Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Marketing results in 2010

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Here’s a quick question: What kind of sales results are you expecting in 2010?

By the way, if you want great results, I’ve put links to dozens of powerful ideas at the foot of this post for you!

I’ve worked with thousands of small business owners and studied thousands more and I’ve found that we are all creatures of habit, who tend to fit into 1 of the following 2 groups:

Group 1

Some of us habitually strive to achieve better and better results, by using increasingly effective marketing strategies and taking the actions required for sales and marketing success.  We know that whatever 2010 throws at us, we are masters of our own destiny and we look to the challenges of 2010 with excitement.

Group 2

These business owners habitually avoid change.  They prefer to stick with what they know, even if it’s not working.  As a direct consequence, they already know that 2010 will be a struggle.  Many have already decided to just sit tight and hope things will get better.  They look to 2010 with apprehension.

Thankfully, we each get to pick which of those groups we are in.

If you are in group 1 (and if you read this blog I am assuming you are), here are some marketing ideas to help you blow the lid off your potential in 2010:

Make a million – How leverage works in marketing

The importance of taking action

How to develop the right marketing mix for your business (Part 1)

How to develop the right marketing mix for your business (Part 2)

A list of 34 marketing tips and ideas

Here’s 10 of the most commonly used, effective, small business marketing activities

… and finally, here’s something for you to avoid – Marketing that makes you cringe.

An inspired idea

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Here’s a quick tip for anyone, who wants to ensure they never lose a great idea again.

It’s a fact that you are never more than one great idea away, from achieving a massive breakthrough.  That’s why it’s so important for you to be prepared when inspiration strikes, so you can capture it!

Here’s the thing with inspired ideas: They tend to come to you at the worst possible times.

Inspiration has a strange habit of striking when you are not holding a pen and paper or sat in front of a computer.  You will be; walking, cycling, waiting for a train, going for a run, stuck in traffic, etc.  As a result, it’s way too easy to forget that great idea by the time you get back to the office.

Use a digital audio recorder

Everywhere I go, I carry a small, digital audio recorder with me.  It’s about the size of a packet of gum and it can record dozens of hours of audio.  As soon as I get an idea, it goes straight into the recorder.  Then, at the end of each work day, I go through the recordings I’ve made.

For example, I wrote these 34 marketing tips after listening to 34 short audio recordings of marketing ideas I had captured.  So, if you’re looking to treat yourself to an inexpensive yet extremely useful Christmas gift, this might be a great little investment.

How do you capture ideas at the moment?

Also, where do YOU tend to get your best ideas? Let us know!

Why bloggers post every day – Part 2

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Do you write a blog?

Are you thinking about blogging or taking your blog more seriously?

In either case, I believe you will find this post really useful.

As regular readers will recall, I wrote a post last month about the results I have seen, since I increased the frequency of my blogging from around 1 post a week to 6 or more posts a week.  This is part 2 of that post; Why bloggers post every day.  I suggest you read part 1 before you continue, as it contains some very interesting findings, which could really help you!

However, since writing that post I’ve noticed another interesting development, which I want to share with you.

More visible, more mentioned

It’s now a month since I started blogging almost daily and in addition to the results I covered in part 1 of this post, I am now starting to see a significant increase in the number of times that this blog get mentioned.  These mentions range from people citing this blog (or me) in their blog posts and articles, through to an increase in the number of times I see the blog and myself mentioned across Twitter, Facebook, forums and newsletters etc.

Why is this happening and what can we learn from it?

As I said in part 1 of this post, there was a significant growth in reader numbers here, as the frequency of my posts increased.  A larger reader-base obviously gets your blog and your name on more peoples radar.  The more people aware of you and what you do, the greater the chances are that you will get mentioned.

Of course, this then alerts new people to your blog and your work, increasing the size of your readership and thus the process feeds itself.

Here’s something special

By getting good quality information in front of people regularly, I believe you also become a more integrated part of your readers daily experience.  Many readers will position you very differently too.

You, (the blogger) become a regular part of their working day.  Your blog becomes a growing repository of answers and ideas, a knowledge-base that your readers can rely on. If you can understand what’s happening there, it’s so powerful that it’s almost magical.

Share your experiences

Do you tend to subscribe to blogs that are updated more regularly or less regularly?

How often do you think a business to business blog should be updated?

If you are a blogger yourself and you have either increased or decreased the frequency with which you post, what kind of feedback have you seen?

Please join in the conversation and share your feedback!

All you need is a laptop and a phone line

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I was speaking with the engineer who came to fix our heating system yesterday.

