We thought that our first article of the year should be something a little inspiring to help kickstart your success for 2019, so here are a few pieces of extremely valuable advice from 5 of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs…

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”.

Bill Gates (Microsoft)

At the time, unhappy customers can make you feel very disappointed, and rightly so. But take that disappointment and turn it into improvement. Unhappy clients can be assets. Pay attention to what any disgruntled customers might have to say. This is a wonderful chance for you to learn and to grow in the right direction.

“Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

Steve Jobs (Apple)

Steve Jobs is really an entrepreneurial legend. And he had some very sound advice for entrepreneurs. He is known for his exemplary attention to detail, and putting quality over quantity. If you always put quality first, you can’t really go wrong! And in the context of marketing/social media, it is definitely better to go viral once, than have two average posts!

“Move fast and make mistakes… Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough… Most companies mess up by moving too slowly and trying to be too precise. When you are moving quickly or doing anything like this, you want to make mistakes evenly on both sides. We wanted to set up a culture so that we were equally messing up by moving too quickly and by moving too slowly some of the time. So that way, we’d know that we were in the middle.”

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

A pretty self explanatory way of thinking (and a pretty different way of thinking, too)! Play around with your marketing. Making mistakes is all a part of the game, until you find out what works best for you and your business!

“Business opportunities are like buses; there is always another one coming.”

Richard Branson (Virgin Group)

Richard Branson is what you could call a pretty bloody successful business man. He has more than 400 companies under his wings, with an extremely diverse business portolio! So, keep your business portfolios as diverse as possible, and always be on the lookout for new opportunities! Marketing is very similar. It is always changing, so you need to keep your finger on the pulse and keep up with the trends! Don’t fall behind and miss out on good marketing opportunities!

“Business success is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics.”

Tony Robbins (Entrepreneur, Author, Philanthropist and Life Coach)

Tony Robbins is possibly the best business and life strategist out there. In fact, he is quite remarkable, and his success has been nothing short of that. He is an expert in organizational turnaround, psychology of leadership, and the art of negotiations. He believes that in order to succeed, you must be clear about your strengths, weaknesses, goals and strategies! Marketing is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics, also! It is all about connecting successfully with your customers and inspiring them to BUY!

​We hope that 2019 brings you lots of success and some very successful marketing, and that this article helps in some way!

Today, a client was asking for advice with their email subject lines and whilst I was writing the email I figured I would share it to a larger audience.

And I should be honest, I lied, there is no perfect subject line although the above is pretty damn good, if I do say so myself 😊 *pats self on back*

THE BASICS

A good subject line will be compelling, descriptive and creative. That’s a tall task for a few words (If you want a masterclass in how to write a great story in 6 words click here)

The one thing you should never do is be misleading; it will annoy the reader and make sure your follow up email does not get read.

AUDIENCE

Depending on your audience, things can change dramatically if it’s someone you know well they are going to open it anyway – half the time my friends might not even bother with a subject line or the even more interesting “Fw: “. But in general, when wanting to write a good opening line it’s to someone you want to impress either in business or personally and it might be a large group or an individual.

THE STARTING POINTS

You want people interested in what is inside the email. It’s oft told that there are only a few stories in the world and they are just told differently so goes the email subject line. It’s all roughly the same just with a different emphasis here are some tried and true methods

You can ask a question
• Do you know how to write a great subject line?
• Can you write a great subject line without even trying?
• Are your subjects subpar?

You can impart knowledge
• Learn 6 ways to write a great subject
or you can tweak it and make it a personal story
• How I wrote the perfect subject line
• Why did they not reply

Urgency or FOMO or Jealousy
Play on peoples egos or insecurities
• Don’t waste another email
• Hurry – Last chance to learn how to write the perfect subject (ok so they don’t all work for all situations)

Offer
People love an offer. “X% off” or combine it with urgency FOR “25% off sneakers for another 12 hours.”
• SAVE time when writing your emails (ok cheating but if you aren’t selling)

Make it Personal
Never be afraid to drop in a name if it makes sense to do so
• Stephanie, Learn why your emails aren’t getting opened

Mix it up!
And don’t always start the subject with Brand X’s [weekly newsletter] consistency isn’t bad but it can get boring and wastes valuable real estate.

AND you can be cheeky
Is the subject line the new pickup line?

THE BUZZWORDS

Instincts can get the best of us and when we see certain buzzwords our interest is piqued the good people at CoSchedule has given us, not one but two, great lists. Words that will get your emails opened and words that won’t DON’T MIX THEM UP!!!!

All these tips should see you in good stead to write popular, thought provoking, click generating headlines, subject lines, text messages…

A friend asked me the other day “When can we stop marketing?”

I smiled and suggested that the answer may be never but it could also be right away (it should be noted that she works for a company that we are not contracted with so I do not have any skin in the game). “Why do you want to stop?” I asked.

Then she rambled some reasons off but the gist of it was

Our ads are just adding to the maelstrom of crap out there – I don’t want to annoy people…  people unsubscribed from our mailing list plus no one is engaging with our Facebook page.

Basically, it sounded like a marketing existential crisis.

To Stop Or Not To Stop

You might have been surprised earlier when I said you could stop marketing right away but it wouldn’t be the right thing to do – it would mainly be a reason to pivot. There are two reasons why you could stop marketing:

• Your marketing is genuinely losing you money – in which case, I would say you need to change your strategy rather than stop.
• You feel so loathsome and part of a corporate machine adding to the crap that it’s affecting your life – in which case I would say you need to relax a little and then frame it differently in your mind. We don’t have to call it “marketing” or “advertising” we can call it communication or connecting or outreach. And I would also change my strategy because if you feel loathsome – you probably don’t have enthusiasm for your brand and the communications you are putting out into the world and if you don’t – why should/would your current and potential customers?

The main reason why you shouldn’t stop marketing is that you have a product or service that needs to be sold. Depending on the size of your business – you may say that word of mouth has treated you ok so far, well, at it’s very essence all marketing is word of mouth even if it’s organic. You starting a business and telling your friends and family that is in essence marketing. Them telling their friends – that’s marketing, and you don’t feel disgusting about that now, do you? So why should you when you are connecting with people via a different platform be it traditional media or any of the new platforms that we have access to nowadays..

So if you see an unsubscribe don’t feel bad assume that that person was not the best fit for your company not that everyone that gets your messages is perturbed by your very existence. If on the hand no one ever opens your emails then it might be the time to rethink your content. One client recently was scared after many unsubscribes in one email but it was the first email after these people had been added to their list after entering a competition which can be expected after all we use entry guidelines like subscribe to win but inevitably some people will unsubscribe once the competition has finished.

Another way to make you not want to feel like giving up on marketing is embracing your customer find out what works – sift through the analytics; use AI; a simple chat bot can prequalify your customers but also gain valuable insight into what your customers are expecting from you, your website or a given page.

Will they buy the cow if they are getting the milk for free?

Another customer was scared about giving too many tips away for free – I say give more and give it better because:

• you have more knowledge than your readers
• you will never not be better than them at your job and
• they will never have the time to do what you do because they already have a role

At the end of the day the only reason we think you should ever stop marketing is when you close your doors.

If connecting with your customers is getting too hard or feels likes its not working . Don’t give up! The value good marketing brings is invaluable! Be patient, be persistent, create content that is true to your brand, offer value, embrace your customer and make it easy for them to get what they want.

We love a good statistic, all of us. Period. We, marketers, that is, use stats to demonstrate value.  One great stat that I love is: