Ten top ideas for marketing in a recession

Here are some good ideas from C.Edward Brice Marketing Gimbal.

Top Ten actions for recession marketing.

1. You will live or die within your customer base: In times of economic uncertainty, when budgets are getting cut back, people buy from who they know. This means you’ve got to engage with the customer base more frequently and deeply than ever before. Might be a good time to start a customer community or referral program.

2. Customer marketing content becomes king: Content relating to customer ROI, success stories, problems solved etc becomes vital to your messaging success and sales support.

3. TCO & ROI are Mandatory: Understand how you reduce your total cost of ownership and what the ROI is for your solutions, and quantify these. See point # 3.

4. Measure Everything: Know what works, and what doesn’t, and stop what doesn’t.

5. Invest in Communications: Communications becomes a high ROI tactic in tough times. Use it! Make sure your PR firm is using all the social media tools at your disposal to get your message out. To this end if you don’t have a PR firm then start a twitter page, start a blog, brand a You Tube channel, and develop some viral content. Its low cost and it works.

6. Data is king. For push marketing make sure you have good enriched customer data so you can segment by multiple criteria. The more targeted you get, the more effective your message and conversation. In answer to your next question, Yes we still need some old school push marketing. I would not bet my career on hoping my blog generates business in a recession.

7. Use the phone. If you have a good inside prospecting and customer database and have access to tele-sales/marketing (insoruce or out) use it to keep engaged with customers. Work with sales to programatize blitz days, identify reasons to call, prospect within your database, and use your calling resources to do the initial selling before handing off to outside sales people (could lower your cost of sale). Be careful where you use tele in the demand funnel. Note I said “inside prospecting database”. Pure outbound cold calling is very expensive, and not very effective unless your value proposition is incredible.

8. Stay close with sales. You’re in this boat together and you will either join forces or sink. Work with sales; understand what is and what is not working. Develop strong joint measures.

9. Have a Strategy. Strategy is about sacrifice and if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. If you have no priority then you will sprinkle your marketing dollars all over the place and have no impact. No impact says good bye to your job in the next round of cost cuts. Ask the hard questions. Is segment x more important that segment y? Is Country B more important that Country C?

10. If you have “Social Media Strategist” as a Title change it: Call yourself marketing, customer marketing, installed base marketing etc. Most management is old school and unless you can show revenue generation coming from Twitter then reposition yourself closer to revenue generation.

10 top marketing mistakes small business make - how to avoid them.

Carolyn Stafford from Connect Marketing has a great report and the 10 top marketing mistakes small businesses make.


Report on Marketing Mistakes as pdf.

In summary however:
Mistake #1 they lose sight of the big vision – for their life and their business. Carolyn recommends:
Stop spinning your wheels. If you have lost sight of the vision for your life and your business, I
recommend you get up close and personal with yourself. I think you need to spend some time working on your business and not in it. Schedule this time in every week or it won't happen.

Mistake #2 they don’t follow a plan and take a ‘scattergun’ approach to marketing.
Remedy
Follow this simple Step Process to get yourself a simple marketing plan as a starting point:
1. Get some marketing know-how
2. Do a marketing audit.
3. Get a marketing plan.

Mistake #3 they slash (or even wipe out) the marketing budget.
If you are a solo operator, I suggest you seriously consider employing someone so you can focus on working ‘on the business’ instead of ‘in the business’. The day I employed my first staff member was the turning point for my business. Suddenly I had to generate the new leads and business to fund their salary and it inspired the growth of the business.

Mistake #6 they communicate poorly with the people that matter most to their business.
Remedy
Spend a few days going through your database of contacts. Apply the 80/20 rule and identify the 20% of people (include clients, suppliers, business associates) who are likely to give you more business or are advocates for you in some way. Then don’t wait. Call them up. Invite them out for a coffee. Don’t make it a sales pitch. Ask them for feedback on how you can improve your service to them. This is by far the best way to get honest feedback.

