Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Examine all your options

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I’ve received quite a few emails recently, from people who want to market a new business venture, even though they have no budget.  Whilst it’s common for new projects to have limited budgets, having zero budget is still thankfully relatively rare.  Several of these emails closed with the statement that they had just 2 options; to do nothing or to launch their new project right now, with no budget.

Of course, in reality they had stacks of options.  They may, for instance, decide to get the funding in place, then go for the launch.  They may decide to find some partners, who will invest expertise and money in the project, then go for the launch.  They may decide to make the product or service better, whilst saving to get the funds in place, then go for the launch.  There are always options – providing you are prepared to look.

Examine all your options

I often hear people make similar polarised statements, where they say something is either this or it’s that.  They then make their decisions based on those 2 choices alone; without considering all the other viable options.  When you give yourself the option to either do nothing at all or do something wrong, you are asking yourself to answer the wrong question!

Good preparation and planning are cornerstones of a successful project.  Conversely, most of the failed projects I see, had failed long before they even started, through lack of preparation.  It’s great to see people putting their energy and effort into something positive, but without proper planning, all that energy and effort will only get them so far.

After all, if you are rowing your boat with all your strength in the WRONG direction, you will never get where you want to be!  In fact, the harder you row, the further in the wrong direction you will go.

It is possible these days, to successfully launch a small business or a new project with a shoestring budget.  You know what?  There are millions of people right now, trying to do just that!  They are seeking to grab the same people’s attention (and money) that you are too.

Yes, you can beat them, but it will require forward planning, solid preparation and the ability to consider all your options.

Marketing time for your business?

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This quick marketing tip is all about how to improve your marketing results in the medium and long term.  In fact, it will give you one of the marketing foundations behind the most successful businesses in the world.

Marketing & small businesses: Never enough time!

I often hear the owners of small businesses, saying that they don’t have the time to market their services as an ongoing activity.  They tell me that it’s only when they lose a major account, that they have the time available, to dedicate to marketing.

The primary problem with this approach to marketing is that it simply does not work.  It causes a business to reach a plateau or spin its wheels.  This happens because periods of growth mainly come, AFTER there has been a loss of business / revenue / profits.  The loss of business having prompted the marketing.

When I hear the time argument, I explain that when marketing is conducted on an ongoing basis, it actually takes very little time each month.  Unlike panic-based marketing, when there’s been a big, sudden drop in business, working to a marketing strategy takes surprisingly little time.

In contrast, successful businesses of all sizes, work on their marketing all the time. It’s just a normal, ongoing business activity.  The difference between the two approaches to marketing is that one type of business uses tactical marketing, whilst the other uses strategic marketing.

I wrote a post about this, which explains the difference between tactical and strategic marketing and also explains compound marketing / leverage.  Be sure to check it out!

Tailor your marketing strategy to your resources

When I work with my clients, I always start off by ensuring that their marketing strategy is tailored, to match their resources.  It has to be manageable and easy to do.  It also needs to not get in the way of their core business.

Your marketing strategy needs to be similarly developed around your unique situation.  When it is, marketing becomes manageable and easy to implement into your working week.  This is the secret to developing a predictable, confidence inspiring flow of sales / new business.

Your marketing check list!

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Here’s a marketing check list, for those of you who want to start seeing some fast, measurable marketing results.

Your answers to the questions of this simple check list, will give you some idea of just how ready you are to successfully compete for business, in today’s highly competitive marketing environment.

Ready? OK, let’s go!

Marketing check list

  • Do I have permission to market to these people?
  • Is there a genuine reason why they should buy from me, rather than their current provider?
  • How motivating is that reason – Is it powerful enough to compel them to switch?
  • Will my marketing message REALLY stand out among the avalanche of marketing offers being directed to these people right now?
  • Am I going to use a strategic approach, where a series of preplanned messages are delivered in order to generate a compound effect – or will I ‘just try’ some one-off marketing emails, mailshots, ads etc ?
  • If people decide to check out my website or blog after receiving my marketing, will it project the kind of polished, professional image required to gain their confidence and their business?
  • Will the message they get from my site compel them to want to take action; to call me, email me, visit my premises etc?
  • If not, should I think about getting my marketing copy writing written by a professional?
  • Do I have a social media marketing strategy, which will attract bankable results, (rather than just follows / adds / friends etc?)
  • Do I have a way to effectively measure my marketing results?
  • How worried would my competitors be right now, if they knew my answers to the above questions?

