Jim Connolly Marketing

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Marketing that makes you cringe

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This week, I have already received several, ineffective “old school” marketing messages, based around the same tired, generic format.  I wonder if you get these sales pitches too?

The person introduces themselves to you and then asks, “how can I help you?” The subtext here, is that the person wants you to believe that they are offering this help out of the goodness of their heart and not as part of a commercial transaction.  Money, prices or fees are never mentioned – Just the mysterious offer of help, from a stranger who knows nothing about you or your business or your needs.

They want you to think of them the way you would, if your car had broke down miles away from anywhere and they kindly stopped to offer you a lift.

Of course, in this case, they were not just driving by – you were deliberately targeted for marketing purposes. They know and you know that in reality, they are actually looking to make you a customer.

Like most people, I cringe when someone tries to market to me under this kind of false pretence.  I also wonder what they believe they will achieve, by starting off a commercial dialogue, with both parties aware that there’s an unspoken, yet blindingly obvious ulterior motive in play.

If you want to help someone, that’s great. If you want to market to someone, that’s great too. But please, don’t pretend to be doing one thing when in reality, you are doing the other. The marketplace is not stupid.

Marketing advice

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I was looking at our search analytics yesterday and saw that a number of people found this blog, searching for the phrase marketing advice, using google.

I entered the phrase into Google and saw that I was on page 1 of google.com.  As I write this, I’m still on page 1, though this will change – possibly by the time you read this. See below:

marketing advice

Is Google getting smarter?

Although I use meta tags for each post and title tags for some posts, the copy writing here is not deliberately optimised.  In other words, I write exclusively for humans and not to keep search engines happy.  Even so, google has been able to identify that there’s lots of marketing advice on this blog.

This confirms what many experts have told me; that the easiest way to optimise a site, is to stick to your topic and make it as valuable as you possibly can.  After all, the content on your site is what encourages people to link to you. These links allow new people to discover your site – But they are also used by google as a way to ascertain the value of your content.

Any good search engine optimisation (SEO) expert will be able to help you get more targeted traffic to your site. In my opinion, every business these days should have a budget for professional SEO. However, it’s comforting to know that by focusing on good quality content, you can still achieve page 1 rankings for valuable search terms.

Inspired marketing

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If someone has a piece of your written marketing in front of them right now, will they feel inspired to take action?  Will your marketing message compel them to call you, email you or visit you?

Written marketing

I am in the process of writing an article for my next marketing newsletter.  It’s all about how to make your written marketing more powerful.  Copy writing is one of the most overlooked areas of marketing within small and medium sized businesses.  They will often invest thousands in a great website, an advertisement, a mailshot or a brochure – only to blow it all by writing their own, uninspiring copy.

A professionally written marketing letter, advertisement or website can out perform one written by a keen amateur by thousands of percent.  I’m not talking marginal differences here.  For example, this blog generates more enquiries in one day, than many sites with more traffic will get in a whole month.

Fortunately, it’s really easy to measure how effective your existing written marketing is; simply by measuring your results.

Unfortunately, a lack of results is not usually enough to motivate a business owner to have their copy written professionally.

I spoke to a web designer recently, who designed a £17,000 website for a client.  Unbelievably, the client was happy to spend all that money on a new website, but refused to pay for a professional copy writer!  Three  months later, his client has had four email enquiries via the site and not a single phone call.  This, despite the fact they have very effective search engine optimisation (SEO) and get a lot of targeted visits each day.  When my friend asked the site’s owner why she didn’t have her new site copy written by a professional, she told him; “the cost would probably be too high.”

Clearly, she can afford the cost of losing tens of thousands of pounds worth of new business though!

When I speak with business owners, who are getting poor results from their marketing, they always blame outside factors.  They will blame the economy (even when times are great), the marketplace, the time of year etc. 

It never crosses their mind that the reason they are going nowhere, is because their marketing is ineffective!

By the way, these are the same people, whose mailshot letters you throw in the paper bin and whose advertisements and websites you ignore.  They honestly believe that YOU are the reason they are failing; not thinking for one moment that their pedestrian copy writing and amateur marketing might be to blame.

Inspirational marketing

We have to remember that our prospective clients are not idiots.  Today’s consumer is better informed than ever before.  They see ‘average’ marketing all day long; it just washes over them.

To motivate someone to become a client or customer, we need to capture their attention and then inspire them.

Don’t copy your social media guru

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I’m a marketing man, not a social media expert. However, because some social media tools are excellent for helping small businesses market their services, I’ve spent years studying the marketing potential of social media.

Here’s an important observation I would like to share with you.

Don’t copy your social media guru

It’s all about why you should not necessarily use the same social media strategy, as your social media guru.  Whilst their advice might be superb, simply copying what you see them do, is not always the right thing to do.

Let me explain.

In my experience, most social media professionals make their living selling a mixture of; books, downloadable products and ads or sponsorships on their blogs. Some of the better known social media figures also offer seminars / workshops internationally too.  Unlike most of their readers, they are not geographically limited in what they provide. Someone buying their latest book or eBook in the same street is no different from someone making that same purchase, on a different continent 10 time zones away.

If you run a business, which provides services (or sells to) a particular geographical area, you are going to need a far more geographically targeted approach to your use of social media.  You will need to focus your efforts in a way that attracts and develops opportunities in the area that’s of commercial interest to you.

For example, if you are an accountant or lawyer, it’s unlikely that you will be seeking business leads or referrals on an international basis.  Apart from anything else, your qualifications will restrict what you can offer internationally.  If you work in insurance, your products may have geographical limitations too.  Same again if you operate a franchise business, with a set territory.

Tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and FriendFeed are known for making it possible to easily develop an international network of contacts.  However, they also make it possible to search for (and connect with) your target audience too – people where you do business.

Your social media feedback

I know that a lot of my readers are big users of social media, some with great success!  If you have developed a social media strategy, which has a geographical element, or you have any tips for a more regional approach to social media; please share it with your fellow readers and myself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

2 things I didn’t know yesterday!

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Here are 2 things I didn’t know yesterday, which I wanted to share with you.  If you have anything you want to add, please do so – it’s always great to get feedback.

Twitter unfollowing trend is set to continue

Since blogging about Robert Scoble unfollowing his Twitter followers, I have had a lot of feedback.  As well as the comments on the blog, I have had people emailing me, a few people calling me and even a blog post featuring me.

I’ve been told we are going to see some more well-known Twitter users doing the same as Scoble, over the coming days and weeks. Maybe even sooner!

MarketingProfs feature

I wrote a post recently, called; “How to sell against cheaper competitors” and was blown-away to see it used in yesterday’s MarketingProfs newsletter. With around a third of a million subscribers, it was exciting to get the opportunity to reach so many new, great people.