Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

  • Home
  • About
    • About Jim Connolly
    • My top marketing tips for 2025. Yours now, for free!
    • Privacy Policy
    • How I use cookies
    • Contact
    • Disclosure
  • Hire me
    • Let’s Grow Your Business
    • Pick My Brain for the results you need!

Internet marketing experiment update!

By Jim Connolly | November 19, 2008

It’s almost 2 weeks since I started an experiment on jimsmarketingblog.com.  I wanted to see what REALLY happens when a blog offers a valuable, ‘do-follow link’ to everyone who comments there.

What does ‘do-follow’ mean?

In brief, every time you comment on my blog, you will receive a special kind of link back to your website or blog.  This link actually tells Google and Co to visit your website or blog – which can really help your Search Engine Optimisation.

Sadly, the vast majority of blogs (over 99% apparently), offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google and Co NOT to follow the link to your website or blog. They do this to stop the mighty Google penalising them with a lower page rank and also to stop spammers targeting their blogs.  Links from do-follow blogs like mine are a lot more valuable, so spammers apparently target them more (or do they? – Read on!)

Here’s what’s happened thus far!

Comment numbers are about the same

This surprised me.  The percentage of people commenting here is, surprisingly, no higher than it was BEFORE I gave do-follow links!  The original post, where I announced I was offering do-follow links, has now had well over 200 comments.  However, the number of comments on my posts since then, have only grown at the same rate as my readership.

Links have doubled in 12 days

There has been one amazing, immediate improvement, since offering do-follow links!  You can call it the power of attraction, karma, sewing and reaping – but the number of people linking to this blog has literally doubled in just 12 days!

No increase in Spam

Another surprise is that I have not seen any increase in the amount of spam I get, not yet anyway.  I am getting the odd idiot try to use the comments section of various posts, to advertise their latest wonder product – but that’s nothing to do with the do-follow links – that’s just what some misguided people do on any well read blog.  These are deleted immediately.  Everything else has been caught by my spam filter.  I use the Akismet plugin for WordPress.

Google isn’t happy with me

Google traffic here had been increasing until I started offering do-follow links.  Now, it has stopped increasing and has actually dropped slightly.  That said, all search engine traffic combined accounts for less than 1% of the people who come here.

In case you were wondering, the 4 biggest sources of people to this blog are:
1. Direct traffic
2. Twitter
3. StumbleUpon
4. Links from other blogs and websites

Conclusion

It’s still very early days, but I have seen nothing to stop me offering do-follow links.  The readership is growing extremely well and I have attracted over a thousand new links; since offering do-follow links to my readers.

The lesson thus far, has been that the Internet is actually about PEOPLE and not about Google or any other company!  If people like your website or blog, and you market it correctly, they are going to share it with their friends and contacts.  If the people at Google are as smart as I think they are, they will catch onto this and stop trying to punish blogs that, like mine, are committed to helping others.

So, the experiment continues!

What do you think?

If you have any ideas or opinions regarding what I am doing I would love to know!

twitter marketingEqually, what have YOUR experiences been with linking, Google or blogging in general – share them with my readers and myself in the comments section.

If you are a Twitter user, please leave your user name in your comment, so people can follow you – I’m @jimconnolly by the way!
.

Dear Google

By Jim Connolly | November 14, 2008

An open letter to the Google algorithm

.
Dear Google algorithm,

I see from what you have done that I have REALLY offended you.  You have reduced the amount of traffic you send here by 50%, so you must be very angry with me.

In view of this, I just want you to hear my side of the story…

I know you like to see blogs post content every single day, regardless of quality.  I know you have ‘issues’ telling great content from crap, because you are just a piece of software, and that you use how regular someone posts to a blog as a way to determine the quality of that blogs information.

You really need to understand that the Google way of deciding value seems insane to us humans!  If we used the Google quality model, a blade of grass, for example, would be of higher value than a flawless diamond. Grass is really common you see Google, but flawless diamonds are extremely rare.

I ‘could’ have written a few more posts this week, just to keep you happy Google, and I would have – only I decided to spend all my ‘blog time’, actually communicating with the people who read and comment in this blog!

Google – If you ever decide to start ranking blogs based on the quality of the writing, the quality of the comments and the number of people who actually read and comment there – we can be friends again.  There are flawless diamonds in the comments section of this blog – if only you knew!

However, whilst you continue to rank blogs based volume over quality, you can take the worthless 0.4% of traffic you generate for me and poke it up your software driven, clueless *@*!$
.

Love and hugs,

Jim Connolly

Focus on people – Not ‘hits’!

By Jim Connolly | November 10, 2008

Because of the amazing growth of this blog, since I started marketing it just 9 weeks ago, I am getting a lot of people asking me the same question:

Could you take a quick look at my blog / website Jim and give me some tips for how to get more traffic?

This question is based on an easy to make, but incorrect assumption.

It assumes that I’m a SEO expert
– When I’m actually a Marketing Professional!

I’m not a SEO (search engine optimization), expert.  Those are the people who can get you to the top of Google and help you get tons of ‘traffic.’  I am a marketing professional with a blog.  The success I have achieved with jimsmarketingblog.com has been achieved through marketing, not SEO.

In fact, even though my last post has already attracted over 155 180 comments, I break many SEO ‘rules’!

For example, I’m told a blogger should post something every day, for the best SEO results.  That’s why your favourite Internet Marketing or Social Media ‘Guru’ will often use guest bloggers to write stuff for them – just so they can get SOMETHING out there and keep Google happy. I prefer to post only when I have something of value to share with you – because I blog for people and NOT for Google.  As a result, people know the content here will always be consistent and from the same, trusted source.

blog marketingAlso, I refuse to compromise on the way I write, just to make it easier for search engines!  I am not repeating ‘key phrases’ or ‘key words’ over and over again.  Why?  Because if I only compromised my writing style by 1% in order to keep GOOGLE happy, that 1% could be the message YOU needed to hear in order to achieve a great sales or marketing breakthrough.

It’s just NOT an option for me.  I write for YOU – Not for Google.

I use two forms of SEO here

I change the title tags of each post, to make them as relevant as possible to people and I also use alt tags for any images.  These 2 forms of SEO take seconds to do and don’t get in the way of what I am trying to achieve.

So, what am I trying to achieve?

A blog powered by PEOPLE – NOT just another blog where GOOGLE decides who finds it and how successful it will be!

SEO is ONLY important if you want search engine ‘hits’

SEO is something I believe you need to embrace, ONLY if you want to attract better search engine results.  I recommend you invest in as good a SEO provider as you can afford, if you want more traffic from Google and company.

However, I also think you should invest in some of the free, non-SEO ideas I have used on jimsmarketingblog.com. That’s what this post is all about!

Community

Look through the 160 180 or so comments on my previous post and you will see something amazing! You will actually be able to sense the genuine warmth my readers have for each other and for me.  There’s already a strong community developing here and that’s what has led to the success of this blog.  This feeling of community is why people are so comfortable when commenting here, contacting me or even hiring me for their marketing.

Because of this sense of community, you will also see lots of comments from people who use Twitter.  There’s a good reason for that too! When I started marketing this blog (just 9 weeks ago), I had about 160 contacts on Twitter.  Today, I have over 5,100 contacts – thanks to the JimsMarketingBlog.com community. Isn’t that amazing?  I use just one social networking service and yet connect with more great people, than many who are in half a dozen networks.  That’s the value of community!

I find many small businesses think about their online marketing in terms of; hits, clicks, visitors or traffic.  I believe a far bigger emphasis should be placed on; people, community, connecting and networking.

Use great SEO – but never forget the human element.  Those hits, clicks and visitors are people, after all!

What do YOU think about mixing SEO with a MORE people-focused approach to marketing? Let us know!

Marketing Guru’s, equality and attraction

By Jim Connolly | November 4, 2008

Recently, I have started getting a lot of emails from people; asking me a version of the same great question.

Here’s the question:

Jim, I hear that you don’t use any form of paid advertising or link exchanges – yet your posts often get dozens and dozens of comments. According to alexa.com (or whoever), this new blog gets lots of traffic. How are you doing this?

So, what’s my ‘secret’ then?

My secret is simple. It’s all down to Equality and Attraction!

Equality

I provide marketing material for people just like me; small business owners and those who work in sales / marketing.  If I know what I am doing, you should fit into that group too.  We are all totally equal here.  I don’t buy into that Internet celebrity or marketing guru bullshit. I’m just a normal person who happens to run a successful marketing business. I have the marketing answers you need and I work hard to get as many of them to you, in as clear and interesting a way as possible.  I don’t have a tribe; I have a network of friends and great contacts.

This is a level playing field, where you and I are part of the same marketing community.

Guess what?  That means when you email me, I always email you back.  When you comment on this blog – if your comment requires or requests an answer, I give one, always.  If I like your work, your blog or your product, I promote it for free – you won’t even know most of the time, until you check your stats, sales (or Twitter follow numbers!)

marketing guruMy readers seem to like my guru-free approach to delivering the marketing information they need and helping them succeed.

As a result, you recommend this blog, my RSS feed and my newsletter to your contacts.

You are the reason a 3 month old blog is attracting so much attention. You are the reason I don’t need any paid advertising.  You are also the reason I continue to do this; even though I have been financially secure for life since I was 29 years old (I’m 43 now).

That’s despite starting off in life broke; with no connections, the son of immigrants and covered in scars and even a gunshot wound from a violent childhood in the slums. I’m proud to say that I earned my money selling millions of pounds and dollars worth of ‘goods and services’ – NOT selling books or seminars on ‘how to sell!‘

Although my primary focus is always on giving, I have already generated thousands of pounds / dollars worth of sales for my business, from this new blog.  I did over £7,500 worth of business from enquiries here in the first 10 days alone. If you have a website or blog and you would like to attract more business or leads, here’s how I do it.

Attraction

My work is all about attracting sales and enquiries –  not chasing them.

Why?

Simple – people hate being pestered by salespeople!  They hate being pursued by overzealous networkers (online and offline.)  They hate having unwanted advertising thrust upon them.

People LOVE to buy things but they HATE being sold to!

Here’s how people often get it wrong
This morning, I decided to help my Twitter followers build their follower numbers and get some traffic to their blogs.  I asked them to send me the URL of their blog.  Then, I sent another message out to around 4,500 people – with a link to all the blogs that had been sent to me.

What do you think happened?
Within minutes a couple of people decided to send THEIR blog over and over again; so their blog address appeared multiple times in the link I sent!  I received over a dozen messages from people telling me they had blocked these users and some had even advised their followers to block them as well.

That’s because people hate being pushed, pestered, chased or pursued.  Whenever someone tries to use these tactics to generate sales, they come up against resistance. What a hard way to generate new business!

marketing guru advicePeople come to this blog looking for free marketing ideas, strategies and information.  They come here to connect with people and ask questions through the comments section.  So, that’s what I provide.  I don’t ‘push’ anything.  In fact, there is only ONE page on this entire blog where you can learn about my marketing services.

You attract sales, leads and referrals by being attractive.  In the online world, this means making your site or blog as valuable to your ideal profile of client / customer as possible.  You do this by focusing on delivering quality and quantity. It requires a mindset, where you are prepared to give high quality information away for free; not just the watered down free stuff you see on most websites or in free ebooks!

If you keep all the good stuff back for your paying clients, how is a prospective client going to know how brilliant you are?

You need to make your blog or website an Aladdin’s cave. This means, when your prospective clients or customers arrive, they need to believe they have just stumbled upon a goldmine of great information.

If you sell widgets, make YOUR site or blog THEE place to find out everything they need to know about widgets!  If you sell a service (like I do), use your blog or site to showcase your expertise. Show you really know your subject, answer people’s questions and position yourself in their mind as an expert in your field.

Of course, we are not only attracted to people, groups, blogs and sites that offer great value – we love to SHARE them with our friends and contacts too.

I always advise people to take a look at their marketing and decide if it is genuinely attractive to prospective clients / customers or not.  If you are not sure or you just want to make your marketing even more attractive, ask yourself the Aladdin’s cave question, which I touched upon earlier.

“Would someone visiting my website or blog immediately think they have just stumbled upon a goldmine of great information?”

If the answer is no, look for as many ways as possible to add massive value!

Online networking & attraction

By Jim Connolly | October 29, 2008

As some of you already know, I use Twitter; the micro-blogging tool, to keep in touch with some friends, clients and contacts.  I have three thousand followers and really enjoy interacting with them; they are a BRILLIANT bunch of people!  However, I know that many of them find it hard to get new followers, so I decided to do something to help!

My idea

I wanted to develop a list of my followers, who were all interested in networking – so people could build their Twitter follow lists. I sent my followers a Twitter message (called a Tweet), asking them to send me their name and their username, if they wanted to go on this list.

Only around 70 of the 120 or so replies I got were actually usable.  The remainder were sent without a name, or were emailed to me via the blog, without a Twitter user name! Obviously, because so few of the messages were usable, it became way too time consuming for me to continue and the list has been closed.

Two important lessons I want to share with you

Firstly, Twitter is a wonderful tool, but it is limited. It only allows you to post 140 character long messages. This means it’s great for getting short, direct messages out, but lousy for explaining things.  I’m sorry for not being clear enough with my request – But that’s NOT the reason I’m writing this!

