Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Hard work isn’t enough (here’s what is)

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marketing, hardworking, momentum

One component of successful marketing, is knowing what needs to be done.

A second component of successful marketing, is to put that knowledge into action.

And an essential third component of successful marketing, is to keep on doing what’s required. Once things start moving, they need to keep on moving. Lasting success requires an ongoing effort. Continuous forward movement. 

Marketing momentum: the mover of mountains that’s easy to lose

Marketing momentum is where your intelligent activity (doing the right things, correctly) combines, to attract the results you want. For example, an increasing number of; sales leads, sales conversions, client enquiries, new clients, proposal requests, bid requests, client referrals, new subscribers, media requests… exciting times for sure. 

Here’s the reason I’m sharing this with you: once you’ve created marketing momentum, that momentum must be maintained and sustained.

  • You need to keep actioning your ideas.
  • You need to carry on looking for great opportunities.
  • You need to turn up again and again and again.
  • You need to consistently review and increase your targets or goals, as old ones are achieved.
  • You need to remain dedicated to improving how your business operates.
  • You need to keep working your plans.
  • You need to carry on delighting your clients.
  • You need to stay on the lookout for people who can improve your business.
  • You need to repeatedly make big, exciting promises and then deliver.

Doing all of the above is easy at the start, especially if you have an existential need for more clients or more customers.

But when all the important marketing numbers are moving in the right direction and things are going great, finding the motivation to keep your marketing momentum moving forward can become harder. And momentum soon fizzles out when left unattended.

This is something I work on regularly with new clients. Interestingly, very few ever think it will be a problem for them. This is largely because when people hire me, they do so when they’re looking for fast, massive increases in sales and financial results. They’re in the ideal mindset for creating momentum.

But.

As things start to improve, with exciting results moving all their important numbers in the right direction, almost every client I’ve ever had unconsciously thinks they’ve now arrived. That this new level of success is a destination. Irreversible, so long as they work hard. 

They forget they were already working hard before hiring me… and hard work didn’t produce the results they wanted.

Hard work by itself is not enough for ongoing success. So, ride the wave of momentum and keep moving forward.

Make your marketing totally unmissable. Here’s how!

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marketing tip, unmissable marketing

What do the following have in common?

  • The trailer for a movie, which is part of a franchise you really enjoy.
  • A radio interview with a musician, whose music you’ve always loved, talking about their new album.
  • A Facebook post from an author, whose books you collect, announcing their new title.
  • A newsletter from a brand you like and trust, announcing an exciting new product.

The answer is that they are all examples of marketing you value. Marketing you wouldn’t want to miss. Marketing that doesn’t even feel like marketing.

How to create unmissable marketing

So, what was it that made those marketing examples unmissable?

  1. You gave permission for the marketing message to reach you. You tuned into the TV station or radio channel. You liked them on Facebook. You subscribed to their newsletter.
  2. The product being marketed (movie, album or book etc.), is something you’re interested in.

The key words there are permission and interest.

Here’s why!

Without your permission, the marketer is being a pest. No one wants to be pestered with unsolicited emails, off-target advertising or unrequested social networking messages.

Without your interest, the “offer” is just another annoying, time-wasting, badly targeted sales pitch.

Making YOUR marketing unmissable

Here’s a proven method I’ve used with clients that keeps on working.

  1. Think about the brands you have given permission to contact you.
  2. Write them down.
  3. Next, ask yourself why you did it. Why did you subscribe to their YouTube channel, their newsletter or their podcast? Why did you like them on Facebook or connect with them on Linkedin? Why did you ask them to send you their catalogue or email you their updates?
  4. Finally, see what you can learn from their strategy, which you can adapt, to earn the permission of your prospective customers.

Yes, it takes more effort to create unmissable marketing, than to target strangers with ads.

However, the conversion rate is fantastically higher. There’s no advertising budget required. And you’ll build your very own community of highly-motivated prospects. 

Rapid, massive business growth: With MBRs

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marketing tip, MBR, Mutually beneficial relationships

This is massive.

