Posted By PC Hay on December 15, 2008
Whether you think the economists are right or wrong about the state of our economy, most people would agree that perception is reality, and unfortunately, many people feel that our economy isn’t doing so hot right now. As a result, many companies are cutting back or eliminating their marketing efforts and hoping for a turn-around. This never works because once you reduce your marketing, you reduce your exposure and then your revenue, making it even more difficult to gain or even maintain traction.
When money is tight, what is a company to do? How can you continue to market when all logic implies that you simply can’t afford to? It can be done; you just have to get more creative and more aggressive.
Perhaps you have been running a radio advertising campaign that is now out of your budget. Most business owners would simply pull the plug, but an alternative would be to take a different direction by producing your own podcasts and making them available on your website. For example, if you run a financial planning firm, your podcasts could focus on explaining financial terms, outlining particular investing strategies and helping callers with their specific questions. In addition to the exposure on your own website, you can submit your podcasts to various directories, such as Apple’s podcast directory, Podcast Alley and Podcast.com for even more exposure.
If cable advertising was part of your marketing plan that you can no longer afford, you could consider starting your own weekly television program. You may be thinking “If I can’t afford to advertise on cable, I certainly can’t afford to start my own program.” but the good news is that it may be free because in many areas, the government has required the local cable companies to provide channels for public access programs at no charge. This means you will have at your disposal a set, all of the necessary equipment and possibly even a crew to run it. All you need to do is develop the material. You will need to contact your local cable company for details.
You should already be blogging, and your blog should be hosted on your own website rather than one of the free sites such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. This helps to give your existing website visitors insight to your company’s personality and experience while providing a boost to your organic search engine optimization. If the information that you produce is useful it will also encourage your visitors to come back more frequently, which will help you to convert more of them to paying clients/customers over time. Success in this realm will depend on your ability to produce original content rather than the rehashed posts that plague much of the blogosphere today. Your choice of blog platform is not a critical factor, but I personally believe that Wordpress is the best one available. Wordpress, along with a number of other blog platforms are available free of charge and can be installed with a few simple clicks through the admin panel at most hosting companies.
One powerful tool that most companies can benefit from is email marketing because it is relatively easy and extremely cost-effective. Constant Contact makes it easy to build and manage your list, design and send your emails, and track your results through a web-based application. You should carefully plan your email marketing campaign though; send your message too sporadically and you won’t achieve the results you’re looking for, send your message too often and you’ll annoy your recipients. As with blogging, you should also ensure that you are producing original, useful content. Everyone gets more than enough emails already so if you want them to pay attention to yours, it needs to stand out.
One weakness of many companies is their customer service. For many small businesses, it is easy to close the sale, collect the money and finish the job, but they often overlook the customer during the process and rarely follow up with them afterwards. They also fail to realize that sometimes, their customers just don’t understand their business or processes and may need more communication throughout the relationship. This is a tough flaw to for most business owners to spot because it requires a great deal of objectivity on a personal level. It is easy to look at a balance sheet and see exactly what your revenue was last year, but it is a lot more difficult to look at yourself and see how you could have been wrong in how you handled some of your customers. For most companies, it is best to bring in customer service consultants for this. While there will be an investment needed to do so, it pays off several times over though repeat business and referrals.
Networking is another powerful tool for developing new business, but it does take time to build effective relationships. You can start by looking for a few networking groups in your city, but don’t forget to take advantage of online social networking tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and APSense. Just remember, networking is not about the quick sale, its all about building relationships. In many cases, you won’t end up doing business with the people you come in direct contact with. Instead, they may refer other people to you. Be helpful and patient and the results from this approach will come over time.
The economy may not be doing as well as you may like but there is no reason for your company’s exposure and revenue not to increase. You just need to be creative and work a little bit harder than your competitors. The leverage you gain now can catapult you well ahead of them when the economy picks back up.
Category: Marketing Tips |
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Tags: economic, exposure, marketing, revenue, slowdown