There was a second, far more valuable lesson here!

Around a dozen of the messages I received were borderline abusive or very abrupt.  So, as a marketing man, I wanted to know how that kind of online networking attitude was working for these people.  Here’s what I found….

I decided to take a look at their websites or blogs, using a few of the well-known online research tools – just to get a very general idea of how many people they were attracting to their sites.  Not one was registering even average traffic numbers.  Then I took a look at the blogs of those who had blogs, and saw very few comments or signs of reader activity.  Finally, I noticed that none of them had more than a handful of followers on Twitter either.

Whether building a network of clients online or offline, it seems the same rules apply:

People are attracted to attractive people
– and they are repelled by repellent people.
.
When I talk about being an attractive person here, I don’t mean physically attractive – I mean attractive in relation to one’s personality and actions.  Even ugly, bald guys like me can be attractive as people ya know!

The way we interact with people online is REALLY important.  If we try to help people, speak well of people and focus on delivering quality to people – we will attract the help and co-operation of others.  However, if we speak ill of people, are abrupt with people or focus too much on ourselves – we will attract very little positive response.

What have YOUR experiences been with online networking?

Do you have any tips you would like to share with your fellow readers?  If so, please leave a comment below.

Common marketing mistakes 101

By Jim Connolly | October 24, 2008

There’s a lot of information on this blog about things you can do, which will help you dramatically increase your sales results and profits.  However, it’s ALSO really important to know some of the things you must avoid, if you want your business to succeed. That’s because some marketing mistakes can nullify all your hard work and actually set you and your business way, way back!

Common marketing mistakes 101

marketing mistakesThis post contains some of the most common and damaging mistakes I see people making with their marketing. I hope that through the comments section, you will share some of the common errors you see people making too! Here are a few, in no particular order, to get the process rolling:

1. Failing to differentiate their product or service

One of the hardest things to sell, is a product or service that looks to be ‘about the same’ as hundreds or thousands of alternatives.  It’s hard to stand out and grab peoples imagination, when you seem to offer ‘just the same’ as a stack of other providers.

For example, the Internet is filled with people offering coaching or consulting services that look identical to each other. They offer a service that sounds the same, to the same potential clients, with the same kind of promises and THEN market it in the same kind of way as each other! The net result is that EVERY PENNY they spend on marketing is being cancelled out, by the thousands of other people who are doing the same things.

The problem here, is that some of these services are outstanding and others are rubbish! However, because they all seem so similar and promise the same results, it’s impossible for a prospective client to tell one from the other.

If you want to make sales all day long, break away from the pack and BE YOURSELF!

Develop your own unique voice and use it to show the VSP (Valuable Selling Proposition) you bring to the marketplace. If you can answer the following question, and then communicate it effectively in your marketing, your sales will sky-rocket immediately;

“What genuinely compelling reasons are there, for someone to become a client of mine; rather than one of my competitors?”

For example, I answer this question by offering a marketing service to small businesses; which gives them unlimited access to me for a whole year, for a small, single, capped fee!  We have regular marketing meetings all the time, so my clients can plan ahead with total peace-of-mind; with me as their virtual Marketing Director and advisor.  Also, if they get a problem or they just want to kick some ideas around, they can call me whenever they want.

YOUR answer to the above question must be non-generic.  In other words, it’s not enough to promise great customer service or to promise to go the extra mile for your clients – everyone promises that – even those who don’t provide it!  Your answer has to be something that makes it super-attractive to become one of your clients.

2. Relying on pedestrian copy writing to sell their services

Most smaller businesses tend to write their own marketing copy – and the results are often shockingly poor.  For example, it’s not uncommon for a small business to pay a fortune for a great website, and then write the wording for that site themselves!  As a result, they find that people who visit the site don’t fill in contact forms, click links, email them or call them.

That’s because pedestrian copy writing simply INFORMS people – without inspiring or motivating them to take action!

If you want to dramatically increase the number of sales or leads you get from your; website, blog, advertising, mail shots or email marketing – get your marketing written by a professional!

3. Focusing on the size of their network, rather than it’s value

networking events groups marketing salesYou have seen them, the people who attend EVERY local networking event and eagerly thrust business cards into as many people’s hands as possible.  They then ask the stranger; “So, tell me how I can help you” …. just like their 1980’s networking manual told them to!

OK – that’s one way to build a network.

Here’s another!

My former client, Susan, is a marketing consultant to small businesses.  She decided to do as I suggested and stopped attending every networking event in town.

I got Susan to shift her focus from the typical ‘numbers game’ approach to networking – To focusing on quality and influence instead.

I got Susan a list of the 10 main accountancy practices (or CPA’s) in her region; who between them, look after around 35,000 local businesses.  Susan then decided that these would be her ‘network’; as they had the potential to provide her with more high quality clients than she could ever need.

I suggested she attended some local lunchtime events sponsored by these people and to use the opportunity to set up meetings with the senior partners of each firm.  After attending just three events, Susan had meetings booked with each of the people who would become her new network.  She did her homework and focused on what she could do for them and their clients.

Six of the accountancy practices were just not interested.  But she DID manage to form a great relationship with the other four practices and she now has a client-base full of top quality clients.

The bottom line: A network of 30 well-connected, influential people is vastly more commercially valuable and easier to manage, than a network with 300 contacts who lack influence or reach!  As human beings we are obviously all of equal value, but in the marketplace, some people are massively more influential than others.

4. They don’t show everyone how brilliant they are!

The information most small businesses and entrepreneurs put on their websites, blogs and in their newsletters, is usually a watered-down version of what they are actually capable of.  They fear that if they give too much away for free, people won’t pay them for ‘the good stuff’.  This is a SERIOUS mistake!

Why?

Because if you don’t let people see how great you are until they become a client, how are they supposed to find out?  If you only have a diluted version of your work available for free, that’s what people will associate you with.  You have to let everyone see the value you are capable of providing. I know you are great, you know you are great – now let ‘them’ see how great you are!

I am not talking about giving it ALL away.  I’m simply suggesting that you make sure that there is real, genuine value in what you decide to put ‘out there.’

OK – What are the most common marketing mistakes YOU come across?

Here’s your chance to share the most common marketing mistakes you see small businesses making. If you can offer a solution too – please do!  I want to make this post as valuable as possible.

How to make sales the easy way!

By Jim Connolly | October 14, 2008

Generating high quality sales on a regular basis can be either really hard and stressful or really exciting and enjoyable.  Sadly, for most businesses, making frequent high calibre sales is a struggle.  It’s easy to see why, when you look at what they do.

They make life as hard as they possibly can for themselves, by replicating what their competitors are already doing!

