Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Would people miss your marketing if you stopped?

by

I get scores of really important emails every day. I call them important, yet none of these marketing messages are of any importance to me.

They’re typically irrelevant and of literally zero interest. They are only important to the people sending them!

I know you receive these emails too. The amazing offers, which are not amazing in any way whatsoever. The poorly targeted offers, which aren’t even applicable to you. And let’s not forget the masses of automatically generated spam.

Here’s the thing: If your important news is only really important to you and your business, you’re not marketing to people. You’re interrupting them! And if you do that a second time, you go from interrupting them, to pestering them.

That’s not a good look.

How to get it right

Create something genuinely interesting, which is important to your prospective clients or customers. Then, only send your message to people who have given you permission to contact them, and who you know have a genuine need for that important information.

It’s hard to overstate the marketing power of a valuable message, sent to people who want to hear from you. It’s how you create the best marketing… marketing that’s so useful, people would miss it if you stopped.

Give your best ideas away for free. Here’s why

by

content marketing

What I’m about to share with you may sound a little counter-intuitive. It isn’t. In fact, it could help you achieve breakthrough marketing results.

Allow me to explain.

I come across the following problem a lot. Mainly from service providers, who are struggling to attract new clients with their content marketing. Their primary concern looks something like this:

I know I need to provide good, free advice via my content. Surely if I give my best ideas away for free, no one will pay to hire me?

I’ve already explained why you should be stingy with your time, but not your ideas. However, there’s another, excellent reason why you should provide outstanding, free advice.

And it’s this…

Think for a moment about the alternative. Imagine you publish a newsletter, videos, a blog or a podcast. Now let’s also imagine that instead of sharing great advice, you share weaker information. Average free stuff. Nothing special. Nothing that really stands out.

Guess what?

You’ve just given your marketplace a weak, low-impact insight into your work. You’ve painted a lousy picture of how good you are. So, not only will people be highly unlikely to hire you, they’ll also be unlikely to share your newsletters, videos, podcasts, blog posts or subscribe to you. That’s a huge lose, lose. (Actually, that’s wrong; it’s a lose, lose, lose, because you’ll also be damaging your reputation as a knowledgeable professional. Ouch!)

Here’s what really happens when you give great free advice

Yes, freebie hunters will certainly gobble up all your free advice. But that doesn’t lose you a penny. Why? Because they were never going to hire you anyway. Freebie hunters are the dabblers. The DIYers. So, they were never a prospective client. (Tip, read this: Don’t let greedy amateurs get you down).

Yes, a subset of genuine prospective clients who take your free advice will do (whatever) themselves. Of course, if they find your ideas so powerful that they actually use them, they’re highly likely to subscribe to you and share your work. That’s how every successful resource spreads. Also, I know from experience that many of them will later hire you.

However… there’s also a hefty subset of prospective clients who will find your high quality advice extremely valuable. Now, this subset of prospective clients are the ones who value their time. They love the peace-of-mind that comes from getting expert help. They value professionalism.

These prospective clients will hire you, so you can do the job properly for them. And yes, they’ll also share your newsletters, videos, podcasts, blog posts and subscribe to you.

How do I know for 100% certain that this works?

Simple: It’s how I grew my business!

It’s why I get enquiries from prospective clients, multiple times, all day long, every day. And if it works for me, it can work for you too. Just make sure to offer as much value as you can, as often as you can. Hold nothing back.

P.S. Here’s that article I mentioned earlier. It’s well worth a read: Be stingy with your time, but not your ideas.

Marketing tip: Press pause!

by

I want you to think about the following for a moment:

  • The last tweet you sent.
  • The last newsletter you published.
  • The last Linkedin post you shared.
  • The last Facebook update you posted.

Each of those actions could easily be a prospective customer’s first exposure to you (and your business). If so, it will help form their first impression of you.

Here’s the thing. First impressions count.

  • First impressions count, even if you are having a bad day.
  • First impressions count, even if they are inaccurate.
  • And first impressions count, because if you screw it up, you often won’t get a second chance!

So, what’s the solution?

Well, here’s something that can certainly help you.

Drum roll please…

Pause…

It pays to pause for a few moments before you publish ANYTHING. That’s because most of what you publish is easy to find via search engines or the social networks you use. And we know that the vast majority of people now check providers out, before deciding to hire them or buy from them.

Think about the wider, longer-term implications of what you are saying. Never underestimate the impact of an angry tweet, a needy Linkedin post or a spammy Facebook update, etc.

Once it’s published, it’s out there. It’s in play. It’s carrying your name. And it’s carving your reputation.

