Welcome to the first of six articles on marketing in a recession. In the last few months the companies I have met with have been divided into two camps regarding the recession. About half of them were cutting back on everything possible in an attempt to ride out the storm. The other half have been re-evaluating their marketing strategy and increasing their spend. Which is right?
Obviously companies should be run on as cost efficient a base as possible because any saving on unnecessary expense goes onto the bottom line. In my experience, in recent years this hasn’t been happening, as in general business has been good, almost easy, and overheads haven’t been kept as tight as they should. Cutting back on waste is vital now. However, companies can only cut so far before they start to cut into the core of the business.
Marketing shouldn’t be considered an expense or an overhead. It should be considered an investment in the growth of your business. Cutting back on marketing will have the effect of reducing your customer base. Maintaining or even expanding your market will at the very least defend your market share. If your competitors fall into the trap of reducing their marketing and you maintain yours, you may even find your sales expanding in a recession.
The first step is to review your current marketing strategy, assuming you have one. If not, the first step is to get one! Many companies don’t really understand what marketing really is and how it works. I’ve worked with many companies whose marketing spend was reactionary. By that I mean companies agreeing to take advertisements in magazines or journals, sponsoring an event, even getting a website based on receiving a call from a sales person and once they had sent the cheque, never thinking about it again.
The correct approach is plan out a strategic spend of the marketing budget, across a spectrum of relevant media. Once the strategy is in place, it must be implemented. This might sound very obvious, but one of the main causes of failure of a marketing strategy is incomplete or non-existent implementation. Implementation must be systematic and consistent across the plan.
The strategy must include a measurable feedback loop which will allow you to monitor which elements of your strategy are being successful and which are not. When your feedback shows a part of your marketing is not working and it is ‘when’ and not ‘if,’ marketing is a fluid business, constantly moving. Different types of campaigns work for different types of companies in different markets which is why feedback is vital ) you need to assess why it’s not working. There can be a variety of reasons for this. For example an advertisement in a magazine which isn’t generating results may be a poorly designed ad or the magazine itself may not be relevant for your market. Measure your results and act on them. When one area of your marketing isn’t bringing in business, drop it and transfer the budget to an area which is being successful.
Over the next five weeks I will go into the specifics for the use of advertising, direct mail, networking, websites and e-marketing in a recession. These five tools are not stand alone tactics that work independently of each other, but I will examine them separately for clarity. The key to successful marketing is the integration of all relevant marketing tools and media to ensure your message successfully gets to your customer. Doing this correctly will help your business succeed.