Now what?

The point of this simple check list, is to help you identify how prepared you are.  It’s not enough to ‘just’ work hard on your marketing; you need to ensure you are working hard doing the correct things for what you want to achieve.  Whatever you do, don’t be like the masses of small businesses, that look to the future with their fingers crossed – hoping things will somehow “just work out”.

If you are looking for marketing ideas, this post contains links to dozens of marketing ideas and 2 articles on how to develop your own marketing mix.

If you plan ahead and work smart, you can make this a breakthrough time for you and your business – but don’t leave anything to chance!

6 Marketing tips – Good timing!

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Great marketing and great comedy have at least one thing in common: Great timing!

Of course, the opposite is also true.  A comedian with bad timing isn’t very funny and poorly timed marketing isn’t very effective.

With this in mind, here are SIX timing-related marketing tips, to help you improve your results.

Marketing your events

If you are thinking of hosting any kind of event, Google the date you have in mind and check if anything that’s likely to cause a problem is happening on that day. I spoke with a UK based business owner once, who unknowingly picked (and advertised everywhere) the same date for his company’s open evening, as England’s opening game in the football World Cup Finals.

The end result? He was the only person there.

Planning your marketing

The time to start planning your marketing strategy for 2010 is NOT the first day of January – it’s NOW!

Just as you wouldn’t wait until the day you set off on a round the world trip, to start booking accommodation and flights, the same applies when planning your marketing for the year ahead. Leave yourself enough time to plan ahead properly.

Mail shots & follow-up phone calls

If you are sending out a mail shot, which you intend to follow-up with a phone call, send the mailing so that it arrives on a Tuesday.  This way, you can make your follow up calls on Wednesday and Thursday.  If your letter arrives on a Friday there will be a weekend between your prospective customers reading your letter and you making those first follow-up calls.

That’s a long time for your prospective client to remember your letter. Equally, you don’t want to be making follow-up calls on Monday mornings; when your prospects are often at their busiest.

Industry specific timing

There are times of the year where it’s pointless marketing to certain industries and professions.  In the UK, for example, the accountancy profession is extremely busy in January.  As a result, you are far less likely to be able to meet with or even speak on the phone with accountants in January, than you would be in February, March etc.  Of course, US based accountants are busiest on the lead-up to the 15th April rush.

Companies selling training courses and seminars usually find it harder to fill venues during the summer holiday months, than the rest of the year.  That’s because organisations are much less likely to send employees away for a day, when they are already short of people because of holiday cover.

The key thing here is that whatever industries or professions you target with your marketing, make sure you are aware of their busiest months and focus your efforts accordingly.

Email marketing

Whenever possible, I strongly recommend you avoid sending out your email-based marketing on a Friday afternoon.  If your email isn’t picked up that afternoon, it will be stuck in the bottom of their inbox, under a whole weekend’s worth of junk mail, when they check their email again on Monday morning.  This makes it unnecessarily hard for YOUR email message to get noticed.

You have an entire working week to send out your email marketing, so even if it ‘just’ helps your response rate by 10%, it’s got to be worth avoiding Friday afternoons.

Investing your marketing time correctly

My final time-related marketing tip is simple: Don’t waste major chunks of your marketing time, on minor things.  There are only so many hours in a day and only so many of those, which you can invest in your marketing.

For example, I see people waste weeks researching what type of email software to use – and then use it to send hastily written marketing emails.  That’s all wrong.  I see people wait months before they start blogging, doing hundreds of hours of ‘research’, and they still end up repeating the exact same mistakes that most new bloggers make.

Don’t let this happen to you.  Use your marketing time as effectively as you can.

Okay – now it’s your turn

What do you think?  What time-related marketing tips do you have? Share your feedback!

Your marketing map!

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In this post, I am going to show you a very simple way to make your marketing massively more powerful.

Most small business owners / entrepreneurs have only a vague idea of what they want from their business.  They tend to be highly-motivated and launch themselves like a rocket into their work.  However, with a little more forward planning, it’s possible to totally transform your sales results!

marketing planImagine setting off on a journey; from where you live to an unknown destination 300 miles away.  How would you prepare for that trip? You would probably check the route on a map, so you knew where you were going and how to get there.