Tip: Read this » How To Build a World Class Reputation.

Be where their attention is!

by

marketing

The next time you’re on your way to or from work, try this.

I want you to take a look at the people around you; car passengers, bus passengers, train passengers or pedestrians. Notice what they are paying attention to?

No, they’re not looking at billboards.

They’re looking at a phone or a tablet.

So, be where their attention is

There’s a huge opportunity for you here. That is, so long as you’re willing to publish useful information, which your prospective customers will want to consume, to combat the boredom of a dull journey. Newsletters, podcasts, videos and blog posts are perfect for this.

However, there are a couple of things to consider, before you invest your time and effort getting onto their mobile device.

Firstly, make sure you publish something that’s useful to them. If you do, they’ll share it. Your audience will grow. And your name and reputation will spread.

Secondly, make sure that whatever you publish is mobile friendly. Many small business blogs and newsletters are challenging to read on mobile devices, and that’s just not good enough. If you want to engage readers, give them a great reader experience. If you want to engage viewers or listeners, make the audio-visual experience crisp and clear.

The payback?

When you’ve earned the attention and trust of your audience, by turning up regularly with useful, interesting information, and you have a business announcement for them (a new product, offer, service, event, book etc.), they will listen. And because they know your work and trust you, the response rate can be off the charts.

The opportunity is here and it’s huge. Plus, the financial cost of reaching all those prospective customers is tiny.

The question is, what are you going to do with all this potential?

And your answer will depend on this: Knowing and doing.

The marketing impact of premium quality images

by

As regular readers may have noticed, I’ve recently started using Shutterstock images in my blog posts. They reached out to me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I’d partner with them. Shutterstock has given me access to their 225 million-strong image library, in return for exposure on Jim’s Marketing Blog.

Note: If you haven’t already heard of Shutterstock, they are headquartered at The Empire State Building with an IPO value of over half a billion dollars. In short, their service lets users find and buy images, vectors, videos, and music.

What interested me, was the opportunity to test, and then share with you, if using ‘paid for’, premium images would have a positive, measurable impact on my marketing results. So, I’m going to use their images until January, then I’ll report back to you with my findings.

Previously, I’ve used images from freely available image libraries or made my own. The obvious challenge with free images, is that they are used everywhere. In theory, because premium images are less commonly used and look better, they should be more effective at capturing attention.

Some immediate feedback

There is one immediate, measurable improvement I can share with you already. And that’s speed.

It’s massively easier to find exactly the right image, when you’re searching a huge professional library, with powerful indexing. To qualify that, it has often taken me as long to find the right image for a blog post, as it took to write the post. And the image tended to be, at best, ‘okay’. With Shutterstock, it takes just a few minutes and the image is always highly professional. That’s allowed me to spend 100% of my blogging time actually writing.

It remains to be seen whether the visual impact will move the dial, from a marketing perspective. Rest assured, you’ll be the first to know my results.

Viral marketing 101

by

viral marketing

Every piece of viral marketing you’ve ever experienced, consisted of 2 things.

  1. It went to you. (You received it).
  2. It went through you. (You shared it with your friends or contacts).

For both of those to happen, your marketing message or story, needs to be easy to share and remarkable in some way.

How easy is it?

The marketing message from Kentucky Fried Chicken is simple. Just 3 words long. Finger lickin’ good. That’s easy to remember and easy to share. Regardless of what you or I may think of their food, they’ve given their most dedicated customers a simple message, which speaks powerfully about the taste of their food.

The marketing message from Apple is even easier to share. When someone is using one of their products in public, there’s a highly visible Apple logo pointing at everyone who can see them. Until recently, the Apple logo on MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models was illuminated on the lid. Today, those logo’s are (like those on their phones) highly polished mirrors.

How remarkable is it?

Remember Jennie? I wrote about her recently. Jennie knows I take lots of handwritten notes. When she discovered a note-taking app that did everything she wanted, and more, she emailed me. She also told all her friends about it. Jennie’s remarkable experience turned her from a customer into a raving advocate.

When Greg recommends my services to his friends, he tells them; “Jim doubled our turnover in 5 months”. Greg’s success was remarkable to him, so he shares it. His experience of my work is what motivates him. And his message is just 7 words long, meaning it’s easy to share.

Why not take some time today, to consider how you can make it easier for your message to go to people and through people. Consider how clear your message is. And how remarkable it is. Then look for ways to improve it as much as you can. It’s impossible to overstate the power of clear, easy to share, remarkable stories.