I’d like to introduce you to one of the most powerful ideas in marketing. It’s an absolute marketing essential, known as mutually beneficial relationships or MBRs.

Here’s how it works, starting with a simple question.

Who already serves your prospective clients or customers, with a service or product that doesn’t conflict with your own?

This is why that question is worth so much to you. Those non-conflicting providers already have the attention and trust of your prospects. An introduction to your prospects, from one of those providers, someone they already trust, can make you a fortune.

Here’s how

MBRs are a cornerstone of success. The effectiveness of the strategy is behind the explosive growth of many of the world’s fastest growing businesses. In my own experience, many of my biggest commercial successes have come from MBRs. And some of these relationships have been producing high-profit income for well over a decade.

That’s because once you’ve built the relationships, they carry on working for you.

With one very important warning.

Mutually means mutually!

Mutually beneficial relationships need to be exactly that.. mutually beneficial. Failing to understand this and get the balance right is the only thing that can stop you. The relationship must benefit the other person in a rewarding way. Just like any relationship, for it to work both parties need to be valued. 

So, determine what you can offer these non-conflicting providers, which will motivate them to help you.

How do you get the motivation right?

You need to fully understand the risk you’re asking a potential partner to take. That person or company will be concerned that they risk damaging their relationship with their clients, if you fail to deliver. Remember, they don’t know you yet.

However, as long as the relationship you propose is beneficial enough for them, and you can convince them of your reputation, you’ll massively lower their perceived risk and increase the odds that they’ll want to proceed.

The potential for you and your business is huge.

How huge?

This huge!

  • When I help my clients build MBRs, I can usually find a couple of dozen industries that are non-conflicting with theirs, yet serve the same people or companies.
  • And each of these industries can have dozens, hundreds or thousands of potential, mutually beneficial partners.
  • And each of these partners can have dozens, hundreds or thousands of customers.

That’s thousands, times thousands of potential new customers, who are already feeling positive about buying from you. Just think about that for a moment. And let it sink in. Then, why not decide to build an MBR.

Decades of experience assures me that you’ll be very, very glad you did.

Grab. Focus. Urgency: How to vastly increase your sales

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marketing motivation, deadlines, sales

When it comes to making sales or getting clients, deadlines are extremely effective. That’s because deadlines tap into one of the strongest motivators in business. The principle of scarcity.

Here’s what makes deadlines such a powerful marketing tool.

  • They grab attention.
  • They focus the mind.
  • They create urgency.

Attention grabbing

It’s no wonder deadlines grab our attention. People hate to miss out. The fear of missing out, or FOMO, is activated the moment we see a deadline attached to something we have an interest in. FOMO grabs a prospect’s attention in a way that isn’t possible, when you don’t attach a deadline to your offer.

Focused

Our mind is then immediately focused on the actual date or time of the deadline. We start to work out the amount of time between now, and the cut-off point. Within reason, the shorter the deadline, the greater the motivation. However, too short a deadline will actually result in fewer sales/enquiries. There’s a balance required. For example, when marketing an event, 1 month is usually too short. But for a flash sale, 48 hours is often too long.

Urgent

The deadline presents us with a limited amount of time to make our decision. This sense of urgency will immediately inspire some people to take rapid action. Others will find the urgency grow and grow as the deadline approaches. Either way, the deadline creates a level of urgency that just isn’t there, when the prospect thinks they have all the time in the world.

So, look for opportunities to add a deadline date or time to your marketing. Then see how all that increased attention, focus and urgency improves your response rates.

Photo by Justin Veenema

How to make more sales, in uncertain times

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marketing, make more sales,

As I promised recently, here are some more ideas to help you and your business through the uncertainty of the current economy.

As things change, we need to adjust our marketing to the new wants and needs of our customers or clients. That’s what I’m focusing on today.

Plan with flexibility

Typical marketing plans run for a year and make the mistake of assuming conditions will remain roughly the same. As a result, these plans fall to pieces when faced with a period of rapid change. That’s why your marketing plan needs to have flexibility built in.

I recommend creating 90-day marketing plans, to run alongside your overall business plan. These need to be regularly reviewed and adjusted, based on real-time feedback. What’s working better than before? What are your prospects suddenly asking for? What’s no longer working as well as it used to? You get the idea.

