Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

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!

Are your competitors being marketed professionally? Here are 5 clues!

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Here are 5 tell-tale signs that your competitors are not marketing their services professionally:

  1. Their marketing contradicts itself.  For example, they will have a website that was clearly “built on the cheap” – Yet their cheap looking website will tell you that they focus on quality.  Clearly they do not!  This kind of fractured message immediately turns people away.
  2. When describing what they do, they use the word “solutions” instead of the word “services”.  For example; “we provide a range of small business solutions”.  This use of the word solutions totally fails as a marketing term and really irritates a lot of people.
  3. They have a section on their website called “news” that has not been updated in 6 months.
  4. Their written marketing is dull, filled with generic promises and far too wordy.
  5. When you ask them why their sales numbers are down, they blame the economy – NEVER themselves! This is despite the fact they have competitors; selling the same offering, to the same people, in the same marketplace, with great success.

So, what would you add to that list?

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

Why I believe it’s wrong to “give until it hurts!”

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Have you ever heard the saying; “give until it hurts” and wondered what it means?

I believe that many misunderstand the statement.  They think that it means we should just give, give, give and only stop when we are out of resources; (time, money, energy etc.)

The wise man or woman knows that the time to stop giving, is BEFORE they feel the pain of giving so much, that they end up hurting – and unable to help anyone else.

Andrew Carnegie, perhaps one of the world’s best known philanthropists, is reported to have decided as a young man, that he would spend half his working life building a massive fortune, so that he could spend the second half, giving all his billions away.  Yes, he helped people along the way, but not to the point where it hurt him or his business so much, that he was unable to help all those millions of people later in his life.

This may sound like a contradiction, but I believe the key to successful giving, is to help as many people as you can!

Help as many people as you can, but as efficiently as possible

Through this blog, I provide free marketing tips and advice to thousands of people.  At the moment, I spend around 3 hours a week writing content; which I can do without it “hurting” or harming my business.  Just think how much LESS of an impact it would have, if I used those same 3 hours each week, to give 3 people an hour of my time.  If you are currently giving until it hurts, you may want to consider a similar approach.  Try putting your expertise in one place and then allowing as many people as possible to benefit from it.

I believe we each owe it to our families and ourselves, to get the balance right – So that we learn how to help as many people as we can, without the pain of neglecting our families or our own businesses in the process!

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

The marketing power of confidence

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Have you ever noticed that it’s easier to attract new clients or customers when business is already going well, and that it’s harder to attract them when your business is struggling.  One of the primary reasons this happens, is that business owners tend to act, communicate and make decisions very differently, when times are good than when times are tough.

Marketing in good times: Typically, business owners act with confidence when times are good.  They speak in positive terms about their business, their marketplace and their future.  They make decisions based on what they want to achieve.

Marketing in tough times: Typically, business owners act with trepidation when times are tough.  They speak in neutral or negative terms about their business, their marketplace and their future.  They make decisions based on what they fear.

Marketing and confidence

Confidence plays a massive part in the success of any business, for example:

  • We buy from people, who we feel confident about.
  • We recommend people, who we feel confident can deliver.
  • We follow people, who we feel confident can lead.
  • We buy products that we are confident we can trust.

When we listen to people who speak with confidence, we tend to believe in them.  However, when we listen to those who lack confidence, we don’t.  In both cases, the speaker transfers either their confidence or their lack of confidence to us, depending on their disposition.  This is why leaders in every area of life, are those who can inspire confidence in their message; be that in a boardroom or sports arena.  By the way, I wrote about another aspect of marketing with confidence here.

The great news, is that confidence starts from within.  WE get to decide whether we project confidence or concern.

Marketing tip: Take a look at the information you currently feed into your marketplace.  This includes your interactions on social media sites, as well as marketing-specific messages and business conversations.  Now, check them to see how likely they are, to inspire confidence in you or your services.  If you think there’s room for improvement, seek to inject a more positive, confidence inspiring message from here on!

What makes you feel more confident about a potential provider?  What can providers do, to help you feel more confident about them and their business? Share your thoughts!

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

How to set sales targets and achieve them!

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hit sales targets, set sales targets, reach sales targets

I have a question for you today: Are you on track to reach your sales targets?

Don’t worry if you just answered “no” to that question, because I am going to give you some ideas and a stack of free resources, to help you hit your sales targets.

I’m also going to give you a simple 5 step guide, to show you how to set your sales targets in a way that’s easy to manage and achieve!

OK, there are 3 possible answers to my opening question:

  1. Yes.
  2. No.
  3. Sales targets?  What sales targets?

Sales targets: If you are on track

If you are currently on track to reach your sales targets, keep on moving forward.  Just make sure you don’t allow complacency to rob you of a great year’s results.  Examine what you have been doing and look for the most effective elements of your marketing, as well as any elements that have underperformed.

Seek to improve your weaker areas and refine your stronger areas.  Nothing happens in business by chance, so be sure to research where your successes have come from, so you can build on them in the 2nd half of the year.

Oh, and WELL DONE!

Sales targets: If you are off track

If you are currently off track, this is a fantastic time to review your marketing strategy and get yourself on track.  Make a list of every marketing activity you are using as part of your overall marketing strategy and examine how well or how poorly they have been performing for you.

If you are currently using certain types of marketing simply because you see others using it or because it feels comfortable, STOP!

You need to identify the correct marketing mix for you and your business, based on your sales targets, your resources and what you want to achieve. Here are 180 marketing and business development ideas to help you.

