Blog
Thursday 8/13/09
Posted by: Erika Leaf |
Marketing in a Down EconomyWhat are the best strategies for keeping your business financials healthy in a tighter buying environment? Are you “working smart” as well as “working hard”? If belt tightening needs to happen, what expenses should be the first to go? Here are some thoughts on cost effective marketing, guerilla marketing and return on investment (ROI) of your marketing dollars.
Increase your clientele - Leverage the power of your existing clients by creating a system for collecting referrals. Depending on your relationship with your clients, you may want to offer an incentive for a referral, but it may be as simple as just asking for it. - Host an event – anything from offering meeting space to a local group to hosting a charity event to putting on a business event. Bringing people into your workplace is a sure way to get new clients connected to who you are and what you do. - Broaden your base by offering your product or service to a wider geographic area. If your primary area suffers a deeper recession, doing business in other areas that might not be struggling so much can really help keep your business going. - Join forces with a related business and do a cross promotion. Exchange Point of purchase countertop displays with them or posters or even free standing displays in each other’s lobby describing the promotion. Co-sponsor an event for half the cost and twice the exposure. - Join forces with a competitor – it’s not just big Wall St. firms that can do mergers and buyouts. Don’t rule it out without thinking about who your competitors are and what opportunities might lurk there for your business. Maximize Your Advertising Dollars You could easily spend a couple hundred dollars on a newspaper ad that appears for one day. Or you could spend the same amount getting a banner that you can put up for 6 months, or getting the doors of your pickup truck lettered with durable graphics that will last 5 years. Print advertising definitely has it’s place, but when you consider how many “impressions” you get per dollar spent over the life of the marketing piece, you’ll see that signs and graphics are an excellent investment of your marketing dollars. - Put graphics on your vehicles. Did you know that the average delivery vehicle makes 16 million visual impressions in a single year? With a five year guarantee, that’s a whole lot of impact for your one time expenditure! - Put out an A-frame. For the cost of one print ad you can have a full color attention getter that will last for years. - Dress up your location with fabric or vinyl banners. Impress and inform your clients. You get a lot of bang for your buck with such a large canvas. Use New Media People use the internet more and more often to get the information they need. And this includes information about products and services they need. Even if you’re not internet saavy yourself, don’t neglect this important and cost effective way to promote your business.
- Put downloadable PDFs on your website and refer clients to them rather than paying for printed material that you also have to pay to mail out. - Pay attention to Search Engine Optimization for your website. Pepper your page titles, meta tags and the visible text on each page with the keywords your clients are likely to search for. Submit your pages to each search engine provider often. Encourage others to link to your site. And use flash sparingly because search engines can’t read it and it won’t drive traffic to your site (although it looks cool once the traffic arrives at your site!) - Start an e-newsletter. Keep your name in front of your clients without any printing or postage costs. Providers like MyEmma or Constant Contact make it easy to do it yourself with templates and easy to follow directions. You don’t have to be a high tech person or a graphic designer to put out a nice looking e-newsletter these days… at a fraction of the cost of putting out a print newsletter. - Depending on what your business is, consider online advertising with Google Adwords. This is pay per click advertising, so you only pay when people click on your ad. And you get to set the monthly budget. Do it yourself or get help from a web marketing guru. Make your trade shows pay off - Hone your message - Promote your booth ahead of time to potential customers. Consider adding something like “See you at booth 125 at the Expo” to your email signature line for the month before the show. Mention your upcoming shows in your newsletter or with an envelope sticker on your mailings. - Design an open, inviting booth with fresh, attractive, engaging graphics (for photos of nice local booths, see the previous issue of Cool Projects) - Train your booth staff. Role play how you want them to approach people and what to say. A small investment of time could dramatically increase the effectiveness of your pitch. Even seasoned employees can benefit from this kind of group brainstorming and practice. - Follow up after the show by phone, email and mail. Don’t give up too easily. Hot prospects are worth your extra attention. Take Advantage of Free Publicity It takes your time and effort to tap into the opportunities for free publicity, but when business is slow and your time is more in abundance than your money, it is a perfect time to focus on this. - Get published. Write a column, contribute to an article, share your expertise. This gives you exposure as a trustworthy expert. Can’t beat that. - Write a press release every time you hire a new employee, add a new capability or sponsor an event. You don’t need any special skills to write one. Here’s a simple guide to formatting. Target specific editors of relevant sections or publications. Call for their name and address it directly to them. - Invest your time, energy and imagination in guerilla marketing techniques Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur, a small business or a larger well established business, in a down economy, it’s more important than ever to “work smart”. So make a smart marketing plan, and then focus on carrying it out. Use this time as an opportunity to become more efficient and more effective. Good luck!
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