How to make sales the HARD way

sales and marketing tipsMost small and medium-sized businesses offer the same kind of service as their competitors, for the same kind of price as their competitors, to the same potential clients as their competitors.

Then, they market this service in the same way as their competitors.  The net result is that AT BEST, their service seems just the same as all the others!

For example, there are over a dozen, equally-qualified law firms in my local area – but I could not give you one valid reason to pick one of them rather than another!  In fairness, the same could be said of most service providers in most areas.

How to make sales the EASY way

To regularly generate high quality sales, you need to start by putting all the odds in YOUR favour! You do this by:
1. Offering the marketplace something it wants.
2. Being the only provider of this product or service – so there’s no competition.

Break away from the pack

To achieve sales success in a competitive industry, it is essential for you to break away from the pack and design your business and marketing around what the marketplace wants.

Most businesses wrongly assume that because their competitors are doing things in a certain way, they should too.  However, as we have seen, when you follow the pack you simply blend into the background.  How do you break free from the pack and ensure you are moving in the right direction?

Listen to your marketplace

The first thing you need to do is identify a genuine need within your marketplace, which is either not being serviced by anyone or not being serviced correctly. Most businesses will listen to their clients and the prospective clients they meet and then use this tiny, unrepresentative group to base their picture of the marketplace on. This is too small a section for you to accurately read what the market for your services REALLY wants from a provider.

If you want to make the right decisions, you need to listen to the needs of the wider marketplace.  This is where all your future clients are, after all.

Fortunately, this has never been easier, thanks to the Internet!  From the comfort of your desk, you can find out what your prospective clients are worried about and what problems they have.  Armed with this information, it’s easy to spot opportunities for your business.

Remember, whatever industry you are in, you are always a professional problem solver.  If you are a dentist, you solve the problem of tooth-ache – if you are a web designer, you solve the problem of ugly or poorly-functioning websites etc.

How to get all the information you need

Without doubt, the fastest and least expensive way for any small or medium-sized business to learn what their marketplace really wants or needs, is to follow their marketplace ‘online’.  The best way to quickly collect all this information, 100% free, is to find some blogs, websites and forums that your marketplace read / comment on and then READ THEM!

The easiest way is via RSS (you can find out about RSS here.)

For example, let’s assume Bob runs a commercial insurance brokerage and he specialises in working with hotels, based within a 100 mile radius of him.  He would subscribe to the RSS feed of each blog in his area, that’s focused on the hospitality industry.  He would then take time to read the questions that hoteliers ask in these blogs, as this is a good way to learn about their concerns or problems.

Bob could also start his own blog and use it as a way to communicate with the marketplace.  Unlike a website, a blog allows you to have a dialogue or conversation with all your readers and everyone can join in.  This is a superb way to get the essential feedback you need and to learn what your marketplace wants.  By the way; it’s also very effective as a way to make new contacts.

Bob could also use his blog to share useful resources with his readers, so they start to think of him as a problem solver; giving him a massive competitive advantage over his competitors.

Creativity and marketing

Once you learn the problems and challenges facing your marketplace, you now need to get creative!  You need to either think of a way to adapt one of your existing services, so that it solves these problems or you need to create a new service.

For example, I did this exercise with one of my clients a while ago.  He owned a successful accountancy practice and we found that in his area, local businesses were crying out for a professional lunchtime networking event.  So, we developed a free networking event every month and the results were stunning.  Not only did he manage to generate stacks of new clients and contacts through these events, he found a second, even more valuable benefit.

When he or one of his staff met with a potential client, because they were the only practice in the area offering this free facility, they were seen as the accountants who not only ‘did the numbers’ – but helped their clients make money too!  This set them apart from all their competitors and led to some amazing results.

Is it time you broke away from the pack?

Whatever area of business you are in, you will always find it hard to win new clients or make more sales, if you are replicating / repeating what your competitors are doing.  Find out what your marketplace really wants and then focus on delivering it in the most effective way possible. It’s a lot easier to make sales when your product or service is the answer to a problem, that no one else in your area / region is solving other than you.

That’s how to make sales the easy way!

The marketing power of questions

By Jim Connolly | October 3, 2008

If you want to improve your marketing, boost sales and increase the profitability of your business; you need to understand and use the power of questions!

In marketing – questions are like gold dust because…

The questions you ask determine the answers you get!
The answers you get determine the actions you take!
The actions you take generate either success or failure.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Bob is struggling to win new clients for his business.  The mailshots he has always relied on to generate his sales leads, have slowly become less and less effective.  With very few leads, Bob is now making very few sales. So, Bob asks himself this question;

“What can I do, to make my mailshots more effective, so they generate more leads?”

The kind of answers Bob can expect might include:
“I could make a more attractive offer in the letter.”
“I could get my letters written my a professional marketing copy writer.”
“I could use a better mailing list.”

These are not bad answers – but they are answers to the WRONG question!

Bob’s problem is not the success of his mailshots! His problem is the number of sales he is making!

Bob should have asked himself a question like;

“How can I achieve a massive increase in sales and profits?”

This kind of question would lead to far more valuable answers, like;
“I could stop mailing 500 companies a month using the post and mail 100,000 companies a month instead using email.  The savings will be massive – making the cost of each sale dramatically lower and my profits far higher!”

“I could advertise my widgets in ‘The Widget Gazette’ and get my sales message in front of 200,000 widget buyers next week!”

“I could start attracting leads using pay-per-click advertising on Google / Yahoo etc!”

“I could get my widget website fully Search Engine Optimised and use an SEO company that will work on a commission basis!”

“I could do an endorsed mailing with another company; where they recommend my widgets to their clients – the results can be stunning and the cost-per-sale is very low, increasing my profits!”

The marketing power of questions

There are an almost limitless number of GREAT answers to the second, more effective question!  Each answer has the potential to solve Bob’s sales dilemma and with so many great options, it’s far more likely that he will turn his sales figures around!

If you want to make more sales or increase your profits – make sure you are asking yourself the right questions.

3 great Internet marketing tips

By Jim Connolly | September 21, 2008

In this blog post, I am going to give you 3 great tips to improve the amount of leads, enquiries or sales you make from your website!

But first, have you ever wondered why some of your competitors appear on the first page of Google, when you do an industry related search?

They have really average looking websites and the content is no better than yours – so how come they rank so highly and get all that lovely search engine traffic?

You ‘might’ be surprised to learn that it has LESS to do with the quality of their site and MORE to do with things like the number of inbound links their site has and how many times a day or week it has new information added to it!

Search Engine Optimisation = Google optimisation

I know people speak about Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) – but it’s really Google optimisation. Here in the UK, for example, more than 80% of all Internet searches are done via Google. So, it’s all about Google and doing what THEY say you need to do, in order to rank highly.