Pay extra close attention to your customers

One of the best pieces of business advice I’ve ever received is this.

‘Your customers will show you where your market is going’.

Customers do this through their actions and their words. Here are some questions to ask yourself, so you can see where your market is going.

  • Have your customer enquiries changed recently?
  • Have your customers’ buying habits or preferences changed recently?
  • Are customers mentioning any new concerns during the sales process?
  • Is there a meaningful increase or fall in customer spending?
  • Have you noticed customers becoming more price-sensitive?
  • Are customers engaging with you differently online, perhaps interacting more through social media, direct messages, or emails?
  • Have your customers started recommending (or requesting) new products, services, or features you previously hadn’t considered?
  • Is there a noticeable increase in customers asking you for personalised or customised offerings?
  • Are there specific fears or uncertainties customers are expressing more often?
  • Have customer priorities recently changed?

Now ask yourself, are there new opportunities emerging, or new concerns emerging, which I need to take action on?

Focus on your new opportunities. Think positive

Rapidly changing conditions often cause stress or anxiety for small business owners. We need to be aware of this, and turn it around. A positive, proactive mindset helps us adapt quickly, confidently, and effectively. That’s exactly what we need right now.

So, focus on opportunities rather than obstacles.

Also, encourage yourself, and your team if you have one, to innovate. Innovating puts you in control. It immediately gives you a lift and causes you to think far more positively.

And remind yourself regularly of the challenges you’ve overcome in the past. You’ll overcome future challenges too, if you use the right approach. In fact, you may well come out of this wiser and wealthier than you were before. I saw this with 100% of my clients during the pandemic.

I hope you found this useful. If you did, share it with your friends.

17 Tips to help you grow a stronger business

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marketing tips, build strong business

Here are 17 tips to help you grow a stronger business. In no particular order.

Lead with outcomes
People are buying what life looks like after doing business with you. Don’t sell the process. Sell the improvement.

Simplify the next step
Don’t just tell prospects about your product or service. Show them exactly what they need to do next. One clear action. Make it easy for them to move forward.

Your brand is always doing something
If you haven’t built your brand with intention, it’s still shaping how people see you. Only negatively.

Fit in and disappear
If your offer looks like your competitors’, you vanish. Be specific. Be different. Be seen.

Don’t build your audience on rented land
Social media platforms regularly change their rules and algorithms. They can disconnect you from your community or massively restrict your reach at any time. And it’s put many people out of business. Build an email list. Own your business’ communication channel.

Turn up consistently
In uncertain times, consistency builds trust. Be the business that turns up, follows through, and keeps its word even when others go quiet.

Stop waiting. Start creating
The perfect time won’t come. Build the opportunity yourself.

People buy for their reasons
Not yours. Always start with what matters to them.

You don’t own your customers (or clients)
You borrow them. They’re free to leave. So, keep increasing your value.

Every touchpoint matters
Buyers check you out quietly, behind the scenes. Especially your online personality. Make sure every part of your presence earns their confidence.

Too many low-quality customers
Low quality customers or clients are the unavoidable result of low-quality marketing.

Everything you do is marketing
Yes, everything… look. The way you answer emails. Your prices. Your contracts. How you follow-up. People notice. And they talk.

Use curiosity in your marketing
Give people just enough information to spark a question. That’s how you generate enquiries. Not by trying to answer everything upfront.

Use fewer words
Most marketing copy I see is 70% too long. Cut to the chase before they lose interest.

Don’t lower your fees
Raise your value. People pay for outcomes, not discounts.

Clarity sells. Confusion repels
Make your message short, clear and easy to act on. Too many options? They won’t pick any.

Earn permission
When someone chooses to hear from you, they’re far more likely to listen.

Your economy

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marketing tips, small business

The economy is general. It’s determined by outside factors.

Your economy is specific. It’s determined by you.

Your economy is what matters. That’s because it is always your actions that determine your economy… and your results.

