Thursday, 5 March 2009
5 Tips For Marketing In An Economic Crisis
Back in 2007, I was managing a financial trading brand that had its budget reduced to one third of its previous level. We were faced with a lot less budget but the expectation of attracting the same level of business. It was a pretty daunting situation. I was anxious and annoyed that the hard work we’d put in over the past years to build up the brand would be wasted and that our customer base would dry up.
Anyhows, after a tough couple of initial months, we got used to working with less and at the end of the financial year, we had exceeded expectations, gaining more customers than the previous year (when we had 3 times the budget!). Thinking back to that challenging year, there are five key lessons I learned that can apply to marketing in the current economic crisis.
1 – Change Your Perspective
Ok, so you’re budget has been cut, but you need to stop looking at the glass as half empty. Shift your point of view, re-cast yourself as a scrappy, efficient, determined marketing force with limited fire-power that you will use very intelligently. Changing the way you look at yourself and your marketing configuration will help get your creative juices flowing to meet the challenges ahead (let’s face it, with not challenges, life is very very dull).
2 – Cut The Fat
We all know that there is a significant proportion of our marketing that’s set asides for ‘ego marketing’. Of course, if you have the budget, this activity is great, it boost searches and helps you raise your brand profile (as well as boosting the egos of your superiors). But a huge proportion of it is wasted.
The current cost-cutting frenzy is a great time to cut these wasteful campaigns and re-allocate budget somewhere more accountable, maybe you can use it to help start off that blog you have been thinking about launching, or developing education products to support existing and potential clients. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out some better way to spend it any case.
3 – Experiment
When we were dealing with a reduced budget, we had a lot more motivation to try out new and experimental tactics and approaches (as long as they were low cost). Our big-spending competitors didn’t need to bother with these tedious niche-approaches to marketing cause they still had their magazine, tv and rich media ads to fuel their business.
With the advent of social media there are 100s more channels opening up to reach your potential customers. Take advantage of the tough times to experiment with these, you may just strike gold.
4 – Grow From Within
A lot of times our existing clients are one of our most powerful sources of new business. Unfortunately they get neglected and at best offered pretty rudimentary member-get-member promotions. If you’re firepower to reach new clients is limited, try to generate a better relationship with your existing clients by:
- Helping them fix problems quickly
- Asking for their opinion and help to improve
- Providing them with useful content
You already have the ability to contact them cost-free so take advantage of that. By genuinely helping and considering the concerns of your existing clients, you can generate enough positive word-of-mouth to boost new client numbers.
5 – Get Passionate About Analytics
With a smaller budget, knowing exactly how each penny of your budget is spent become more important than ever. Really taking a close and deep look at your website and marketing analytics will pay off big time. You’ll be able to identify what’s working and what isn’t as well as spot any opportunities for optimising your website user-journey.
So those are 5 lessons that helped me deal with a significantly reduced budget. What have I missed? I’d like to hear your ideas, comments about marketing in a down-economy.
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