Listening to the news will besiege you with Doom and Gloom about the economy. Yeah, times are tough for many, but they don’t have to be for you. That’s why I really want you to read this article from my friend MaryEllen Tribby. She’s a working mom and has all the same challenges you and I face everyday (including the economy), yet she’s created 3 multi-million dollar businesses from scratch and building more! It goes without saying, she’s got some great insights we all can learn from. So, check this out, you can thank me later.
In Tough Economic Times: Market Smarter, Not Harder
By MaryEllen Tribby
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is a motto your more resilient and clever CEO’s and marketing professionals
adopt while their meek counter parts tend to bury their heads in the sand during these tough economic times.
Yes, times are still tough, and people are still scared regardless of their current income level.
And rightly so, many people who are in decision-making jobs feel a sense of responsibility to their employers, their
colleagues and their staff. Very often these folks have a knee-jerk reaction and cut marketing dollars before weighing the
consequences.
In reality, cutting your marketing budget in a bad economy is the last thing you should do. This is not the time to focus
less on marketing … rather the opposite. The beauty of marketing in the 21st century is that many of the marketing channels
available to you are cheap, easy and fast to execute.
The cost of entry has never been lower (and I am not just talking email marketing), there has never been more niche markets
available and it has never been easier with today’s technology to accurately measure the impact of your marketing efforts and
make educated decisions about going forward to plan cohesive multi-channeled marketing campaigns.
Smart companies that continue to grow and prosper during hard economic times understand the value of multi-channel
marketing:
* Create strong customer relationships.
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of multi-channel marketing is that it provides great customer relationship-building
opportunities. Direct mail and email allow you to stay in front of your customers while letting the customer learn about your
product on their own schedule. Telemarketing allows you to provide additional information and answer questions
your customers may have.
Regardless of which channels you use you should never promise anything that you aren’t going to be able to deliver. In
fact, you should always be over delivering on the promises you make in your marketing
copy. Remember that integrity is the key.
* Choose efforts that help you pick the low hanging fruit.
Never forget to market most often and most strongly to those loyal customers who buy from you. Direct email
marketing, well written and based on a compelling offer, is critical. It is easy to implement and extremely cost effective -
allowing you to communicate with your customers as much as you (and they) want. It also gives you the ability to test, see
what’s working, and quickly react to generate more sales. It allows you to make your message as timely and relevant as
possible.
For the most part, direct e-marketing is a two-step process. The first process is to develop a list of people who will accept
your promotional messages. This list is built through the use of banner ads, insert ads and asking for your customers’ email
addresses. The second step is to send them your direct response promotions. These are usually longer sales letters, much like
direct mail.
* Some forms of marketing don’t cost you a dime.
You can create online buzz about your product through social media. This can take on many forms: online forums, message
boards, blogs, video blogs, and social networks (such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.). Use social media methods to
stimulate conversation about you, your business, and your products. The key is to be genuine. To ensure the buzz is positive,
you have to promote yourself gradually and organically by developing real relationships with your desired audience on
targeted social media sites.
It is also imperative that you are involved in the conversation on your own site. To ignore your own customers (on your website
or others) is an unforgivable mistake in today’s interconnected world. You must always be answering their questions,
responding to their complaints, exploring opportunities, announcing new products, listing upcoming events, and reminding them
of deadlines. The list is endless.
* Want to drum up great PR? Get to know the media.
Of the many channels of marketing, public relations is one that every business should embrace. That’s because it is nearly
free. If you have a good writer on staff, your only cost will be the event you are publicizing and the small amount it takes
to mail or email out your own press release. When it works, it really works, going from regional to national to
international faster than it takes to write up a conventional advertising campaign. The trick is creating successful, newsworthy
stories.
It’s very important to target your press releases to specific publications and media outlets whose customers you want to reach.
Rather than sending out 1,000 general press releases about a story that has general appeal, it’s much more effective to send
out a dozen or so targeted press releases containing stories that are exactly right for the intended audiences. It’s simply
quality vs. quantity.
* Don’t go it alone.
Many small businesses balk at the idea of joint ventures. They don’t like the idea of splitting revenues. They like selling their own products
because they keep 100% of the revenues. This is the kind of thinking that destroys a business. When a joint venture is executed properly,
it doesn’t subtract from the business it adds to the business. There are many ways to do joint ventures and the best ones are those that pair
up businesses with asymmetrical resources and skills.
To find your joint venture “soul mate” think about the major players in your marketplace. Consider the strengths and
weaknesses of each. Ask yourself how you might benefit from working with them. Make a list of potential partners and develop a
strategy to approach them and show them how they could benefit from doing business with you. The idea is to develop joint venture
relationships that are easy to maintain, financially profitable, intellectually rewarding, and long lasting.
Regardless of how many channels you use and which ones they are, smart companies understand ROI (return on investment).
If you see a company, perhaps one of your competitors advertising often and in multiple channels — chances are it is a
healthy company. Study that company, is there something they are doing that you can implement.
If you are interested in expanding your company’s reach, try incorporating multi- channel marketing campaigns into your
business model. But to make sure you spend the appropriate amount of time on each channel (for the revenue generated) check
out my #1 Amazon.com best-seller, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business
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