We saw this everywhere a few years ago, during the pandemic lockdowns. There would be businesses in the same industry, in the same towns, serving the same marketplace; one would flourish and the other would fail.

Same restrictions.

Same opportunities.

But massively different outcomes.

Your economy and amazing opportunities

Yes, the 2025 economy is fast moving and increasingly hard to predict. However, every business owner who’s doing the right things for the current landscape will thrive. I know because I work with these business owners every day. We’re working on their economy. We’re focused on the things they can control.

It turns out that’s almost 100% of what actually matters, for the success of their businesses.

Also, remind yourself that every time we see economic uncertainty, the number of new opportunities multiply. So, look for the new needs and new wants of your marketplace. Their needs and wants are begging for you to step in. Bring them your new ideas, new products, new services, new product bundles, new payment options and new packages, etc.

In short, there are opportunities all around you. It’s the perfect time to start developing your economy.

Assess. Improve. Execute

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marketing tips, curiosity, sales leads, sales

Photo Finn Hackshaw

Today, I’m going to share a marketing idea with you that helped me increase a client’s sales results by just over 180% in 5 months.

It can be summed up in 3 words: Assess. Improve. Execute.

Here’s how it works.

Assess

The first step to boosting your sales results is to assess your current situation. I spent some time digging into my client’s sales and marketing process and identified her company’s primary problem. It turned out they offered a superb service and when prospects learned about it, they absolutely loved it. The problem was that they were getting too few chances to demo their service. This means I needed to radically increase the number of high-quality client leads they attracted.

Once we identified the root of her problem, it was time to improve things and free my client to dramatically increase her company’s sales results.

Improve

There were a number of areas in my client’s marketing that were under-performing. This is why she wasn’t generating the volume of high-quality enquiries she needed. She knew her marketing wasn’t working the way she needed it to. But like many business owners, my client assumed the enquiries they attracted were about average in number and quality. She was wrong on both fronts. A common mistake, which had been needlessly losing the company a fortune.

By making a small number of essential improvements at the very beginning, we were able to considerably increase her results. And fast. Really fast.

I remember the easiest adjustment I made, was to improve the focus of their sales message. It had previously focused on what their business did, how great their service was and how amazing their team was. It’s a common mistake.

If your marketing has a similar focus, it’s a bad, bad idea!

And here’s why.

No one buys a service or a product. They buy the result. For example, you don’t buy exercise equipment. You buy looking good and feeling great. So, sell the result of investing in your service.

Anyhow, we then dug a little deeper and uncovered a series of similarly untapped, windfall opportunities.

One of them was for me to transform their website into a lead generating machine, by improving their marketing copy. I needed it to make prospects on their site feel massively more curious.

Curious? Why curious, Jim?

Think about it. Every client or customer enquiry you have ever had, or will ever receive, only happened because that person needed to know something. So, if you want your marketing to attract massively more leads, it needs to create more curiosity… and answer fewer questions.

Previously, their website tried to answer as many questions as possible. I rewrote their marketing and made sure it provided just enough information.

Just enough information to inform the prospect and ignite their curiosity.

Just enough information to compel, to motivate and to inspire eager prospects to contact them with a high-quality enquiry.

We wrapped these ideas into a plan, along with half a dozen other tactical improvements. Now we were good to go!

Execute

Oh man! Without doubt, this is the stage that excites me most. This is why I do what I do.

It’s where we execute on the newly-improved marketing and measure the feedback. There’s something wonderful about the energy I get from clients, as they see their business performing the way they always wanted it too. And often far, far better.

Assess. Improve. Execute. Focus like a laser on those 3 steps and watch your business grow.

Proof: Your business growth potential is limitless

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Marketing forward

You now have free access to every prospective client or customer on the planet. And that’s a provable fact.

This means the potential to grow your business is literally limitless.

  • Podcasting gives you a free, global radio show.
  • WordPress gives you a free magazine, plus free, global distribution.
  • Social networks give you free access to a global audience.
  • YouTube gives you a free, global TV channel.
  • Email gives you a free, global communication channel, which scales to infinity.
  • Zoom gives you free, global access to video meetings.