This means, if you seriously want to get onto the first page of Google for a common search term associated with your industry or profession – I’m afraid it’s going to cost you serious money! I know medium-sized companies today, which spend over £8,000 every month on SEO; to get as close to the top of page one of Google as possible!

Yes, those people who appear above you in the search rankings at Google, are often paying tens of thousands of pounds a year for their FREE place at the top of those search results!

A big marketing problem for small businesses!

Google created a major marketing problem for every small business on the planet, as soon as it became the dominant search provider. It’s all down to how Google decides which sites to place at the top of its search rankings. Two of the most important things Google looks for are:

1. Inbound links, preferably thousands, linking to you from relevant sites!
2. Regularly updated pages, preferably updated on a daily or weekly basis!

Obviously, most small businesses simply do not have the time to add new pages to their website every day and they lack the time and expertise, to add the thousands of links from other people’s websites too!

Google’s SEO model loves BIG companies!

Bigger companies find it extremely easy to make their way to page one of Google.com – without breaking any rules! That’s because Google is rewarding things that small companies cannot afford to provide; like a dedicated person or group of people pumping links and content into their website!

Big companies, however, simply hire a great SEO company to do it all for them (along with the dozens of other nifty techniques that SEO companies use.)

Small companies & website traffic

How can a small company possibly compete; when it doesn’t have the time / expertise to do its own SEO or the money to outspend it’s bigger rivals?

Simple: It uses a different approach to generating targeted traffic to its website! That’s what I am going to share with you, with the following 3 essential internet marketing tips!

Internet marketing tip 1: Get an SEO company to optimise your site!

If you have a business website YOU NEED A GOOD SEO PROVIDER! A website that is not optimised might as well not be there – because it’s pretty-much invisible. An optimised website, on the other hand, can be a money-making-machine for you and your business. An SEO company will make sure that your website is configured correctly, so that it is visible to search engines. They can also make sure you have enough relevant inbound links and give you some great SEO tips (like putting keywords into the headings of your pages etc.)

Get an SEO company to look after your website on as regular a basis as you can afford. This alone is not going to get you to the top of Google, but it will make sure that your site can be seen by Google and that you get a better position than you have today. Every little helps and even basic SEO is often a very worthwhile investment!

Internet marketing tip 2: Get a business blog!

Google values sites with regularly updated content. This is useless for most commercial websites, because once they are written they are pretty-much static. There’s no need to add new pages or new sections each day, even if you had the time to.

Google likes to see new content added at least once a week, preferably more often! This is why so many businesses now write a blog, which is actually woven into their main website. Each new post counts as a newly added page and also generates new links – all working toward helping your website climb the Google search rankings!

Blogs are also a great way to reach new people and to have ‘conversations’ with them; through the comments section of each blog post. This is what I love most about this blog; it gives me the opportunity to have a two way dialogue with you. Right now, you can read what I am saying and then let me and all the other readers know what you think – something just not possible on a regular website!

As I write this, Jim’s Marketing Blog is just a month old and already has over 700 inbound links. It is also starting to generate a regular flow of search engine traffic and generating traffic to my main website at jimconnolly.com

Internet marketing tip 3: Use social bookmarking

You can generate high quality, targeted traffic to your website, without a search engine!

By joining a social bookmarking or social networking website, you can attract targeted traffic and make some great contacts too – all for free! I use StumbleUpon and my personal favourite Twitter – both of which have really helped me to reach more people with my work. I have had one page of my blog visited more than 5000 times in an hour or two – after a friend from StumbleUpon recommended it to his other friends. If you want to know more about StumbleUpon click the link.

Twitter allows you to communicate directly with people, each of whom have their own network of contacts. By selectively generating a network of contacts on Twitter, you can get highly-valuable feedback and also lots of new traffic to your website. I have made some amazing contacts on Twitter and can not recommend it highly enough! You can contact me now via Twitter – my user name is @jimconnolly (say hello)

There is also Digg, Reddit, Delicious and MANY more.

In fact, if you look at the bottom of all my posts, you will see a list of buttons. These buttons allow people who read my stuff and like it, to share it with their contacts at the press of a button.

You can and should be able to generate daily or even hourly enquiries, leads or sales from your website. This brief post / article has just scratched the surface and I will be adding more information in coming posts.

I suggest you start now, by looking for an SEO company who will give you an assessment of your website and a quote, to make sure your site is fully optimised. Many SEO companies offer different levels of service, from a one-off basic review of your website – to an ongoing service, where they handle everything.

I will be covering Internet Marketing and SEO a lot more in future posts and also in the articles in my newsletter.

Avoid toilet paper web design

By Jim Connolly | September 12, 2008

Marketing is all about developing trust.  This is why I am always totally amazed, when I see an apparently legitimate company, using the exact same ‘toilet paper web design’ as used by online criminals, scammers and con artists!

What is a ‘toilet paper web design’?

I coined the phrase ‘toilet paper web design’ a year ago.  It refers to that ugly, hard-sell design style, where web pages are fairly narrow BUT REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LONG!  They just roll on and on like a long narrow roll of toilet paper (hence the name!)

Usually, these over-long pages use lots of different font colours and font sizes, plus pictures of expensive cars, piles of money or sometimes both!  There’s way too much use of underlined words and highlighted text – they look like a total mess!  Some even show fake copies of financial records and fake testimonials about whatever scam they are trying to fool you into signing up for.

They then end with a super, limited offer; for you to get a ‘bundle’ worth 299.99, for just 24.99!  The bundle is either membership of something or a photoshop image of a box, which looks like a 1970’s soap powder box!

Legitimate businesses should use legitimate marketing!

When someone visits a website, they immediately form their all-important first impression of that website and the person or business behind it! If they see you using the same online marketing style as a scammer, you are really in trouble!  Your image will be warning them NOT to go within a mile of you – that’s not good for your marketing!

Unbelievably, some of the most common users of toilet paper web design are legitimate business coaches, trainers and consultants! This con artist template is fine for con artists.  However, if you have a legitimate business with a legitimate product or service, it’s crazy to try and emulate what criminals do.

Whenever I have spoken to legitimate businesses, who use the toilet paper web design approach, they always say they did it after either reading some ebook or after seeing a site that claimed to be successful, using the same approach.

An ebook can be written and posted to the Internet in minutes and a scammer will never admit their site is not working!  They usually have dozens of sites and rely on each one finding enough vulnerable people to make a small profit!

If you know a legitimate business that’s using this approach – point them to this article and help them avoid being wrongly associated with Internet scumbags!

Good marketing advice?

