Outsourced Marketing Services

19 Brilliant Strategies for Surviving & Thriving the Downturn

In the highly challenging economy in which we compete, growth (and even survival) depends on developing a systematic, organizational capability and expert resources to identify growth initiatives and opportunities, and to capitalize on these, ahead of your competitors. It is important to take action to not only get through this economy, but thrive as well.

  1. Have a clear strategy. A marketing plan establishes a solid foundation for your sales and marketing planning in this challenging economy, and helps maximize your resources. It validates your target market and competition, clarifies your sales and marketing plans for staff and executives, and ensures your resources and budget are appropriate for your planned marketing activities. Treat growth as a discipline across the entire organization. Companies that treat growth as the responsibility solely of the business development group rarely create meaningful growth. Create Key Performance Indices (KPIs), financial and non-financial metrics used to help your organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals - to assess the present state of the business and to assist in prescribing a course of action. Ensure strategies, budgets, and sales are realistic, and create and implement the resources for all initiatives (consider outsourcing, see below). All sales and marketing efforts, whether they are strategic or tactical, will become much more efficient and effective.
  2. Cut your operating costs. Look at every line item, and determine where you can cut costs. Unnecessary infrastructure, no control over business assets, over expansion, hiring "warm bodies," Sacrificing short-term cash flow for long-term growth, are all classic mistakes in tough times. Look at your business as an outsider. What overhead can you reduce, that will allow lower cost and/or improved performance.
  3. Outsource. Consider outsourcing areas that are not your businesses core competencies. Let the experts do the work, people potentially highly qualified in specific areas. They will likely be better, faster, more cost-effective, and will be directly accountable to you, day-to-day. Manage your vendors closely with a few effective people. Incent your outsource vendors by creating performance milestones. Manage by performance metrics.
  4. Adopt digital & interactive media as predominant mediums for reaching your customers. Mobile and internet will thrive through this economic downturn. They are now mainstream, and easier to target your preferred customers. They are likely cheaper, faster, and will give you almost immediate results. You can measure results in real time, and adjust on-the-fly. No print costs. No postage fees. No delay. Immediate feedback. Portable and wireless. Multiple offers to different target audiences. Marketers are cutting their traditional media budgets and investing more into digital. A whopping 62 percent of marketers said they would be pulling dollars from traditional and placing them in digital. Traditional marketing (print, radio, TV, magazines, billboard, trade show) is still relevant in many areas, and still works. An integrated campaign is still best, if you have the budget.
  5. Quality is king. Word-of-mouth is queen. Customer satisfaction Reigns. The lowest cost marketing expense, and the highest return on marketing investment (ROMI) is returning satisfied customers. In a sea of market place customer satisfaction mediocrity, satisfied customers will talk up your products and services, and create positive word-of-mouth to many non-customers, creating new clients. Alternatively, if you are not providing high perceived customer value, you will struggle through down times, and may not survive. Look at your competitors. Test their quality. Make sure you exceed it, especially in customer facing situations. High quality services & deliverables. Employee training, motivation, employee communication, and efficient processes and methodologies throughout your organization are key to customer satisfaction, and repeat business.
  6. Meet your “new” customers. Know changes in customer spending profiles. Ensure you study carefully and clearly understand how your target audience segments spending may vary in a tough economy. “Know” who your most profitable customers are. Go after them. Though nearly all consumers (B2B and B2C) are facing economic uncertainty, their responses to economic difficulties differ - but not necessarily along conventional market or demographic lines. Firms must fully embrace the "empowered consumer" and give them the tools to harness their opinions—good and bad. Behavior and attitude will vary according to multiple factors, which may shift regularly based on their perceived needs. Clearly identify Potential Rebounders (currently 33% of consumers) - those likely to loosen up on spending sooner; Status Quo (48%) - those not likely to change from current behavior; and Digging In (19%) - those tightening spending and retreating further. Look to see “how” they are making their decisions, not just who is spending, and who is not, and adjust your growth strategies, messaging, and offers- based on your clients “real” needs. Smart organizations are highly customer-centric and marketing functions are interwoven throughout their operations.