As I made him some coffee, he asked me what I did for a living, so I explained a little about what I do.  Afterwards, he said;
“So, you run an marketing business, with clients all over the world, and all you need is a laptop and a phone line? Wow!”

I then replied;
“So, you fix complex electronic control panels for advanced heating systems and all you need is a bag of tools? Wow!”

It takes more than tools

Thanks to the Internet, there are more free or inexpensive marketing tools than ever before.  Anyone can set up an account with; Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, WordPress or Blogspot etc.  However, very few small business owners or entrepreneurs achieve significant, tangible results from their investment in these tools.

Here’s why: They only take step 1, of what is a 2 step process.  Once you have mastered the mechanics of the tools, (how they work), there’s a second step required.

You need to study how to use the tools you have selected, in order to generate bankable results.  Very, very few people have a strategy for transferring; followers, fans, retweets, connections, readers etc, into paying clients or customers.  I include social media gurus here, most of whom seem to rely almost exclusively on speaking at conferences for their income – Few of whom, surely, want to spend so much time away from their home each year.

Sadly, there’s no generic piece of marketing advice I can give you, that will provide you with the correct marketing strategy for your business.  That’s because  your strategy needs to take many factors into account, which are specific to you and your business, in order for it to work.

For example, when a new client joins my marketing service, our entire first marketing session is a fact-finder, where I ask them dozens of questions about their business and what they want to achieve.  It takes hours!  However, armed with that fact-finder information, I can develop a powerful marketing strategy for them, based on taking them from where they are today, to where they want to be in 3/6/9 and 12-months.  Then, I work with them every week for a year to make that happen.  Between us, their competitors don’t stand a chance!

Here’s the bottom line: If the purpose of your marketing activity is to generate bankable results, (rather than followers, retweets and fans, etc), and this is not happening, you must change your strategy.  Don’t become one of the masses, who mistakes movement for progress.  Hard work alone is not enough.

How to discover what your prospective customers want

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If you want your marketing to succeed, it’s essential that you understand exactly what your customers and prospective customers want.  This feedback allows you to develop your services and market them; with an accurate understanding of what your marketplace actually needs, rather than what you think or hope it needs.

Listening to the marketplace

Sadly, the majority of small businesses get their feedback almost exclusively from existing customers.  And even then, only when there’s a problem or when a customer is delighted with the service they have received.  These extreme ends of the scale are useful, but limited.  They tell you what you are doing well and less well – but they don’t really help you discover what your prospective customers want or need!

Remember: When you develop a product or service that’s the answer to a common problem, which is not being solved effectively by anyone else, then market it well – You can achieve hockey stick sales figures VERY quickly!

I regularly ask my clients for feedback on everything I do.  However, I also ask for feedback from my blog readers, many of whom are prospective clients.  I regularly encourage them to comment on my posts and I often ask for their opinions.  I did this most recently on Saturday, in a dedicated post. I need to know what my readers think I am doing well and what they believe I am doing less well. I need to know what topics my readers are most interested in, etc.  This gives me a clearer picture about what my prospective clients are interested in.  So far, via email, blog comments and Twitter, I have had over 100 people get in touch.

Marketplace feedback

If you genuinely want to be as relevant and valuable to your marketplace as possible, start talking to them and request feedback regularly. Here are some of the things I suggest you look for:

  • Look for problems that you can fix.
  • Look for gaps in the market that you can service.
  • Look for areas where there are misunderstandings regarding your industry, as these are opportunities to educate and inform.
  • Look for areas where your competitors are strong, so you can make your services stronger / more valuable.
  • Look for ways to differentiate your services from what’s already ‘out there.’
  • Look for feedback regarding how well known your ‘brand’ is among your prospective clients or customers.

Those are just some really useful pieces of information, that can help you massively improve the success of your marketing.  However, in order to get that data, you need to ask.

What do you think?

So, what additional feedback would you add to that list?  Please take a moment to share your thoughts with your fellow readers and myself.

Your feedback please

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In order to make this blog as valuable a resource as possible for you, I need to know what YOU want to see here.

Sure, I have analytic tools that let me see the posts that get read and shared the most, but that’s only part of a much bigger picture.

So, with that in mind, I would really appreciate it if you would let me know what you would like to see me do more of on the blog (or less of.)  Am I missing subjects that you would like to see me cover? Let me know.

Please feel free to give as much or as little feedback as you wish on anything related to the blog. If you would rather contact me via email, feel free to drop me an note over at jim (at) jimsmarketingblog.com.

Please help me make this a better marketing asset for you and the rest of the blogs community in 2010.  Your opinions really matter to me.

Thank you!