Jim Connolly Marketing

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Quick marketing tip

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Here’s a quick marketing tip, which has helped thousands of people to massively improve their sales results.

One of the most common marketing problems businesses have, is reaching the right people at the right time. You need to get YOUR message in front of people, at the exact point where they are extremely interested in buying your kind of product or service.  So, how does it work?

Marketing, word of mouth and a recommendation too!

This quick marketing tip is all about identifying the people, which your prospective clients contact before they are about to purchase your kind of product or service – and getting these people to recommend you.  This means you not only get a supply of sales leads from extremely hot prospective clients, you also get to benefit from the power of a referral too!

Example:  Although this process works for business to business providers and in many different industries, for this example, let us assume that your business supplies and fits wall and floor tiles.  You would start off by asking yourself; “what do people do just BEFORE they get their bathroom or kitchen re-tiled?”  Well, in some cases, the person will have just experienced a flood etc and called in a plumber.  Equally, they may have got a plumber in to fit a new bathroom suite and now require the floor and walls re-tiled.

So, you would contact the plumbers, who work in the areas and the kind of homes you want to work with, and offer them a standard referral fee for every piece of work their referrals generate for you.  Obviously, you would show them some examples of how brilliant the quality of your work is, so they knew they were recommending a high quality service.

What kind of businesses can use this marketing tip?

I have seen this simple idea work wonders for; web designers, accountants, hotels, marketing consultants, recruitment companies, trainers, insurance providers, lawyers, hosting companies, maintenance providers, PR firms and stacks more.

By being selective about who you get to recommend you, you will also be able to attract work from the ideal profile of client or customer for your business too!  This is a great way to attract excellent quality, highly targeted leads – Without wasting a penny on ineffective advertising. You only pay when a lead becomes a piece of business, making it one of the most profitable forms of marketing out there.

A residual income & stacks of kudos

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When I wrote and published my Motivation Master Class audio series, I did so because I knew the product would be a success.  It has generated a very nice residual income for me over the past 3 years and helped thousands of people, spanning 4 continents, to achieve some great results.

Once the audio series was written and produced, I was able to refer to myself in my marketing as Jim Connolly; author and marketing coach.  You might (or might not) be amazed to know what an immediate, powerful impact that had on my marketing results. Response rates improved across the board.  I also found that I was able to easily get guest spots on the radio and to have my articles published.  The Business Editor’s of newspapers were keen to give me write ups in their business pages – and all because I decided to put some of my knowledge onto CD’s.

Two good reasons to get that book of yours on paper

These days, many people with a specialisation decide to write an ebook.  These are usually given away for free, though some are sold.  Whilst this is great, it’s becoming increasingly common.  In other words, telling people you are the author of an ebook has a lot less impact, than being the author of a hardback or paperback book. That’s because anyone with a computer and some free software can publish an ebook.

However, only a tiny percentage of people (and a microscopic number of your competitors), will have been published as the author of a traditional, softback or hardback book.  The good news is that now, you can self-publish a book for very little and benefit, the same as me, from; a new income stream and a stack of kudos!

How?

There are a number of websites, which will allow you to produce high quality hardback or paperback books in extremely small numbers (or huge ones).  Try a google search for “self publishing”.  Lulu.com is probably the best known of these self-publishing websites.  So, if you just want to produce 10 or 50 paper-based copies (just to get you started or test the market)  – Now you can!

A new income stream or career?

There could be a huge public demand for your book – and a great way to find out is to get it ‘out there!’  I sold copies of my audio program all over the world and made a lot of money with very little effort.  I know a large number of my readers are specialists in their area of business, just like I am with marketing.  However, I also know that many of my readers are not professional marketers – but you don’t have to be.  Many of these self-publishing sites will even help you market your book, if you want them to.  They will also deal with things like distribution.

I’m not suggesting this is ideal for everyone.  I would only suggest doing this if you genuinely believe your book will be of interest to people – the idea is to produce something of value, with potential to become a profitable income stream for your business. The kudos of the author title, whilst powerful, should be secondary.

Time for marketing

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QUESTION: What does great marketing have in common with great comedy?

ANSWER: Timing!