You might also check the weather and traffic conditions and ensure you had enough fuel.  With all this in place, you stand a 99.9% chance of getting where you want to be!

If that journey had been ‘planned’ ahead the way most small businesses plan ahead, it would have been very different!

There wouldn’t be a clear destination, so it would have been impossible for them to plan a route.  In other words, they wouldn’t even know if they are heading in the right direction or not! With no idea of where they’re going and no route to follow, they could end up anywhere.

Marketing and planning

If you study any successful business, you will see that they deliberately plan what they want in advance.  As a result, they can spot immediately if they are on target or heading in the wrong direction.  They are also able to anticipate potential hazards and even identify the people; whose help they will need in order to succeed.  Because they know where they are going, every step takes them closer and they can plan ahead with far, far more confidence than the average business.

How to smash your sales targets with a little planning!

Here’s a quick way to find exactly what you need to do, in order to reach your annual sales target. It also gives a quick insight into the power of using firm figures.

List your desired turnover & profit figures

You need to know what you are aiming for in real terms. This means writing down what you want to ‘get’ from your business financially.

List the number of sales needed in order to hit those figures

Once you know how much money you want to earn, you need to identify how many sales you must make in order to reach that figure.  This then becomes your annual sales target.

List the number of enquiries needed to generate 1 sale

How many meetings, calls, emails, letters from prospective clients / customers do you need on average, to generate a sale? If you need 100 sales to hit your sales target and each sale requires 3 enquiries, your initial focus should be on generating those 300 enquiries as inexpensively and quickly as possible!

Divide the number of enquiries needed by 12

In the above example, you would need to generate 25 enquiries a month in order to hit your annual sales targets.  This means you would now have a very clear picture of the kind of marketing activity you need to invest your time / money in, if you want to succeed.

What next?

Now that you have a good idea of ‘the numbers’ required for you to hit your sales targets, you need to start generating those sales / enquiries! To help you, here’s a list of 10 of the most effective forms of marketing for small and medium-sized businesses that I know.

Over to you!

What forms of marketing have you found to be most and least effective for your business? Please share your experiences with us and leave a comment below!

Quick Marketing Tip – Strategic marketing

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One of the common factors behind all successful businesses, is that they use a strategic approach to their marketing rather than a tactical approach. So, what’s the difference?

Strategic marketing

marketing tactic strategyIn short, businesses that take a strategic approach to their marketing, think ahead and plan ahead.  They ‘compound’ many marketing activities together to leverage the best possible sales results.

Tactical marketing

Businesses that take a tactical approach, tend not to plan their marketing in advance. As a result, each individual marketing activity is done in isolation and therefore, lacks momentum. Tactical marketing decisions are usually made either on a whim or (most commonly), in reaction to a sales problem.

For example, a business owner will wait until sales are down – and then decide to ‘do something’ about it.  They then do one single thing in isolation, (often a mailing, advertisement or an email blast) and typically get a very poor response.  Often, I see a business with a single marketing letter or advertisement, which they use whenever ‘business is bad’ – rather than using a series of letters or advertisements, which build upon each other strategically, to create a compound leverage effect!

What is compound leverage & why do you need it?

Compound leverage is when you do a series of marketing activities, which compound to create a result that’s greater than the sum of the individual parts.

For example:
If you have a marketing email and you send that same marketing email, to the same list of people 6 times – you will see your results drop after each mailing.

However, if you decide to do a series of 6 different marketing emails; with each email building upon the previous one, you will see the power of the 6th email massively leveraged, because of the foundation created by the initial email and all the curiosity / desire created by the 2nd-5th emails.

By switching from a tactical approach to a strategic approach, you can massively improve the success of your marketing without having to invest a penny extra.  In fact, many people see far better results AND are able to cut their marketing budget at the same time!

The switch from a tactical approach to a strategic one, requires a shift from having a short-term focus (tactical) to having a medium or long term focus (strategic.) Every successful business I have worked with or studied, thinks and plans ahead with a long term focus.

If you want your business to not only survive but thrive during 2009, don’t wait until 1st January to do something – make a plan today! Put a strategy together, which consists of a series of marketing activities that compound to provide you with the kind of forward momentum you and your business will need in 2009!

Here’s a list of things to consider adding to your marketing strategy – from the most popular page on the blog!