Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

1 Essential word your marketing needs. Plus 1 you absolutely MUST avoid

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business growing, how to

Here’s a very quick tip, to help you improve the sales effectiveness of your marketing. It’s all about a word you use regularly, which is negatively impacting how people feel about your business.

That word is change!

People are hard-wired to fear change.

We know that change, good or bad, is a source of stress. Even something as positive as the change that comes from getting married, buying a new home or setting off for a week in the sun, is a cause of stress. In short, change is a trigger word, which places the prospective client or customer in a suboptimal state.

Because of the negative way people feel when confronted with change, it makes sense to remove the word from your marketing. Don’t worry, I am going to give you a massively more powerful, motivating alternative!

Improve, rather than change

Whenever possible, use the word improve, rather than change. Improve, is a positive word. It’s an attractive word too, because we are always looking for something better.

For example, look how the phrase below becomes far more powerful, when change is replaced with improve.

“This copywriting tip will change your marketing results.” (It could make them worse)

“This copywriting tip will improve your marketing results.” (It will make them better)

Your prospective clients or customers fear change, but want things to improve. So, stop offering them what they fear and give them what they want.

All the tools you need are here, for free

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marketing blogs, marketing help

You now have FREE access to every prospective customer on the planet. This means your potential to grow your business is literally limitless.

Think about it:

  • Social networks have given you free access to a global audience.
  • Podcasting has given you a free, global radio show.
  • YouTube has given you a free, global TV channel.
  • WordPress has given you a free magazine, plus free, global distribution.
  • Email has given you a free, global communication channel, which scales to infinity.

You have permission!

You don’t need permission from anyone. You don’t need a talent scout, publisher, radio executive, TV producer, magazine editor or anyone else, to pick you.

So, what’s stopping you? Find out. Fix it. Then watch your business thrive!

Stop wasting your time, marketing to the wrong people

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marketing blogs, marketing strategy

If your marketing is not attracting enough sales leads or client enquiries, I have an idea to share with you. It’s based on a strategy I have used extremely successfully with my clients.

Here’s the thing: You can waste a lot of time and money, marketing to the wrong people. Fortunately, the opposite is also true. If you market to the right kind of people, you can massively improve your results.

Allow me to explain.

Ignore the disinterested

No matter how great your service is, people who are delighted with their current provider are highly unlikely to switch to you. That’s because they’re not looking for a new provider. They’re simply not interested in dumping a service, which they are extremely happy with.

We call the people who are not in the market for your services, the disinterested. Whilst it is possible to sell to those with no interest, it’s an extremely low leverage activity. It’s also totally unnecessary.

Focus on the dissatisfied

It makes a great deal more sense to focus on those who are eagerly looking for a new provider. We call these people the dissatisfied. They are actively in the market for what you’re offering. They’re ready to make a purchasing decision. They are motivated buyers.

Certainly, build an awareness of how great your service is. Make it easy for people to find you, when they have a future need. That goes without saying.

However, if you want to connect with people who will give you their full attention AND who are ready to hire you, create a marketing strategy that seeks out the dissatisfied.

This is a specialist area of marketing and something you will need help developing. The upside is that it’s far more effective than trying to convince the disinterested. The huge, positive impact this can have on your future results is hard to overstate.

Tip: Here’s some free advice on how to build a successful business, which includes lots of ideas and examples.

Your marketing begins with the service you provide

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In this post, I’m going to share the answer to one of the biggest and most important problems facing business owners.

A fundamental truth

When we encounter outstanding value, we take action. We make a purchase. We tell our friends, so they don’t miss out.

  • At no point do we need to be pestered to make a purchase.
  • At no point do we need to be pestered to spread the word.

The outstanding value captures our attention and then motivates us to take positive action.

Your prospective clients are just the same

If your prospective clients encounter outstanding value, it will capture their attention. It will motivate them to hire you, buy from you and / or spread the word about you. If you offer outstanding value, once a handful of people know what you do and how you do it, the word will spread like a virus. [That’s why we call effective marketing Viral Marketing].

There should be no need whatsoever to keep pestering the same people again and again with your marketing.

However…

  • If you’re telling people about your service, yet they don’t hire you or tell their friends about you, you must take heed.
  • If your clients are not a very regular source of new clients, you must take heed.

You need to listen to the silence. It’s telling you something. It’s telling you that your service isn’t interesting enough to capture people’s attention and not valuable enough to motivate them to take action.

Confronted with this feedback, the typical small business owner does the exact opposite of what they need to do. Instead of pumping massively more value into their service or product, they look for magical ways to market an unattractive service, which no one is talking about.

