This current economy offers advantages to small business that we may not see for quite a while.
Advantages? What planet am I living on, you might ask. Unemployment is up. The stock market is tumbling and all we seem to be hearing lately is more gloom and doom.
I’m talking about advantages that allow you to set yourself apart from the competition like never before. While everyone else is crying the blues you can be taking positive, decisive action. Here’s the kind of simple actions that get you results in this difficult economy:
Create Revenue
In most environments today, particularly business-to-business, the demand is for more sales. That’s what clients want to hear. If you have a legitimate, credible story as to how you can help a company generate revenue, management will clear the calendar with great haste to hear what you have to say. This message is a particularly strong door opener for consultants and service providers. What’s your revenue improvement story?
Don’t cut marketing
Particularly advertising support. It’s the first thing that most companies do in an economic downturn because it is the easiest course of action. But all it does is concede the playing field to the competition. Statistics clearly show that marketers who increase their spending during a recession experience sustainable long-term gains in market share and profitability. Think about how you can beat your competition in reaching your target market more effectively?
Market to your base
Revisit your loyal customers, the ones you have probably taken for granted and ignored as of late. Now is the time to consider instituting a workable system that will help you identify and nurture that loyal base by maintaining an ongoing communication channel with them. What are you currently doing to stay in touch with your customers?
Start sponsoring
In times of stress, consumers gravitate to the familiar. Your job is to be there as a touch point. That means event promotion, cross-promotion, cause marketing, all of the in-the-trenches, one-on-one, hard-working marketing labor that many companies forsake for the ease of an advertisement or commercial. It’s not a matter of either/or, but both. How can you be creative in sponsoring network marketing and event promotions?
Try something new
Consider test markets, new products/ service introductions and any new revenue stream that got put on the back burner when times were flush. If the old revenue streams are drying up, where is the risk in experimenting? Remember, no guts, no glory. How will you “dare to be different” this year?
Think vertical
For small businesses in particular, understanding and mining a vertical segment makes good sense.
Dig in and dig deep. Capitalize on the credibility that you have built up and sell it aggressively, particularly through referral and word of mouth. Don’t be afraid to leap frog from segment to segment when you think you have a translatable story to tell. What new markets can you penetrate? How can you make your solution more important to that selective client base?
Client retention is key
The importance of “the relationship” with the customer never diminishes. For most small businesses, developing and exploiting the relationship is the one major advantage they have over the big players who don’t have the time and energy for it in the first place. This boils down to added value. Customers crave it but don’t get enough of it. When was the last time you gave serious thought to providing a value-added premium in customer transactions?
Be the “Terminator” of new business
Now is the time to undertake that aggressive, long-term new business program. Segment the prospects; maintain a disciplined follow-up program (contact management system, direct mail, telemarketing, e-newsletters); and remember that it is a process of consistent and persistent approach and attack. Don’t hesitate to contact prospects out of the blue with an idea as to how you can legitimately impact their business. In focus groups, prospective buyers quite often remark on how little they get called on or approached with a legitimate, new perspective about their business. How can you adopt this strategy?
Don’t forget self-promotion
When times are tight, most small businesses tend to give up on self-promotion. Now more than ever we should be super-aggressive about telling the world how good we are by seeking high-visibility clients, taking on select pro bono assignments, hitting the speech circuit and chasing “ink.” The best line on the subject comes from Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi: “Consumers don’t stop buying when economies go through down cycles. They look harder for value.”
The job of the survival marketer in 2002 will be to identify that value, proclaim it loudly and go after the thinning customer herd where others show fear and give up. In this economy so many customers are having reservations about getting a good value on whatever product or service they are buying.