By Jim Connolly | September 7, 2008

I have just been reading some dreadful marketing advice; given by a self-proclaimed ‘marketing guru,’ to the owner of a small business. The advice was in answer to a question posted on Twitter.  The advice was totally incorrect and showed that this so-called marketing ‘guru’ didn’t even possess a basic understanding of marketing.

I checked-out the guru’s website and…

Because the advice was so obviously given by someone with no marketing background, I was curious and decided to check out her website.  In seconds you could see that this lady was clueless when it came to marketing!

Her website was horrible.  It lacked even basic Search Engine Optimisation, the copy writing (wording) was shockingly poor and the site looked really ‘cheap!’

The site was littered with marketing buzz-words, and as you would expect, there were the obligatory links to various affiliate marketing programs promising to make you RICH RICH RICH!!

Bad marketing advice can kill a small business!

We live in an age where anyone can set up a website or blog and claim to be an expert on anything!  That’s why, as a respected name in marketing, I decided to start a website a couple of years ago – www.jimconnolly.com – that just GIVES AWAY FREE MARKETING information to anyone who wants it. No, you don’t even have to subscribe to anything or register – it’s ‘just there’ for you to read, listen to and enjoy the results!

Small businesses and those just starting out, rely heavily on free advice.  I wanted to make sure there was a 100% free, reliable marketing resource for them, which they could use to massively improve their sales results. Because I base all the marketing information at jimconnolly.com on ideas I have used to generate millions in sales for clients and myself, people know they can trust the advice there.  Of course, it’s also the reason I launched this marketing blog!

Jim who? – Never heard of you!

If you don’t already know who I am, I have been a marketing professional for over 20 years and I have run my own successful, international marketing business for the past 13 years.  I have generated many, many millions of pounds and dollars worth of sales and my marketing material now reaches millions of people each year, spanning over 70 countries.  My newsletter is read by thousands of people on every continent and my audio programs are used all over the world.  I have also contributed to programming on The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in the UK and CBS and CNN in North America.

I hope you find this blog useful. I am adding new material all the time and I encourage you to leave a comment and share your thoughts with other readers. Please feel free to share this blog with your friends, using the buttons below!

The power of a great marketing statement

By Jim Connolly | September 3, 2008

I saw a piece of marketing earlier today, which clearly demonstrated the power of a well-written marketing message. It was an advertisement for an Internet hosting company.  It makes what ‘sounds’ like a very positive statement; regarding the quality of their service – until you think about what they are actually saying!

Here’s what their marketing message said:

“We guarantee that websites hosted on our servers, will be working 99% of the time!”

However, 99% reliability for an Internet hosting company is AWFUL!

The promise of your website being online 99% of the time, if you select them to host your website MIGHT sound like a great deal – but it’s not!  It’s shockingly poor!

What they are ACTUALLY saying, is that if your business has it’s website hosted with them, you can expect it to be down, off-line and unavailable for the equivalent of THREE FULL WORKING DAYS EVERY 100 DAYS! So, over a period of little more than3 months, your potential clients or customers will be unable to find your website for a combined period of 24 hours – (that’s three working days, based on the 8 hour working day model)

There are 2 marketing lessons here

  • Firstly, the power of a well-crafted marketing message is enormous.  You can make something sound irresistible and inspire people to contact you and buy from you in their droves – even if your service actually sucks!
  • Secondly, even with great marketing, unless your service is excellent, you will lose clients just as quickly as you gain them – perhaps even faster!  When I searched for this company’s name on Google; it generated page after page of people complaining about the service they received. If only this company was as devoted to service, as it seems to be with its marketing, it would be massively more successful.

Marketing success

Marketing success comes only when you are able to win AND retain high quality business.  Looking after your clients and providing them with more than they expect, every step of the way, is not only great customer service; it’s extremely good business practice too!

Clear marketing sells

By Jim Connolly | August 30, 2008

In marketing, clarity is extremely important!  Your marketing messages need to clearly state what you do, what the benefits of your services are and why a potential client should do business with you or buy from you!

Clear marketing

Clear marketing messages command a potential client’s attention with laser-like precision!

Sadly, most small businesses use a foggy, conversational approach to their marketing and as a result, they lose stacks of business unnecessarily!

Most small business websites lack clarity

When you read the wording (or the copy) on the homepage of a typical small business website, it rarely gives you the core information you need!  Instead, you usually find a welcome message and some general ‘blurb’ about the company.  There’s nothing there to motivate the visitor / reader to click anything or do anything. As a result, most people quickly leave these sites and stacks of potential sales and enquiries are lost. This vague, generalised approach to marketing is a complete waste of time and money!

For example

I recently saw a website for a company that had the following headline across its homepage…

“Providing integrated business solutions to SME’s.”

Apart from mentioning that they work with SME’s (Small to medium-sized Enterprises), I have no idea whether they are; business advisers, software developers, accountants, recruitment specialists, hr consultants or anything else!

To make your marketing message stronger- try this!

Take a look at your existing marketing.  Read your website, your sales letters, marketing emails and brochures or flyers etc.  Make sure that each of your marketing messages explains clearly:
1. What you do.
2. How it will directly benefit the reader.
3. Why they absolutely need it (right now if possible).
4. Why they should buy ‘it’ from you (and not someone else).

This simple exercise can produce immediate, measurable results!

Beating the credit crunch!

By Jim Connolly | August 29, 2008

Whenever times are hard and the economy heads south, people (and businesses) have to think a lot harder before they spend their money.  This is something we have seen time and time again during past recessions.

However, the ‘credit crunch’ has given us a MUCH BIGGER problem, because our potential clients not only have less money than before – they are finding it hard or impossible to access credit too.  As a direct result, generating sales or winning business is set to become increasingly harder, with potential clients understandably extremely cautious about spending their money.  Perhaps more cautious than ever before.

One thing we know with total certainty, is that the marketplace for YOUR services is about to become more and more competitive.

This means your marketing has never been more important

You must be able to get the attention of your prospective clients and then totally convince them that you offer the best possible option for them.  Any business today, whose marketing is ‘average’, is going to find the coming two years (some say three) increasingly painful. The only solution is to improve the way they sell and market their services.

Why is marketing so much more important now?

During a normal or strong economy, people don’t have to think too hard about making a purchase and are measurably less choosy.  As a result, until recently, even poorly marketed companies were able to generate a level of sales; just by ‘being there’ or contacting prospects at the right time.

However, during a bad economic climate, people think far harder before they buy anything.  As a result, we are seeing people and businesses now shopping around for the best offer before they spend a penny.  Thus, they end up buying from the best marketed businesses, because these are the businesses who know how to grab their attention and make their offer sound the most attractive or compelling.