  7. Encourage word-of-mouth. This is a large paradigm change for many companies, who have traditionally tried to have a carefully orchestrated forward-facing “image.” The new web has changed all that, and customers can now determine your quality, performance, and value, in a few minutes of online searching on forums, blogs, ratings, and press. “Encourage” dialogue with your target audience. Digital users research before they buy. They ask their friends, and they search exhaustively online. Interact with your customers openly in nothing but a forthright, honest manner. Think about user-contributed product reviews, and the ability to share reviews and comments on your product and services with friends or to anyone interested. Use web 2.0 tools to allow them to engage and participate in your business (surveys, wikis, blogs, content syndication, press releases, and depending on your target audience, sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Youmeo, Twitter and Flickr). You will benefit from increased real-time knowledge about how your customers perceive your organization, and you will “engage” your audience in thinking and talking about you, leading to dialogue, increased brand awareness, lead generation, and create sales that your competitors won’t.
  8. Incorporate Web 2.0. Think individual relevance. The new 2.0 Internet with its social networking  (Blogs, Podcasts, Vidcasts, MySpace, Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn) and new media platforms both invite and demand that its participants be engaged, and involved, and active. Think experiential. It provides new technologies and web designs that enhance creativity, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. To your customers, Web 2.0 is about relevance, and direct value, what’s in it for me? Old media, like TV especially, just asks that we passively stand around and watch. The more valuable you are with fresh new content and tools that directly benefits your target market, the more engaged and loyal they will be as customers to your brand.
  9. Build your Brand. In tough times top-performing companies make absolutely certain that brand is a central organizing principle. Your brand is the platform on which your customers make their buying decision Your brand is the "relationship" between your product and/or service and your consumer. Any time a consumer touches your brand via any medium whether web, computer interface, phone, interpersonal, print, news, word-of-mouth, sales call, or otherwise, – it must consistently and credibly communicate the promises and values your product and/or service can deliver. It’s no coincidence that strong brands, generally are the market leaders, who have a better time in tough economic times. Companies need to fully understand what drives demand on a second-by-second basis, and ensure their brand is closely aligned in all initiatives.
  10. Best-in-class creative & messaging. Be the best at messaging and creative in your competitive set. It gives your organization instant credibility. Differentiates from your competitors. Provides clarity, and clear value proposition, based on their real needs. Will also shorten your sales cycle, allow you to recruit better employees and retain them (they generally go to the perceived better companies), and will motivate both customers and employees.
  11. Mine your customer Database. Make sure your have a detailed database and use it regularly to connect with your target audience through an effective customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Ensure your marketing initiatives have Web 2.0 incentives for customer data collection capabilities to build accurate profiles of your target audience, and connect with them often, especially in this tough economy. Great content builds databases. Relevant content is key. The new world of always on, networked, social & knowledge needs – provides you multiple opportunities to connect with your target audience, providing constant data collection capabilities to construct an accurate and comprehensive profile of their customer base, & better, real-time decision making for shifting markets and customer behavior.
  12. Reach out to your customers frequently. That’s the value of digital. It’s instant, easy, and measurable. Connect to your customers in relevant time, purpose, & and content. Rather than implementing "one-off" promotional campaigns, leverage each activity and vehicle against each other to achieve maximum impact. Integrate a related campaign and offers into your direct mail, advertising, web, and other activities to create a more noticeable impression. Campaigns can be set up in advance, and based on the likely needs of multiple markets. How often is frequent enough? It depends on your market, your offer, your resources, and your business strategies, however there are some guidelines. Once you've prioritized your primary, secondary, and tertiary markets, we recommend you "communicate to" your primary market 2x monthly, your secondary market 1x monthly, and your tertiary markets 1x quarterly.