Here’s a list of 32 questions, to help you get your marketing and business development back on track.  Oh, and if you have not yet discovered the right marketing for you, here is a list of my top marketing tips.

Sales targets: What sales targets?

Most small business owners don’t have a process in place, to set and then track their sales targets.  It’s easy to see why, when you consider that the whole process seems so complicated.  This makes it hard to focus and to he honest, a little daunting too.  The good news is that it’s easy to set realistic, easy to follow sales targets.

The key, is for you to know how many sales you should be making each month or each week, in order to meet your annual turnover and profit goals.  By chunking the annual number down into monthly or weekly targets, it’s far easier and less daunting to keep on top of the figures.

Here’s a simple, easy to follow way to discover what your sales targets should be, in weekly or monthly chunks.

  1. List your turnover / revenue targets for the next 12 months.  We need to know what this figure is, in order to know how many sales you should be making each year.
  2. Now, list how many “average” sales you would need to make over the next 12 months, in order to achieve the above figures.  Write this number down.
  3. To get an approximate idea what your “average” sale value is, list (for example) the value of your last 20 sales, and then divide that number by 20.  This is only an approximate figure, but it will give you something to work with and is usually pretty accurate.
  4. Now, divide the number you wrote down in step 2, by 12.  This will give you a monthly sales target.
  5. If you want to work on weekly targets, (this suits some business types better than others), simply divide the annual number of sales by 52.

The great news is that no matter how things are right now, you can improve your sales and not only reach your annual targets, but blow the lid off them!

Whatever you do, make sure that if you are off target and not enjoying the success your hard work deserves, that you make the changes required.  Things will not “just get better” by themselves.  For better results, you need to be making better marketing decisions.

Tip: If you found this useful, you can get my latest ideas delivered direct to your inbox, for free, right here.

Dealing with unwanted attention!

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One of the things seldom mentioned about developing a successful online profile or brand, is that as your visibility increases, you’re likely to start attracting some unwelcome attention.  This usually ranges from mild abuse on social networks, to full blown blog posts slamming you.

In my experience, there are 2 key reasons why someone would want to target a stranger in this way:

  1. They are jealous of what they believe that person has achieved or their popularity, and see the Internet as a way to anonymously vent their jealousy.
  2. They want to piggyback on that person’s influence, by getting the person to talk about them – even negatively.

Jealousy is one of the prices of success

In the age of the Internet, it’s relatively simple to spot people or brands that are popular.  You can see how many followers or fans someone has and it’s easy to see if their blog or website is popular too.  This makes popularity or success a lot more visible today than ever before.

Now, when you build something that’s popular or successful, most people will see your success as an inspiration; proof that if they do as you have done, they too can achieve the same or better.  However, there will also be a tiny percentage of people, who will see what you have achieved as a reminder of their own short comings.  Rather then improve their situation, they elect to negatively impact yours as a way to address the imbalance.

Dealing with this kind of thing, has become part of the price some people have to pay, for the visibility that comes with a prominent online profile.  The trick, by the way, is to see it for what it is and then move on.

Piggybacking on your success

Another reason why some people choose to take a swipe at those with a large online following, is a lot more calculated.  This, in my experience, is also a lot more common too.  Here’s the general idea behind it:

  • Bob has 100,000 followers on Twitter or a blog with 5,000 unique visitors a day.
  • Mary hasn’t.
  • Mary then decides that if she can get under Bob’s skin with an abusive tweet or blog post, Bob might respond and then his network of followers or readers will suddenly know that Mary exists.
  • Mary then hopes to increase the number of people who follow her, or read her blog as a result of this additional exposure.

In January 2009, I had one of the top 50 most followed accounts on Twitter and the 3rd largest following in England.  Back then, I used to get this kind of thing regularly.  I just ignored it, because I understood why people were doing it and what they wanted to achieve.  I simply saw it like a game and part of the price I had to pay, for deliberately making myself so visible.

A great example of this happened recently, on a much larger scale.  It was during an email exchange between Ryan Tate from Gawker and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.  After grilling Jobs via email, Tate immediately published the email exchange on his website and it went around the Internet like a virus.

It worked!

Well, kind of.

That’s because although it increased awareness of Ryan Tate, it didn’t paint him in a very positive light, as he tried to get under Jobs’ skin just to get a response.  The most heavily quoted part of the exchange, which Tate assumed would show Jobs to be an ass, actually seems to have done the opposite; according to much of the media coverage.  It clearly shows that although Jobs answered lots of Tates’ questions, he believed he knew what was behind it. This is also the final email in their exchange.

Here’s what Jobs said:

“By the way, what have you done that’s so great?  Do you create anything or just criticize other’s work and belittle their motivations?”

The email exchange made the mainstream news, but seems to have worked a lot better for Jobs, than for Tate.  Tate got the traffic, but Jobs got the PR.

The traffic for Tate will have long gone by now; however, the PR for Jobs, who has had people questioning his ability to run Apple with his health challenges, has been pure gold dust!

Conclusion

Thanks to the opportunities we have via the Internet, if we get our marketing right, we can reach thousands of people every day with our messages.  More prospective clients or customers can see us and we can attract leads and business enquiries all day long, 7 days a week.

In the grand scheme of things, these kind of tactics when directed at you are doing little more than signal your increased visibility – which is probably what you want.  The occasional irritating message or blog post is a relatively small price to pay and when seen in context, is almost something to look forward to.