Today, good timing and hard work is no longer enough. You must learn how to out-market your competitors if you want to survive – let alone thrive!

Marketing provides an answer – Thankfully

Amid the doom and gloom, there’s always a ray of light.  You see, as well as receiving a massive number of emails from readers who are really struggling right now – I have also received a small number of emails from readers who are experiencing their best year EVER.

When you understand why some businesses are doing so well right now, you will have an opportunity to do the same.  But first, you need to know what ‘the average’ business does when faced with an economic slump.  This is really important.

Most businesses do nothing

The ‘average’ business today will continue to sell and market their services as if nothing was happening.  Sure, they will moan about the economy and their lack of trade; but they will just keep on doing the same ineffective marketing they always did.

They pin their hopes on things ‘just getting better’ before they run out of money.

In essence, they will stay inside their comfort zone and refuse to move, as if they were a 60 foot oak tree.

But some businesses take action!

Some businesses realise that there is a real opportunity here!  They know that when times are tough, prospective clients always look for value – and making your services look more valuable is all about GREAT marketing.  So, they decide to get serious about their marketing and thus they reap the rewards.  The rewards are far greater than you might imagine.

Marketing lessons from recessions

We know that during past economic recessions, the businesses that improved their marketing and marketed their services the most successfully, managed to gain a disproportionately large share of their marketplace.

Also, when the economy improved, they were in the perfect position to continue growing at a super-accelerated rate!  If you choose, you can turn the credit crunch into a springboard for your business. You can grow at the same time as your competitors shrink.  You can use the coming months to transform the future of your business and your life – but only if you take action and do the right things in the right way.

So – what next?

First of all – STOP!

If your business is currently finding it a struggle to generate the volume and quality of sales it needs – Stop whatever marketing you are doing immediately.

Because…

If you keep using the same kind of marketing, you will keep getting the same results.  Your sales, profits and turnover will not ‘just get better’.  In fact, as the credit crunch continues, your sales, turnover and profits will drop unless you improve things.

Five steps to beat the credit crunch

Step one

OK – as I mentioned above, the first step is to stop all marketing activities that are not making you money.  No matter how ‘comfortable’ you are with whatever you are doing, if it’s not working STOP doing it.  Either find a way to leverage better results from it or discontinue it completely.

Step two

Start getting tons of business through your website. It’s a fact; a fully-optimised website is both the most effective and the least expensive way to generate sales, leads and enquiries. Your website can (and should) generate leads and enquiries for you all day every day.

I know people in just about every industry who now get the vast majority of their leads and enquiries via their website.

You can reduce your annual marketing costs by 90% and increase your sales by 100’s% (or more) at the same time!  Almost all of all MY marketing is now done online.  However, before you start enjoying all those leads and enquiries from red-hot prospective clients, your website needs to tick two important boxes:

  • Firstly, it needs to look professional and have all the functions you need in order to collect enquiries, collect email addresses and make sales etc.  If you want to know why some businesses get leads from their websites on an hourly basis (or better), whilst most websites generate almost nothing, you need the second and most important element…
    .
  • Secondly, your website MUST MUST MUST be Search Engine Optimised.   The reason most small and medium sized business websites fail, is because no one can find them!  So, you will need to get an SEO expert to make your site the one that people find when looking for whatever type of services you offer.

This is the most important step, yet hardly any small business websites are professionally optimised.  Interestingly, 100% of all large company websites are optimised.

Getting a website optimised, is like picking up a shop, that’s located down an old dusty road with no passing trade – and placing it BANG in the centre of Oxford Street or 5th Avenue!

Step three

Read the sales and marketing posts and articles here on the blog.  Everything is written by me, based on what’s proven to work.  I put the blog together because most small and medium-sized businesses rely heavily on free marketing advice – and as a marketing professional, the marketing advice I found online was often pretty awful.  I found that much of it was either shockingly poor , or very out of date. Look at this.

Step four

Download and listen to this FREE audio program.  It will tell you how to get regular referrals, recommendations & leads.

Step five

There are some superb ideas waiting for you right now at TheIdeasBlog.com.  It has often been said that you are never more than one good idea away from achieving a massive breakthrough – so take a look.

The credit crunch is really hurting a lot of businesses right now.  If you have found this credit crunch marketing report useful, please forward it to as many people as possible.

In written marketing – LESS is MORE

By Jim Connolly | August 23, 2008

Here’s a quick marketing tip for you, which will help you get a better response rate from all your written marketing.  To increase the success of your mailshots, advertising, email marketing and the number of leads you get from your website:

Use as few words as you can to get your message across!

Two powerful reasons why, with written marketing, LESS is MORE:

ONE: By using as few words as possible, you remove all the dross and keep only the key points of your marketing message.  This makes your message clearer, more focused and easier for the reader to understand.

[mailmunch-form id="1079239"]

TWO: Just like you, the people reading your marketing have NEVER been busier!  When someone opens a marketing letter, or sees an advertisement, they do a quick scan of it.  If it looks too long, many people will decide not to invest the time required to plough through it!Most of the marketing letters, email marketing and advertising I see is AT LEAST 50% too long!

When your written marketing becomes clearer, more focused AND more people actually read the whole message – you significantly increase its potential!  This is a great way to leverage your results.

Your marketing mix part 2 of 2

By Jim Connolly | August 22, 2008

I am going to show you how to make your marketing more successful and more reliable, with something called your marketing mix. I am also going to give you a list and explanation of some of the most popular types of marketing, used by small and medium sized businesses.  I strongly suggest you read part one of this before proceeding.

This is a BIG marketing guide, with lots of great ideas, so please share it on your favourite social network or social bookmarking site.

In part one of this guide I shared one of the most common errors small businesses make with their marketing. The error is that they rely on just one or two different marketing activities in order to generate their sales.

This is a REALLY bad idea!

Firstly, if you rely on just one or two different forms of marketing, you are missing out on STACKS of new business and opportunities! No matter how good you are at getting the full leverage from a couple of marketing activities, you will be placing a very low ceiling on your business’s potential, if you limit yourself in this way. The most successful small businesses all use at least four or five different kinds of marketing – often 8 or 10 or more!

Secondly, by relying on just one or two marketing activities, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable when one of them stops working! A business owner emailed me to say that she relied on an advertisement in a business publication for over 90% of her sales leads. One of her competitors started advertising in the same publication and her number of leads (and sales) dropped by 40% overnight – That hurts.

So, your marketing mix should combine at least four or five different marketing activities, which compound and create a regular supply of sales for you. Here are some of the marketing options you should consider adding to YOUR marketing mix.

Advertising

A targeted message delivered through a great ad, which is read, listened to or watched by your core target client group is REALLY powerful! For a free advertising guide, click here.