Mistake #7 they don’t seek professional support or help until it’s too late.
Remedy
Review your business vision and make a list of all the kinds of professionals you could use to help you in your business. List the top three you need to achieve your goals for the next 90 days. Think aboutwho you might know who does good work in these areas. Ask your friends in business who they use for their marketing (provided of course you like the way they market themselves and they are getting good results). Do some research on the internet too.

Mistake #8 they stop networking and building business relationships.

Mistake #9 they stop being creative and innovative and are slow to adapt to the environment.

Mistake #10 they reduce investment in technology and the internet.
Remedy
Make sure that a web strategy is part of your overall marketing strategy and budget. Look for an emarketing strategist to work with on your website – do NOT simply get a designer or an IT person to work on it in the early stages.

Seth Godin - online presentation

For anyone in marketing this video is a must.

Seth Godin Spread good ideas utube vid.

Nuture Marketing...

I was at an offsite and heard the term nuture marketing and it was one that I hadn't heard in a while but nuturing customers is key to establishing a long term commitment both ways, between you and your customers. Karin Schaff has a good article explain the process.


Nurture Marketing: Always Being Connected

by Karin Schaff Glazier

The concept of nurture marketing has been around for a long time. However, with narrowing customer markets, fierce competition and an abundance of consumer purchasing options, nurture marketing is changing from a want to a critical need for survival. Much of nurture marketing involves basic common sense: Treat others the way you would like to be treated to keep in touch with prospects (new and existing customers) and develop and cultivate relationships to generate new business. Here are just a few highly valuable but simple tips you can use to begin developing your nurture marketing game plan:

Know your ABCs (and Ds)! Before jumping headfirst into nurture marketing activities, dissect your prospect base into A, B, C and D accounts. Typically, the A and B accounts are where most of your revenue will come from in the near term, per your sales plan and ideal client profile. The C and D accounts are those that hold potential to become revenue-generating accounts, though not necessarily in the near term. The As and Bs typically receive personalized communication when possible. The Cs and Ds tend to receive more of what the industry calls "drip" marketing, which means activities are more general rather than highly personalized by account and contact type.

Become the trusted advisor. Nurture marketing helps to establish you as a trusted advisor in the minds of your prospects—and therefore puts you at the top of their list when they are searching for or trying to make a decision regarding your type of offering. Ask yourself what you need to provide so that they will see you as a trusted advisor. Remember, your product/service information is important, but it isn't everything. Industry reports, case studies (industry case studies as well as your own), articles, Webinar invites, etc., can also be powerful tools. These tools eventually build your nurture marketing tool kit.

Execution is key. Once you have developed your nurture marketing tool kit (which should grow continuously to keep information fresh and new), start to assign activities/materials to specific prospect types (the A, B, C and D accounts). Record specific dates in your calendar when materials should be sent out to each prospect. You may not know what materials you will send two months from now, for example, but you should at least note that you will be sending something on X date. And, don't forget about the in-person visits and outings; they are great tools to add to your nurture activities. You may also have multiple contacts per target account which value different information sent in different ways--and possibly at different times. The information sent to the A and B accounts should be personalized. Sales should lead this effort (i.e. sending an article, highlighting the important concepts, adding a handwritten note, mailing in hard copy format). Be sure to explain why you are sending the information, otherwise prospects may not understand how the information pertains to their business objectives and functional needs. The C and D accounts may receive the same information but in more of a canned/ongoing campaign type approach through mediums such as monthly e-zines or direct mailers. These activities tend to offer the same information to the same people at the same time, and the marketing department tends to oversee these efforts.

Track your activities. It's important to know what you are sending, when and why. Using technology (i.e. customer relationship management and/or sales force automation) to track all your nurture activities helps give you and others visibility into what is working, when and with whom. This allows you to continually improve your approach for better results.

The tips above are only a handful of the things you can do to proactively connect with your prospects. Nurture marketing is a forever commitment that needs some basic ingredients, such as common sense, strategic planning, consistent follow through and passion for getting close to your prospects, so you can reap the many rewards it offers.