Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

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.

To make sure you don’t miss out, subscribe to this blog now, using the RSS button on the top right of the page!

Targeted marketing

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This post is all about how you can increase your sales and enquiries, by using a targeted approach to your marketing.

A great product or service, with an excellent marketing message, will still fail to generate sales – unless that message is reaching a targeted group of prospective customers.  That’s why it’s so important for you to target the marketing of your services, to the right people.

Targeted marketing

If Bob gets a well-written marketing message in front of 10,000 people, who have no need for his services and no ability to pay or obtain credit – he’s unlikely to make a single sale.  However, if Bob gets that same great message in front of just 10 people; each with a real need for his services and the ability to pay – he’s likely to make a number of sales!

Blogging and targeted marketing

Fortunately, one of the best ways to get an extremely valuable, targeted audience for your business, is either free or very inexpensive.  I’m talking about blogging!

Whilst it takes time to set up a blog and add regular, interesting content – the financial cost of blogging is extremely low. Great news for any small businesses who are struggling financially right now, yet still have time available for marketing.

So, how do blogs attract targeted prospects?

There are two main reasons why blogs attract such targeted prospective customers / clients.

Firstly, there’s SEO
A nicely designed blog, with good SEO, (search engine optimisation) and interesting content relating to your profession, will attract people who are interested in your area of expertise.  Although the numbers will be low to begin with, you can develop a great audience or marketplace for your services over time.

Secondly, blogs are read by bloggers
I read stacks of blogs each day and it seems I am not alone!  I’ve been running a Reader Poll on jimsmarketingblog.com for the past 2 weeks; asking my readers if they own a blog.  Interestingly, around 90% of the 300 or so people who voted, said “YES!”

So, someone reads something of interest on your blog, which they then mention on their blog.  Suddenly, their readership is alerted to your work and you get a stack of new, targeted readers!  Many of these new readers will be bloggers too – helping you reach more and more people.

This kind of targeted readership is ‘marketing gold dust’ for you and your business.  These people are reading your blog because they already have an interest in, or need for, your subject.  So, if they see you as someone with the answers they need in your area of expertise, who better for them to call / email when they want to hire someone?

Targeted readers come from focused content

In my experience, the blogs that attract the most targeted readers, are the blogs that offer the most focused content.  Some blogs suffer from diversifying too much.  As a result, they attract a fractured readership.

Conversely, by blogging about subjects directly relevant to your services / products, you get to attract not only a readership, but a community!  Jimsmarketingblog.com is an example of a community blog. That’s because the blog’s readers, commentor’s and myself all share a common interest in sales, marketing and business development.

How well do you target your marketing?

If you want to improve your sales figures, a great place to start is by looking at how well you target your prospective customers / clients.  If you are a commercial blogger, (blog as part of your business), and you want to attract a more targeted readership, ensure your posts are ‘on topic.’

If you are not already blogging, this might be a great time for you to start! Just make sure you are committed to investing the time required.

A new year or the same old year over again?

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For most businesses, the first week in January is not the start of a New Year – It’s simply the chance to live the same old year over and over and over again!

They carry on investing their time and money in all the wrong places and thus, they get the same kind of results.  Such businesses reach a plateau after a few years and tend to stay there.  Like a truck that’s stuck in the mud, the harder they try the deeper they seem to get trapped.

The owners of these businesses complain about their lack of results, but fail to make the changes required for success. This fear of change is what psychologists refer to as The Homoeostatic impulse.  It’s best demonstrated in the human desire for things to “be the same – but better.” However, as we all know, improvement can only come as the result of change.  Things don’t “just magically get better” – we have to make them better.

If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!

So, as we enter the first full working week of 2009, let’s embrace the opportunity to learn from what we did in 2008.

Movement or progress?

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As we move into a brand new year, I would like to share one of the simplest, yet most valuable pieces of advice I know with you.

Don’t mistake movement for progress!

Progress is not the result of hard work. If hard work were the secret to success, our grandparents would have been millionaires!Progress only comes when we work hard doing the right things. However, if we keep rowing that boat in the wrong direction, no matter how hard we row; we will never get where we want to be.

Before you invest your time or money on any marketing activities in 2009, make sure you are doing the right kind of marketing for your business – before you worry about doing it correctly.  For example; you ‘might’ be doing a mail shot correctly – yet by using email marketing instead of paper-based mailings, you can see better, faster results for a fraction of the cost and time of a traditional mail shot.

You might be doing that mail shot correctly, but it may not be the right form of marketing for what you want to achieve – your outcome!

Making progress

I suggest you look at all the marketing activities you currently engage in and then, one by one, find out if there isn’t a better, higher-leverage alternative for you to use in 2009.  There’s a list of marketing ideas here, which are extremely effective, just to get you started.