This means that in June 2023, a start-up business with no budget, can reach every city on the planet, in a way that previously cost millions and was only available to the world’s biggest corporations.

It’s truly a spectacular time to be a small business owner.

With an idea and a plan, the world is yours. This is true even if you’re struggling right now. Isn’t that amazing?

So, all the tools you need are freely available to you. The question is, what will you do with all this potential?

Boost your sales. With Time Wasters!

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deal time wasters, convert time wasters, marketing time wasters

How do you feel about people, who either ask you questions about your service or look around your products… then leave without buying?

Some business owners get angry. That’s understandable. They perceive these people to be time wasters. In doing so, they miss out on an extremely valuable opportunity. They leave a huge business asset on the table, untapped. An asset, which could help them massively improve their sales figures.

The asset I’m referring to, is the feedback that so-called time wasters can provide you with.

Allow me to explain.

You attract time wasters for a reason

If you’re attracting too many of the wrong type of enquiries, there’s a reason.

It’s usually a sign that:

  • Your marketing message needs to be improved.
  • You are marketing to the wrong people.
  • Or both.

It’s very easy to learn which applies to your marketing, so long as you ask for feedback. Armed with this information, you can then adapt and improve your marketing so you attract the right kind of enquiries from the right prospects.

Before they end the call or leave your premises, ask something like: What was it that prompted you to (visit or call) us today? This will give you some outstandingly valuable feedback to work with.

For example

  • If people often say they were looking for a low-priced whatever, (yet your prices are average or above average), you need to review your marketing message. Take a look and see if you are overstating how low your prices are.
  • If you are not overstating how low your prices are, then you could well be targeting your marketing message at people with too small a budget.

You get the idea.

The key is to get as much feedback as you can from those who fail to hire you or buy from you. It will help you improve your marketing message, improve your targeting and generate more (lots more) business!

So, reframe how you think about time wasters. Speak with them. Listen. Learn from their feedback. Then, make the necessary adjustments and improvements to your marketing. Don’t just assume that someone is a time waster and therefore of no value to your business.

Their feedback could be commercial gold dust.

In fact, it usually is.

The customer is not always right

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marketing blog

That old saying, that the customer is always right, is bogus. Worse still, if you believe the customer or client is always right, it will damage your business.

Allow me to explain!

That saying still persists, because fearful service providers are scared that if they say the customer is wrong, they might take their custom elsewhere. So, generations of business owners have worked under the erroneous belief that they should simply agree with their clients all the time.

That’s a really bad idea 

It fails the client and it fails you. Here are a few examples.

  • Designers end up producing ugly work, because the client made terrible design demands. The client is left with low quality design, which won’t work for them. The designer will never get to work with that client again.
  • Copywriters end up writing junk, because the client demanded uninformed changes. So, instead of a professional piece, the client gets something amateurish that they could have written themselves. The copy fails to work. The client ends up unhappy. The copywriter is never hired again.
  • Coaches and mentors end up delivering a poor quality service, because the allow misguided clients to dictate what happens. The client then ends up hearing what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear in order to succeed. It fails the client. And the provider is never hired again.

No, I’m not suggesting you argue with your clients. That’s a terrible idea and extremely unprofessional.

I am suggesting you need to guide your clients.

As a professional, it’s your job to help clients make the right decisions, so they get the very best results. That means providing the client with your informed, expert guidance. It means steering them away from mistakes. It means responding with advice and ideas, which lead to a successful project and a delighted client.

In short, your clients deserve your very best work. Agreeing with a client, when you know they are making damaging mistakes, doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you. So give your clients your very best. That’s what they pay you for. That’s what they deserve.

And you cannot, on any level, afford to give them anything less.

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!

Everything your business does, is marketing

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marketing tips, marketing ideas, marketing advice

Everything your business does, is marketing. It gives people an experience… an insight into what you and your business stand for.

That experience is what creates your story: Either a story your clients love and want to share or a predictable story, which they soon forget. A story your prospective clients will be attracted to, or one they will ignore. A story that’s working for you or against you.