Marketing begins with the service or product you provide

When I work with a new client, we start by making their service irresistible. I show them, often simple ways, to make their service vastly more attractive to their prospective clients. It’s only after this, that we dazzle their marketplace with the powerful mix of their newly-irresistible service and highly effective marketing.

Get those 2 elements right and the sky is the limit!

Want to massively improve your marketing? Then get specific!

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There’s a big difference between learning something and learning something of value.  When I speak with people about my services, I often say;

“Some coaches teach so others can learn – That’s not me!
Some coaches teach so others can accomplish – That IS me!”

This is because not all information is the same.  I meet with businesspeople all the time, who tell me how much they enjoyed a certain book or how interesting they found a seminar or workshop they attended – BUT that they still have the same problems or challenges.  They were educated, but with the wrong information for their unique situation.

What are your specific marketing challenges?

I’m guessing that every person reading that question, will have similar answers.  They may want to:

  • Make more sales.
  • Make the same number of sales, but make those sales higher quality.
  • Boost their profits.
  • Find new markets for their products / services.
  • All the above

Here’s where the challenge begins for most small businesses.  You see, although they generally want to achieve one or more of the above outcomes, their situations are unique.  For example, they have differing skills, time resources, finances and unique likes and dislikes.  So, if they apply a ‘general’ marketing idea that they pick up from a; book, seminar, website or newsletter, it’s usually pretty ineffective.

Another month / year’s worth of business progress is lost. (Ouch!)

When I put a marketing strategy together for one of my clients, I always match what they want to achieve, with their unique resources.  For those of you intent on going it alone with your marketing, I strongly suggest you try and do the same.

Here’s just a handful of things you need to ask yourself, before you use marketing ideas you find in a book, seminar, website etc:

  • Does it fit in with your time resources?  Do you have the time available to start it off and to see it through to the end?
  • Does it fit in with your finances?  Can you afford to implement it correctly in the short, medium and long-term?
  • Will it provide the results you need quickly enough?  When do you need to see a bankable return (MONEY) from it?  Do you believe it will get you where you need to be in time?
  • Is it consistent with your personality and your reputation?  If you put (whatever) marketing in place, will it be consistent with your commercial image?
  • Can you clearly see the direct benefit it will bring?  Is it going to generate; readers, follows, retweets, Facebook friends OR is it going to generate the bankable results you need?
  • How might it impact your relationship with your existing clients and customers?  For instance, if you are thinking of offering a super deal for new clients, how might this make your existing clients feel – knowing they are getting a worse deal?
  • Is the end result likely to generate the profile of client or customer you want?  Are you sure that doing (whatever) marketing, is going to deliver the type of new business you want?

The point of this post is to highlight that your unique situation will only improve, when you start using strategies that compliment it correctly.

Whatever do you, don’t waste another year doing the wrong things really well!

Easy access to the marketing answers you need!

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I had one of those moments earlier, where something suddenly clicks into place.  I figured out that Jims Marketing Blog is not actually a blog.

Yes, it’s built using blog software, but it’s not a true blog.  A blog (short for web log) was originally supposed to be an online journal.  That’s why everything’s presented in date order; with the latest ‘news’ at the top.  This format works brilliantly for news blogs or those offering time-sensitive information.

However, this blog (like most other business blogs) doesn’t typically offer time sensitive information.  For example, yesterday’s post about managing your reputation, could have been written next month or 2 years ago.  If you need to know how to write a great marketing letter, who cares if it was posted in February or April?

The typical posts I offer here, are far more like marketing articles or short marketing guides, than chronological, blog updates.  And herein lies the challenge for content providers using blogs to publish their content.

Like most blogs, if someone shows up here today for the first time, they will see this post and below it, excerpts of another dozen or so posts in date order.  The thing is, there are hundreds of marketing articles here, covering thousands of ideas.

Yes, people can use the “search” box on the right to look for specific marketing information, but most people don’t!  They start reading the current post and then follow links within the post or maybe one of the related posts at the bottom of the post.  This really isn’t an ideal format and it means a lot of people miss the key marketing answers they need.

I’ve seen other bloggers try workarounds, like having a “the best of” section – but the READER decides what’s the best post – Based on what THEY are looking for help on, not the blogger!  These “best of” sections simply make popular posts more popular.  Great for increasing the blogger’s page views, but lousy for the reader!

A possible solution?

I’m working on a way around this, which will be based on developing a small number of dedicated sections, each themed on a core area of marketing.  This will be similar to the way categories work on a blog, but hopefully easier for people to find and navigate around.  Those who like the current format will notice no real difference, but those who want to be able to find targeted information more quickly will.