The world economy is in a mess. Everyone agrees on that. And, sadly, nobody sees great improvement in the coming year or two.
That means that business owners need new strategies...especially new marketing strategies...to deal with the current economic ills. If you do not have a relatively new and comprehensive marketing plan designed to take you through the current "bad times", you need to get started on one. The sooner the better.
As with all marketing plans, begin with some basic questions. Who have been your customers? What do you need to do to keep their business? Who are your potential customers now? How can you reach and sell to them? Answer those straightforward questions and you are off and running.
You may find that you can benefit from increasing your marketing efforts, even while others scramble to reduce their marketing expenditures. But, whether you expand or reign in your advertising and marketing, a change in your primary message(s) may be a good idea.
If you are selling home-based business opportunities, for instance, you may experience greater demand when economic anxieties are high. Thus, you will probably want to increase your outreach efforts to people concerned about downsizings and business closings. And, your marketing messages to these people might be different than in the past. While not entirely abandoning messages about the high income opportunities and freedom of working at home, you will almost certainly be well served by spending considerable time talking about the security of owning one's own business and being immune to worries of layoffs and complete loss of income.
If you are selling high priced products, you will have a separate set of questions and concerns than do those of us with more mundane products and services. Your market may become even smaller and more targeted than ever as you seek to reach the shrinking number of the economically privileged; people who can afford luxuries even in difficult times. And, as your market shrinks, your frequency of contact may have to be greater, as might the average purchase size. Or, because very few people are entirely immune to anxiety about our current economic crisis, you might want to highlight your $100 bottles of wine, as opposed to your $300 choices.
It is axiomatic that the poorer the economy, the greater the importance of price. But, for lots of reasons, lowering prices may not be desirable or possible for you. You will need to ask yourself whether dropping your prices will devalue your product in the eyes of customers, what it will do for your volume, and whether you will be able to move your price back to current levels in the future without angering your customer base.
Of course, you have to consider what your competitors are doing. A little competitive research to find out where your competitors are putting their advertising dollars and what they are saying about their products can be very instructive, particular if you track them on an ongoing basis to see what they stick with. Remember, you can assume they only stick with promotional efforts that have proven to be successful. And, there are lots of good tools and programs that make competitive research easier than ever before.
All you have to do to develop good, strategic marketing strategies and integrate them in a well coordinated plan, is to ask yourself good questions and do whatever it takes to get well-conceived answers. You need not be a NASA employee, I promise. But, you must think analytically or get help from an experienced marketer.
Just remember one thing. If your product or service was viable a year ago, it probably still is. Therefore, reducing your marketing budget and/or your marketing efforts is almost never a good idea. The question is not should you market, it is how you should market. - 15266
That means that business owners need new strategies...especially new marketing strategies...to deal with the current economic ills. If you do not have a relatively new and comprehensive marketing plan designed to take you through the current "bad times", you need to get started on one. The sooner the better.
As with all marketing plans, begin with some basic questions. Who have been your customers? What do you need to do to keep their business? Who are your potential customers now? How can you reach and sell to them? Answer those straightforward questions and you are off and running.
You may find that you can benefit from increasing your marketing efforts, even while others scramble to reduce their marketing expenditures. But, whether you expand or reign in your advertising and marketing, a change in your primary message(s) may be a good idea.
If you are selling home-based business opportunities, for instance, you may experience greater demand when economic anxieties are high. Thus, you will probably want to increase your outreach efforts to people concerned about downsizings and business closings. And, your marketing messages to these people might be different than in the past. While not entirely abandoning messages about the high income opportunities and freedom of working at home, you will almost certainly be well served by spending considerable time talking about the security of owning one's own business and being immune to worries of layoffs and complete loss of income.
If you are selling high priced products, you will have a separate set of questions and concerns than do those of us with more mundane products and services. Your market may become even smaller and more targeted than ever as you seek to reach the shrinking number of the economically privileged; people who can afford luxuries even in difficult times. And, as your market shrinks, your frequency of contact may have to be greater, as might the average purchase size. Or, because very few people are entirely immune to anxiety about our current economic crisis, you might want to highlight your $100 bottles of wine, as opposed to your $300 choices.
It is axiomatic that the poorer the economy, the greater the importance of price. But, for lots of reasons, lowering prices may not be desirable or possible for you. You will need to ask yourself whether dropping your prices will devalue your product in the eyes of customers, what it will do for your volume, and whether you will be able to move your price back to current levels in the future without angering your customer base.
Of course, you have to consider what your competitors are doing. A little competitive research to find out where your competitors are putting their advertising dollars and what they are saying about their products can be very instructive, particular if you track them on an ongoing basis to see what they stick with. Remember, you can assume they only stick with promotional efforts that have proven to be successful. And, there are lots of good tools and programs that make competitive research easier than ever before.
All you have to do to develop good, strategic marketing strategies and integrate them in a well coordinated plan, is to ask yourself good questions and do whatever it takes to get well-conceived answers. You need not be a NASA employee, I promise. But, you must think analytically or get help from an experienced marketer.
Just remember one thing. If your product or service was viable a year ago, it probably still is. Therefore, reducing your marketing budget and/or your marketing efforts is almost never a good idea. The question is not should you market, it is how you should market. - 15266
About the Author:
Daniel Z. Kane is a college administrator who has published dozens of brief articles on marketing, online business, online college degree programs, online education for working adults, and related subjects.