So, let’s look at your story

Look at your business from the ground up. What story are you crafting for your marketplace? This brief list will help you build a useful picture. It’s just some of the areas of your business, which combine to tell your marketplace, your story:

  • Your customer service.
  • Your approach to paying your suppliers. (Suppliers talk about late payers).
  • The way you handle inbound calls and emails.
  • The design of your website.
  • The kind of suppliers you use — cheap, average or high quality.
  • The clients or customers you choose to work with.
  • Your opening hours.
  • Your use of social networks.
  • The promises or guarantees you offer.
  • Your pricing, compared to your competitors.
  • Your returns policy.
  • The quality of your end product.
  • The people or brands you associate with.
  • The experience, knowledge and attitude of your team.
  • Your ability to meet deadlines.

If you believe there’s room for improvement in your business, rewrite your story. You do this my looking across the whole of your business, and making sure that everything you do is creating trust and value.

Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you can rewrite your story with slick marketing. You can’t!

Attract more clients or customers with these 5 simple steps!

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Here’s a quick marketing tip, which can help you improve your marketing results extremely quickly.

  1. Think of the last 5 purchases you made, which cost you approximately the same as you charge for your own products or services.
  2. Name the people or companies you made those purchases from.
  3. How did you find those providers? (Word of mouth, search engines, advertising etc.)
  4. What made you decide to spend your money with them, rather than someone else?
  5. Write your answers down!

This simple exercise gives you a useful glimpse into how other people or companies are successfully making sales, in your price range.

Pay particular attention to anything those 5 vendors did that was common to 2 or more of them, but which you don’t currently do.  This brief exercise can help you spot elements missing from your own marketing, which were powerful enough to convert you into a customer / client.

Plus, as those 5 examples will probably have been from outside your own industry, if you do spot an opportunity, it’s very possible your competitors won’t be doing it, making it massively more powerful for you.

It’s only useful, if you use it!

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It’s a fact: The best marketing ideas in the world will not work, unless you use them.

Over the years, I have discovered that small business owners can be divided into 2 groups, when it comes to marketing.

Group 1: Those who find marketing interesting, but just dabble and seldom work with the ideas they find.

These people love reading about marketing and they enjoy the social elements of marketing such as networking, social media etc, but they seldom actually take time to develop a marketing plan and work the plan.  In many cases, they have businesses that are struggling financially and they knowledge to turn it around – If only they put some of their marketing ideas to work.

Ideas are GREAT, but they need to act on them if you want to achieve anything.

Group 2: Those who understand that marketing is an essential part of their business, so they put the best marketing ideas they find into action.

These business owners see things very differently from the previous, much larger group.  They have discovered that if they find a marketing idea interesting, then use it, amazing things can happen.  They are not afraid to fail, because they know that marketing is all about testing and measuring.  If they try something and it doesn’t work the way they want, they will review the feedback and try again with a new refinement.  They will then measure the feedback and make further adjustments, until they get the results they want.

Ultimately, our commercial success will be determined by our level of intelligent activity; not by how much useful knowledge we have acquired.  Why not take the best marketing idea you have right now, and use it!

Marketing: Your past does not equal your future.

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I spoke with someone earlier, who told me that she was “no good at marketing.”  She went on to say that she would never be any good when it came to marketing.  This lady is bright and she has lots to say, that’s worth listening to.  However, she has failed to learn one of the most basic lessons in life:

“Our past results do not equal our future results.”

Just because we used an approach last week, last month or last year that didn’t work, does not mean we have to repeat that same error.  We can learn from that lesson and move forward.  As soon as we use a better strategy, we get better results.

How do you improve?

You have 2 main options if you want better marketing results:

  1. You can spend time studying marketing and start to develop increasingly effective marketing strategies.  This can be very time consuming, but if you are starting to see some progress with your marketing efforts, it may be worth investing some more of your time.  This is likely to be most appropriate for those who already have a good marketing foundation, and those who are not looking for fast results.  There are lots of free marketing resources on this blog that will help you if you want to go it alone.  Take a look at this post as a way to get started – It’s my top 10 marketing tips. Then, I strongly recommend you read my FREE 5 step Marketing Make-Over! You can also use the search box on the right, to find marketing posts on many different subjects – There are hundreds of posts there covering thousands of marketing answers and ideas – just waiting for you and all are 100% free!
  2. You can hire someone who already knows exactly what you need to do.

