Social media marketing Archives - Page 7 of 36

Do marketing gimmicks work? Yes. Here’s how!

By Jim Connolly | December 7, 2017

I think you’ll find today’s post really useful. I’m going to share some ideas, to help you understand how marketing gimmicks work and how you can use them, to massively increase the reach of your marketing.

How a marketing gimmick went viral

Some years ago, I discovered a business blog. The thing about this blog, was that the author cussed and swore. She didn’t just drop the occasional f-bomb. No. She took every opportunity to swear. It was a marketing gimmick, done for effect.

And it worked. It worked really, really well!

At the time, she attracted a lot of attention and interest. People were talking about her. Back then, it was rare for a business blogger to cuss in their posts. Many people emailed me links to her latest posts, dazzled by her profanity.

She gained a lot of visibility. Visibility that had the potential to help her attract a huge (and extremely valuable) audience.

And then… she vanished!

No, she didn’t literally disappear. But she did soon vanish from the radar of public attention.

Why?

Well, it turned out that all she had to offer her readership was her cussing. At her core, she was just ‘yet another’ business blogger. So although her marketing gimmick drew people in, once the initial shock value wore off, there was nothing to return for. It was a missed opportunity.

Marketing gimmicks: making them work

Make no mistake, marketing gimmicks work. That’s to say, they can help you to get noticed… and noticed fast, by a huge slice of your marketplace. Plus, if you use a little creativity, it can cost you pennies.

However, there’s a limit to what we can achieve with gimmicks alone. That’s because while a good gimmick can open a door for you, you then need to deliver something useful.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Imagine you wanted to massively increase the audience for your newsletter, podcast, vlog or blog. You could use a marketing gimmick to get people talking about you, sharing your content and subscribing. But, to benefit from all that valuable attention, you’d then need to offer something of substance… helpful ideas, interesting information, useful insights, etc.

Marketing gimmicks: The bottom line

The bottom line looks like this: Marketing gimmicks will attract people’s attention. Substance will retain their attention.

Before coming up with a marketing gimmick, focus on what you ultimately want to achieve. Then have a process in place, so that the initial gimmick is followed-up with something of value. That’s how to attract people’s attention, retain their attention and earn their trust.

With the ongoing attention and trust of your marketplace, you can achieve great things for your business. Start with a marketing gimmick. But remember that the gimmick is only the start. It opens a door of opportunity. Nothing more.

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

Stop trying to appeal to everyone. Really. Stop it!

By Jim Connolly | November 25, 2017

Today, I’d like to show you how to avoid one of the most common (and costly) marketing mistakes.

Let’s go!

One of the cornerstones of successful marketing, is to identify exactly who your customer or client is, then focus exclusively on them. This is the opposite of what we see most small business owners doing. They try and be a little relevant to everyone, only to find they become directly relevant to no one.

Don’t do that.

Really.

Stop it.

It’s hurting your business!

So, here’s a smarter and massively more effective alternative.

Insiders

In order for your marketing to work, you need to determine exactly who you want to provide your services to. These people are your insiders.

Insiders are the ones you should focus your time and effort on. They are the ones you need to have in mind, whenever you make a marketing decision.

Of course, you can’t have insiders without outsiders.

Outsiders

It sounds a little risky to regard some people as outsiders. However, it’s the safest thing you can do. That’s why every successful business has outsiders. For example, if you’re Apple, your outsiders are people who want cheap technology. If you’re Gap, your outsiders are people who don’t care about fashion.

By deciding who your insiders are, you can create marketing that’s directly relevant to them. This is really important.

Why?

Because in order for your marketing to motivate someone to buy from you, it needs to be compelling. This means it needs to talk directly to them. Vague marketing, which tries to appeal to as wide a group as possible, lacks the impact required.

Ironically, this means that the wider range of people you try and appeal to, the fewer people you will reach with the impact required.

Decide what your ideal customer profile is

Then market exclusively with them in mind.

For example:

Compose every piece of marketing as if you were talking directly to them.
Use their language.
Study what matters to them.
Be where their attention is.
Uncover the problems facing their industry.
Offer answers.
Become a useful resource.
Build services that address their specific wants and needs.
Become known as a specialist provider to their industry, rather than a generalist. (Specialists earn more, attract better clients and are always in high demand).

In short, make your marketing directly relevant to your ideal profile of client. This one step, will give you a powerful marketing advantage over the vast majority of your competitors.

How to build a massively valuable community, without Facebook or any other network

By Jim Connolly | November 20, 2017

What do Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Linkedin have in common?

They’re relied on by millions of business owners, as a way to connect with their marketplace.
Plus, these same business owners have zero control over them.

Think about that for a moment.

On Friday, the popular Unilad Facebook Page was removed from Facebook. It has over 34 million likes and reaches billions of people. The page came back after a couple of days, following a huge media outcry.

The whole thing served as a timely reminder. A reminder that outsourcing the communication channel between your business and your marketplace, to an unaccountable 3rd party, is really risky.

Of course, if you or I have our main social account deleted, there’s unlikely to be a huge media outcry. Click… and we’re gone, along with the community we built.

The answer?

The answer is to take control away from social networks.

How?

My recommendation isn’t sexy. It’s not fashionable. It’s certainly nothing new. But it works. And it’s of massive value.

I’m referring to email!

Sure, use social as a way to connect with prospective clients / customers, if you really want to. But encourage those people to give you permission to contact them via email.

Pushing ads isn’t community building

Many small business owners fail with email, because they make their emails little more than a series of advertisements. Every email should contain what I call Independent Value. This means the reader should get something of value, independent of whether they spend money with you.

So no, a series of emails from you all about special offers isn’t going to cut it. That’s advertising, not community building.

Here’s what works: Only contact people when you have something useful to share. Show up regularly. You’ll then be building your very own permission-based community (what Internet marketers refer to as “your list”).

Yes, make it easy for people to get in touch with you, when they want to hire you or buy from you. Just don’t make that the focus of your emails.

Get it right and you’ll never be reliant on any social network.

I don’t have the time, Jim

A couple of interesting things happen, when you no longer need to spend all that time every day, feeding your business’ social networks.

You’ll rediscover the time you lost. This will give you more than enough time to build your own email community. I’m a dad, husband and I run a successful marketing business with clients all over the world. Plus, I work out for over an hour every day. However, I spend less time on social networks than anyone I know. That’s not a coincidence.
You’ll also find it massively easier to focus. It’s difficult to concentrate on anything, when you’re being constantly distracted by social media updates.

These benefits combine to provide you with a far more productive working environment.

They also “gift” you the additional time and clarity required, to create useful content for your email community.

Business and personal

An important distinction needs to be made, between business and personal use of social networks.

I’m not suggesting you stop connecting with family and friends.

Far from it! I myself use Twitter socially. The vast majority of my contacts and tweets are not connected to my business. It’s a leisure activity for me, which I really enjoy.

My point is the importance of building your business community on a platform, which YOU control. It’s about highlighting the risks of handing the main communication channel between you and your marketplace, to a 3rd party, over which you have zero control.

How effective can building an email community be, when a small business handles it correctly? Well, despite Jim’s Marketing Blog being one of the most popular blogs in its niche, 12 times MORE people read the email version of the blog. My email readership is also, easily my biggest source of new clients and enquiries.

Outsourcing the communication channel with your marketplace, to any social network, is extremely risky. It’s also 100% avoidable.

Here’s what you need to know: This is a proven example, which shows you how to get it right. It includes how I helped a client build a massively valuable reader community. You can read it here.

Who’s responsible for your results?

By Jim Connolly | September 13, 2017

I spent some time recently with the former owner of a local high street store. He explained that the reason his business flopped, was that the “economy was too weak”.

And he was wrong.

I know a number of the people whose retail outlets are on the same high street as his and although a few have flopped, they are a very small minority. Most are doing fine, others are expanding. Including those with the same target customer profile as him.

Not his fault?

He was blaming the wrong culprit. The reason that guy’s business failed, was that he did too few of the things required for success. In other words, he made it impossible for his business to succeed.

For example, he was trying to compete based on price, against online retailers who had a fraction of his overhead; so he was playing to his weaknesses, rather than his strengths. His in-store experience was also very average. He got way too few customer referrals. There was no buzz about his business.

As you’ve probably guessed, he did all his own marketing himself. He did it himself, because like most small business owners, he lacked the business sense and the confidence to get expert marketing help.

The sense, because he thought it didn’t matter.
The confidence, because he saw only risk and it scared him.

He told me, “Finding the right expert help isn’t easy, Jim”.

Yes it is!

Check their credentials. If they stack up, hire them. If not, don’t. If someone lacks the judgement to know good from bad, they won’t be in business very long.

Blaming the economy for the failure of his business is like a bank robber blaming the police for being in jail, rather than taking responsibility for having robbed the bank.

We need to be smarter than that. Which, let’s face it, isn’t hard.

You see the blame game everywhere

Listen to the coach of a losing team after a game and you will often hear all kinds of blame being dished out. Listen to the winning coach and you will hear them talking about how effective the planning was and how committed the team was.

The most effective people in any area of life take responsibility for their actions and inactions. The buck stops with them.

They wouldn’t have it any other way.

Why?

Because accepting responsibility gives them complete freedom. It motivates them to do the right things, correctly… knowing that the right results will surely follow. So, if you want more sales, get a better marketing plan and work that plan.

Every business owner is faced with just 2 choices, when it comes to the development of their business:

Take responsibility. Decide what you want. Get the help you need. Then do the work.
Or find an excuse not to.

Sure, that’s not much of a choice. In fact, if you want your business to thrive, it’s no choice at all.

Marketing 101: Total website optimization

By Jim Connolly | August 19, 2017

There are lots of ways to optimize a web page or blog post. The most obvious and popular is SEO. However, it’s only half the story. In today’s post, I’m going to share another kind of optimization, which is even more important.

As you know, with SEO you optimize your content and site. The idea is to make it rank as highly on search engines as possible, for the correct search terms. It means getting the balance right, with things like:

Word count.
Image tags.
Keyword repetition.
The use of bold (and italics) on certain words
The use of keyword weighted subheadings.
External link building.
Internal linking.

Basic SEO is both important and easy. Really easy.

There are software packages, which will show you exactly what to do. As of August 2017, Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress alone has over 3 millions active users. And many of Yoast’s users have thousands of pages optimized. There could be hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of SEO’d pages out there. Remember, that’s just one of many SEO packages, on just one framework.

Another way to optimize your website or blog

As well as optimizing for search engines, there’s another area of optimization. It’s something, which gets a lot less attention. That’s because it’s a lot trickier. Plus, you can’t automate it. I’m referring to optimizing your writing for people. For example:

Improving the clarity of your message.
Summoning the courage to write what you believe, rather than repeat your version of what everyone else is saying.
Maximizing the motivational impact of your message, so it becomes utterly compelling and converts readers into clients, customers, sales leads, subscribers, etc.

Be sure to get the basics of SEO right. Make it as easy as possible for search engines to understand what your site is about, so they can offer it as a resource to the right people.

More importantly, when people arrive on your website or blog, your words need to inspire them to take action. So, consistently strive to optimize your writing. Make it as compelling as possible. Every word must count. No fluff.

Because there’s no point attracting people to your site, if they leave as quickly as they arrived.

How to attract your ideal clients in just 3 questions

By Jim Connolly | July 11, 2017

I think you’re going to find this extremely useful, so I had to share it with you today.

I have 3 questions for you to ponder. They’re simple questions. However, they can put you on track to attract massively more clients. Not only that, these will be clients who are an ideal match for you and your business!

Attracting your ideal clients

I want you to think about what happens when someone visits your website, sees your social media updates, reads your newsletter or consumes your podcasts or videos, etc.

Now answer the following 3 questions:

Does it tell them who you are?
Does it tell them what you stand for… the things that really matter to you?
Does it give them a reason to switch from their current provider to you?

The majority of small business marketing fails on not one, but all three of those questions. It fails to tell us who they are, what they stand for or why we need to leave our current provider for them.

And without those essential questions answered, there’s nothing whatsoever to motivate anyone to give a rat’s ass about them.

You have a personality. Your business has one too: a way of working, which is your way of doing things. You have things you care passionately about. These are also reflected in the way you work. You have, or can find, powerful reasons why someone should hire you or buy from you. And it’s that mix, which sets you apart, helps you stand out, attracts attention and inspires people to hire you.

So don’t keep it a secret.

Look at your marketing copy. Review your blog, newsletter, social media, podcast / videos… whatever. Then make sure they communicate all that’s meaningfully different about you. In other words, give your marketing your DNA. Your fingerprint.

When you do, your marketplace will have something to connect with. And those in your marketplace who value your message, will be drawn to you.

That’s right: You won’t just attract enquiries. You’ll attract enquiries from people who value the very things, which you and your business value. These are your IDEAL prospective clients or customers. Just think about that for a moment.

Tip: If you’d like to know how and why to stand out, even in an extremely competitive marketplace, read this.