Over to you

What have you found to be the most effective forms of marketing for your business over the past year? Share your experiences and leave a comment below.

Unsexy blog posts can be valuable too!

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A blogger recently told me how his analytics software was unavailable for several days.

He went on to say how much more he enjoyed blogging and social networking his business during that period; without the pressure of checking ‘the numbers’ after everything he did.

Freedom to blog and connect

He kept saying how he enjoyed the freedom to really connect with his readers and those in his network; without the worry of whether his last blog post, tweet or facebook entry was driving visitors to his blog or not.

Although (like me) this blogger sells a service via his blog and not a product or advertising, he says he is obsessive about checking his statistics. It guides everything he does.

Like many service providers, I monetize jimsmarketingblog.com by attracting enquiries from people who read my work and then contact me, when they want someone to help them market their small business or boost their profits.

As a result, I only write posts if I believe people will find them useful, but I base the decision on what to write exclusively on whether I feel the post has value – NOT it’s potential to go viral or attract hits!

Because of this, you will see posts here like this one, which I know in advance will only get a small number of comments, next to the previous post, which currently has over 70 comments. You will see other posts here with over 250 comments, next to posts with 20 or so.  The reason this happens, is that if I believe a post like this one, is offering a valuable message, I will write it – even though it’s not a sexy marketing topic.

Give everything you believe your readers need

I believe that it’s important for everyone, but for service providers especially, to write posts based on what we believe to be valuable to our readers; even if it’s not always going to be a viral post or get hundreds of comments.  The irony, is that this approach has helped this blog grow from it’s launch a few months ago, to a couple of thousand unique visitors a day (often far more.)

The numbers are important for every commercial blog, but they should not be the only driver of what we decide to say!  After all, some of your least populist output, can be the most interesting to a section of your blog’s community.

Link love, Google and spammers

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The results are in and I can now let you know what’s happened since I started this exciting marketing experiment!

As many of you already know, jimsmarketingblog.com offers everyone who comments here a special reward; something called a do-follow link.  This is great for my readers, as it means when you comment here, your link actually tells Google to visit your website or blog; which can help boost your Search Engine Optimization.

link love google spam internet marketingSadly, over 99% of blogs and almost every well-read blog, offers the exact opposite – they offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google NOT to follow the link to your website or blog.

The 2 main reasons people give for not offering do-follow links are as follows:

1. Google ‘penalise’ sites like mine, which offer them, by lowering our page rank.
2. Blogs offering do-follow links are more likely to be targeted by spammers, because links from do-follow blogs are so much more valuable to them.

So, what REALLY happens when you offer do-follow links?

I have seen no drop in traffic from Google. This blog’s only a few months old and it gets around 50 – 60 unique visitors each day via Google. When I started the experiment, I was getting around 40 a day. There are lots of reasons why this number has gone up – but for a very new blog that only posts a few times a week, that’s an ‘ok’ response from Google. I can’t see that I am being punished for offering the links; not yet anyway!

Spam? Well, 99.9% of the spam here is the kind of automated spam that every blog gets and it goes straight into the blog’s spam filter.  There has been no increase in this kind of spam at all.

Spam from people using my comments section to pimp their website/blog has increased very slightly – but mainly because spammers know how well read this blog is. They see posts with over 200 comments and that’s like a magnet for comment spammers.

Thus, I can say with a high degree of certainty that the blog has suffered no ill effects from Google or from spammers, because of my use of do-follow links!

So, I am going to keep offering them to you – every time you comment here!

Benefits of offering do-follow links?

There are a lot of very compelling reasons to offer do-follow links. If you look at the kind of comments I got here when I announced what I was doing, you will see how warmly it was welcomed by the online community.

This blog is all about developing a community, based around our mutual interest in marketing and social media. So, what better way to show my commitment to our community, than to reach out and help promote everyone who comments here?

I have also seen a massive surge in visitor numbers, RSS subscribers and in the number of people who contact me via jimsmarketingblog.com. I believe a big reason for this, is that people really embrace the concept of a blog that actually gives them something tangible every time they comment.

We live in an age where marketing and social media guru’s keep on talking about how important it is to connect and share – yet they do so behind blogs that deliberately tell Google NOT to visit YOUR website or blog!

I really like the phrase that’s used to describe do-follow links.  They call it Link Love. As we approach what is sure to be a very challenging year for small businesses in 2009, I hope more people reach-out to THEIR readers with links that are actually worth having.

Over to you!

So, what do you think about ‘Link Love?’  Do you find yourself more likely to comment on blogs that show they value your comments?  Do you offer link love to your readers already – if so, what has your experience been? Whatever your thoughts are, share them here (and get some Link Love too!!)