Online networking or ‘social networks’

Online networking has great marketing potential. The key is to join a network that is best suited to your needs and to be selective with whom you network! Focus on the quality of people in your network and NOT just the quantity. If you develop a network of 30 well-connected, motivated, professional people and I develop a network of 3000 people who ‘just wanted to join my network’ – your network will be massively more valuable then mine.

A couple of the more popular business networks are www.ecademy.com and www.linkedin.com.  Other’s now use Facebook exclusively as a business networking tool.  I personally use Twitter and have found, like many others, that it is perhaps the most powerful of all.  Whatever network you choose, you are likely to see FAR BETTER results than through wasting your time at traditional ‘networking events’ (Click here to see why traditionasl networking is a waste of your time!)

Exhibitions

As an exhibitor at, (or visitor to), a well-attended exhibition aimed at your target client base – you can easily get to meet people face-to-face, who are almost impossible to reach using other forms of marketing. Depending on your industry or profession and the average lifetime value to your business of a client, you could find exhibiting at well-attended exhibitions an extremely valuable part of your marketing mix. I know companies who win most of their high quality work via exhibitions.

Email marketing

It’s a fact; email marketing is extremely cost effective and certainly one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses. It works incredibly well – and costs little or nothing.

Here are a few things to consider before adding email marketing to your marketing mix. I recommend you build your own email database (mailing list) rather than buy one from a list broker. The best way to get started is to ask your existing clients and contacts if you can have their email address and if it’s ok for you to email them occasionally with news or special offers.

You also need to get people joining your email list from your website! To do this, make it as easy as possible, and offer something of value as an incentive for them to join your mailing list, like a free ebook. Also, only ask for their email address – not their life history, and let them know that you will never, ever pass on their details to ANYONE!

ONLY send people valuable information (like this free guide) or a genuinely special offer. I also strongly recommend that you don’t bombard people with email; just one message every week or 14 days is more than enough. I send my Newsletter out once every seven to 14 days, because people hate being bombarded with information; even great information! As a result, very few people ask to be removed from my subscriber list.

Finally, to grow your list, ask readers to forward your emails on. Obviously, making sure all the while, that you abide by the rules governing email marketing in your country.

Telephone marketing – Tele sales

Telephone marketing works – but it’s less effective than it used to be. Not that long ago, you could call someone’s direct ‘phone line and know that if they were in, they would pick up the phone. Today, people from even the smallest of companies screen all their inbound calls with voice mail; to eliminate unwanted interruptions and sales calls. This means you now need to make massively more calls to reach a smaller number of people!

I used to tell the owners of small businesses to learn how to make telemarketing calls and then set some time aside and make those calls! Today, I suggest you outsource the whole process to a proven telephone marketing company. Doing it yourself is now a low-leverage marketing activity, because it requires so much time.

Outsourced telephone marketing is still a high leverage activity, because you will usually only pay per lead or sale.

Traditional networking

Traditional networking is a total waste of your time – avoid it!

Your website

It’s not enough to simply ‘have a website’! Your website needs to work for your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; generating leads, making sales or collecting the email addresses of potential clients. If your website is simply an online brochure, it’s costing you a fortune in lost sales, lost profits and lost opportunities!

When your website is supported by a newsletter and some Internet marketing, the results can be transformational. Still not convinced? Without spending a penny on advertising, my Internet marketing often reaches over 2 million people in a week! I will be writing separate guides all about forum marketing, article marketing, pay-per-click and blogging shortly.

Joint ventures

Sometimes known as a J.V, a ‘Joint Venture’ is where you and another business or person get together to (usually) cross-market your services. The key to JV success, is to find someone credible, who offers a non-conflicting product or service to the exact same profile of person or business as you do.

So, if you sell recruitment services to the hospitality industry and they sell employee benefits packages to the hospitality industry – BINGO! They can include one of your flyers or letters in one of their mailings and you can do the same for them; everybody wins. Avoid doing a JV with ANYONE you contacts you via email – unless you know them or can check them out. If in doubt – leave it.

Endorsed relationships

An ‘Endorsed Relationship’ is similar to a Joint Venture – BUT with one BIG and POWERFUL difference! The person you do the venture with actually gives you their professional or personal endorsement. This is marketing gold dust.

For example: Rather than just slipping one of YOUR marketing flyers in with one of THEIR client mailings (as they would in a Joint Venture), they actually write to their clients and give you their full endorsement. This is easily the single most powerful form of referral and one of the most powerful marketing tools on the planet.

I have seen endorsed mailings return a 90% positive response rate!

Conclusion

Obviously, the above list does not cover every marketing option open to you, but I hope it gives you a few ideas.

No matter how good your service is, your future success will be determined by how good you are at winning and retaining good quality clients. As Robert Kiyosaki says, lots of people can make a better hamburger than McDonalds; but very few can sell hamburgers more successfully. In today’s super-competitive economy, your marketing is more important than ever before, so make sure you give it the time and investment it needs!

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2

FREE marketing tips & advice

Get my best marketing tips, advice and ideas delivered direct to your inbox. Just add your email below.
I respect your privacy.

Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help small business owners to increase sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. Read more here.

Featured by

marketing advice, marketing help

Site sponsor

packaging consultancy

Categories

  • Blogging (406)
  • Business development (479)
  • Copywriting (303)
  • Email marketing & mail shots (186)
  • General marketing (1,663)
  • Professional development (534)
  • Social media marketing (355)

Hosting provider

20i hosting

Search

Recent posts

  • Give it away July 8, 2025
  • The false assumptions that destroy your results June 30, 2025
  • Here’s how the best paid service providers earn the highest fees June 25, 2025
  • Hard work isn’t enough (here’s what is) June 24, 2025
  • Make your marketing totally unmissable. Here’s how! June 19, 2025
  • Discounts: The full cost to your business June 17, 2025
  • Rapid, massive business growth: With MBRs June 9, 2025
  • For next-level success, swap your fears. Here’s how! June 6, 2025
  • It works better than advertising June 2, 2025
  • It’s the most valuable question in sales! May 27, 2025
  • Grab. Focus. Urgency: How to vastly increase your sales May 20, 2025
  • Attract. Don’t sell May 14, 2025
  • Marketing gold: The follow-up May 10, 2025
  • How to make more sales, in uncertain times May 8, 2025
  • 17 Tips to help you grow a stronger business May 6, 2025
  • How to increase your prices May 2, 2025
  • Your economy April 27, 2025
  • From rags to riches? April 26, 2025
  • Tiny tweaks. Huge wins April 21, 2025
  • Working in. Working on April 15, 2025
  • Home
  • About
  • Hire me

Copyright © 2025 Jim Connolly