  13. Search. 1,000’s of indviduals, searching for a specific need - daily. Computer. Mobile. Local. National. Global. If you are not found by your target audience on the first (or may be second) page of Google, you don’t exist. Being on the top end of search engine results will translate into sales. Local search is the new realm for local business. People won't make car purchase decisions based on mobile searches, but they will use their PDAs to find the nearest gas station, dry cleaner, oil-change center, plumber, florist, ATM, Pizza, or restaurant for a given ethnic cuisine. Your website must be developed for search, both computer and mobile. Search is complex, time consuming, and changes hourly. Search engine optimization (SEO), paid search campaigns, copywriting, keywords, meta tags, page titles, link building, banner ads, long tail…outsource to an expert.
  14. Cash flow. The number one reason that businesses fail is lack of cash. Some of the issues that can bury a business in crisis are: improper management of accounts receivable, lack of adequate record-keeping, no review of financial statements, under-funded growth, no control over business assets, unnecessary infrastructure, having to wait too long for payment for sales, sacrificing short-term cash flow for long-term growth, assuming that because a sales is made cash is available, spending on unnecessary inventory.
  15. Integrated, Cross-Media. Convergence. Traditional, digital, and experiential. Integrated campaigns are more effective, potentially more costly, can be more complex to manage well – but can reach broader audiences with messaging adjusted to the platform. Integrated campaigns cohesively integrate content, context, and calls-to-action, across multiple platforms, such as web, mobile, print, TV, sales force, radio (63% of American adults listen to the radio one or more times a day), special offers, strategic partners, trade show, packaging, point-of-sales, etc. During challenging times you “must” reach your target audience, with messages aligned with your critical business needs and KPI’s.
  16. Measurement, Analytics & KPI’s. Measure and analyze often against KPI’s. During challenging times it is essential the entire organization to work towards key financial and non-financial metrics. These include 3-6 critical measurable objectives, made up of a direction, KPI, benchmark, target and time frame - used to help a business define and measure progress toward critical organizational goals. KPI’s established in your strategy (See #1) include both offline and online metrics. Website analytics are easy to measure, and include its drivers and conversions, for example, which landing pages work better, and convert to new customers than others. With Web 2.0 analytics you should know how visitors interact with rich Internet applications, online video, RSS feeds, consumer-generated media, and more, helping you identify successful content, channels, partners and campaigns. Experiment. Try new options. Measure. Refine & improve.
  17. Leadership. Effective leadership is the number one need of any organization during tough times. Do you have the leadership capabilities needed right now? Are key decisions aligned with the critical needs of the business? Do you have the information needed to make decisions? Are decisions made by committees of individuals who may not have experience in challenging markets or clarity towards the real needs of the business? Too many nay-sayers or confusion? Tough times take strong leadership, and the ability to be disciplined under considerable pressure. If you don’t have the leadership resources, bring in some help.
  18. Keep it simple. Now is the time to focus on what you do best. Expansion may not be your best option. Focus on your strategy and KPI’s. “Know” who your most profitable customers are. Go after them, and ignore “window shoppers” in favor of customers you know have a higher likelihood of purchasing. Plan for just-in-time growth. Outsource where you can, and watch your cash flow. Be disciplined. Simplify complexity wherever you can. Stay focused on the core fundamentals.
  19. Think. Finally, take time to think. During challenging times, stress and a lack of time, often lead to strategic mistakes that leaders could have avoided. It is recommended that leaders take “one hour” a day away from the constant day-to-day demands of communication, meetings, operations, negotiations, and the weight and strain of business – to “think” about what their organization “needs” during tough times. Keep notes, take time to study strong competitors tactics, review financials, think creatively, visit with mentors one and those you trust, one-on-one without interruption. Chart a course. Document.

The author: Peter Ashworth is CEO and founder of Brilliant Blue, a leading US marketing agency. (www.brilliantblue.com). An intuitive and seasoned business leader, Peter's 25+ years of strategic business building, entrepreneurship, and branding and design experience – through 3 economic downturns, provides clients with the insight, strategic capabilities, and tools – aligned with the fundamental drivers of business value - that turns market place business challenges into viable growth opportunities.