Marketing & timing

I received an email earlier, announcing the launch, today, of a new website.  If you check the date of this post (20th January 2009) you will see that it’s the day that President Obama was inaugurated.

This international,  mass media event, has received blanket coverage across the news networks and even seen services like Twitter struggle to cope with the huge increase in activity.

In other words, it’s a terrible day to try and launch a new website!

If you are thinking of launching something for your business, make sure you check out what’s happening on that day.

Email marketing and mail shots

Of course, timing is important to many elements of marketing. For example, the day of the week your mail shot arrives, will have an impact on your response rate.  I advise B2B marketers not to have their mailings arrive on a Monday; because Monday’s are typically very busy for businesses AND your letter will also be with all the other mail that arrived over the weekend.

The day and time of day that your email marketing arrives in someone’s inbox, will also impact your results.  An email, which arrives at 7am on a Monday morning, will arrive in an inbox filled with a weekends worth of junk mail and spam.

That same email, arriving at 11am on a Tuesday morning, will arrive in an inbox, which has already had the spam / junk mail removed.  This makes it easier for your message to stand out and increases the chances of it being read and acted on!

Always check out what’s happening in your prospective client’s world before setting a time to take action.

4 ways to grow a business

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With so many buzz words and marketing ideas flying around, it’s easy to forget the basics.  That’s why I wanted to share something with you today, which really helps us focus on what’s important.

4 ways grow a business jay abraham4 ways to grow a business

As Jay Abraham said so concisely, many years ago; there are only 4 ways to grow a business.  They are:

1. Attract more clients or customers (herein called clients.)
2. Sell more often to your existing clients.
3. Increase your prices or fees.
4. Reduce the number of clients, who stop using your services or buying your products (your attrition rate). Though this was not included in Jay’s original 3 ways to grow a business model.

The most effective businesses, focus on all 4 ways to grow a business.

The least effective businesses focus on just 1 or 2 of them.

Many businesses, for example, actively seek to win new clients; but to little to retain their existing clients.  Others look after their existing clients supremely well and their clients love them – but they don’t focus correctly on winning new clients.

Whatever business you are in, try and work on as many of these 4 ways to grow a business as is possible, for someone in your industry.

Blog comments

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I have always been a keen reader of blogs, not only because of the actual blog posts – but because of the gold dust you can find in a blog’s comments section.

For example, no matter how knowledgeable a blogger is on his or her subject, there will usually be people reading a post, who can add important additional information.  These comments are often just as likely to provide you with the ideas and information you need, as the original blog post!

Blog comments offer targeted feedback

If you want to know what your target market thinks about something, take a look at what they are ‘saying’ in the comments section of relevant blogs.  This kind of snapshot can provide you with a useful way to spot trends.

It can also help you identify common problems that your potential customers have, which YOUR business could solve for them!

Your blog comments

An excellent way to develop a blog, is to take note of the comments people leave.  It’s a great way to ensure your messages are resonating with your readers and that you are giving people want they want.  Many of the changes here on this blog, have been made in response to comments people have made.

Thank you

I would finally like to say “THANK YOU” to everyone who comments here.  Your feedback is, as you can see, massively valuable to both my readers and myself.

Recession thinking

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Judging by my inbox and the comments on this blog, it seems that the current recession is having a very different impact on different people.  That’s to be expected, yet I’m seeing businesses of similar sizes, in the same industries and the same region having totally different experiences.

Recession marketing

I wrote a while ago, about how some businesses managed to grow significantly during the last recession – whilst their competitors were treading water or going broke. You can read the secret of their success here!

Time and time again, we see that it’s NOT outside factors that determine our success or failure, but how we choose to deal with them.  As they say;

When life deals you lemons – make lemonade!

One of the advantages that small and medium-sized companies have over larger ones, is their ability to spot an opportunity and quickly get to work on it.  Large companies and corporations move like a cruise liner – small businesses can move like a speedboat.

Make sure you focus on opportunities and when you spot one, take action!

Business success in a recession

With the media spreading nothing but doom and gloom, I have decided to write a series of posts for you; about businesses I know, who are currently enjoying great commercial success.  These are businesses in highly competitive industries, which are thriving.

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