategy right, this 2 hour session with me could be just what you need.

The café owner whose ignorance is killing her business

By |

marketing tips, marketing blogs

Why do hard-working business owners often make very little progress?

Here’s a perfect and extremely common example. I hope you find it useful. More importantly, I hope it inspires you to make better decisions.

The café owner who’s killing her business

I visited a great little café yesterday with my wife and son. We stopped for a coffee and a slice of cake. The home-made cake was stunning. So beautiful that I took a photo. I was going to share the photo with the 85,000 people who connect with my various social networking accounts.

I had no signal from my phone, so I asked if the café had Wi-Fi. I was told by the owner that they did, however, it’s not advertised and it’s password protected. She explained that they hide the Wi-Fi, to stop people coming in and using it. The café owner brought me the password. It was super-strong with a huge line of mixed numbers, letters and symbols. After failing to get it right for the 2nd time, it was time for us to leave.

Ignorance of marketing is not bliss

The café owner had it all wrong. She thought she would gain financially by blocking people from using the café’s Wi-Fi. She told me she was concerned people would come in, buy just 1 or 2 drinks and in her words “steal the Wi-Fi”. She hadn’t figured out that there are excellent reasons why the larger coffee chains eagerly offer free Wi-Fi.

  • It attracts paying customers. Given the choice of a place with Wi-Fi or without, most people will choose a place with Wi-Fi.
  • It gives customers a fast and effective way to spread the word about their experience.
  • It lets customers share photos of their coffee, breakfast, lunch etc, on their social networks. This is free, powerful, visual advertising for the café or coffee shop.
  • It allows customers to share where they are on social networks, in case a friend wants to join them. This further increases custom.
  • It makes the café a place where people can enjoy a coffee, whilst reading the news or catching up with their friends on Twitter, Facebook etc.

Like almost every small business owner, the café owner is making basic marketing mistakes that are losing her a fortune. We only went in because the place was almost empty and we were in a hurry. She has no idea of the opportunities she’s missing out on, just from that one marketing error. In the short time we were there, I spotted around half a dozen areas, which are losing her a fortune.

When I asked her, “how’s business?”, it was no surprise when she replied that business is slow. Of course it is. How else could things be going, when her ignorance of marketing is killing her business? That’s a rhetorical question.

Smart and average

Smart business owners identify that their business needs help and they get that help. They refuse to dabble with their livelihood.

The average business owner hunkers down and works hard. They’re unaware that hard work is not the key to success. So they end up frustrated. Why? Because no matter how hard they row their boat in the wrong direction, they never end up where they want to be.

Choose wisely my friend.

Mind your own business!

By |

marketing advice, marketing help, bizdev

If you want to rise above your competitors, you have a couple of options open to you.

  1. Destroy the competition: Bad-mouth them. Spread nasty stories about them. Call them out when they screw up. Try to ruin their reputation, so your business looks better in comparison.
  2. Mind your own business: Look for ways to improve what you do. Become a respected innovator.  Out smart and out care your competitors. Make your service so uniquely valuable that you have no competition.

The best way forward, is to focus on your own business. Pay attention to what you can control. Do everything you can with everything you have. If you mind your own business correctly, you’ll never have to worry about the competition again.