The bottom line is that you need to improve your marketing strategy and actions, if you want to improve your sales results.  There’s absolutely no need to settle for under-performing marketing, so long as you are willing to take ownership of the challenge ahead of you and do something productive about it.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

Good luck!

Surviving information overload!

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Following on from yesterday’s post, about the need to be a student and not a sheep, today I would like to focus briefly on the importance of improving our comprehension in the era of information overload.  It’s one thing for us to read something of value, but if we fail to comprehend what we have just consumed, we will learn nothing.

I deliberately tend to write shorter posts than many bloggers, because like every professional writer worth their salt, I know the importance of brevity.  A well written, short piece of information rich copy should be easy for the reader to absorb.  So, that’s what I aim for.  However, when you look at the comments on longer blog posts, it shows that many people comment, with very little understanding of what they just read.  I get it here occasionally myself.  I have had people arguing with me, via comments here, simply because they never took the time to read everything, before commenting.  They were arguing with me, even though they were in 100% agreement with what I wrote.

Information overload

The challenge for all of us today, is that there is just so much content out there.  I did a search on Google a moment ago, for the phrase marketing blogs and found mine (on page 1!) with over 90 MILLION other results.

Just 15 years ago, if we wanted to keep abreast of what was happening in business, we had the business section of our preferred daily newspaper and maybe a few industry magazines, which were published monthly.  That was it!

Today, there is an almost limitless supply of business information; some good, some not so good, but all vying for our attention.  Our senses are assaulted with a seemingly endless supply of must click links via social media too.  It’s little wonder people are skimming over content rather than reading and comprehending it.   So, what we see right now are people who tend to skim over 50 or 100 articles or blog posts in a day, rather than actually read and think about 5 or 10 of them.

In our desire not to miss anything important, we risk missing everything!

It’s a little like those networkers, who flit from person to person after 30 seconds, because they want to meet everyone at an event.  They meet 150 people and yet they connect with  no one.  Another person at the same event, studies the attendee list and decides to selectively speak with a dozen people.  He or she connects with all 12 people and potentially makes some really useful contacts.

For me, one of the best ways to improve comprehension, is to read more selectively.  Look for the best sources of information in your niche, read their work and then take time to think about what you have just read and how you can use it.  Birds of a feather flock together, so you should find that by sticking with your most valued writers, they will introduce you to new, great writers too.  Give yourself a hard limit, by setting your bar high and only read from writers, who regularly deliver the goods.

Replace those who are under delivering, so your list stays fluid, but always focused on what YOU find most valuable.

Marketing and freedom of choice

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When I was starting out in marketing, almost 24 years ago, I remember my boss giving me some advice, which seemed odd at the time.  I asked her what she liked best about being wealthy.  I figured she would know, having built a multi-million pound business from scratch.

Her reply was simply this:
“Jim, the real value of wealth or money, is that it gives you more freedom of choice!”

Of course, these days her answer makes a lot more sense to me.

I often speak with the owners of small businesses, who find themselves working with clients or customers (herein called clients), who they would rather not work with, for various reasons.  For them, it feels like they have no real choice, as they need the income these low quality clients provide.

Successful marketing gives freedom of choice

The quality of your client base is a barometer of how good your marketing is.  It shows you, in very clear terms, the kind of people and the kind of fees, which your marketing attracts.  The good news, is that when you refine your marketing correctly, you can improve the quality of your client base.

This is why one of the first things I do, when I start working with a new client, is to offer them the opportunity to redesign their client base.  I want people to be able to work with the kind of clients or on the kind of projects, that energises and excites them.  After all, isn’t that one of the reasons you went into business in the first place?

The dreams and ambitions you had when you first started out are still valid.  You can have the lifestyle and business that you used to dream about.  You can fall back in love with your business.  You can work with clients that inspire you and who reward you fully for all that value you bring.

It’s all about choice and thankfully, the choice is always yours.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!