5 Core Marketing Essentials You Can Take to the Bank!

Competition: Audit everything about your competitors. Their products, their website, their pricing, their sales force, everything! It's critical that you know their every move not only to anticipate their tactics against you but to find their weaknesses that you might be able to exploit during a time when they are already looking over their shoulder. Take advantage of the economic uncertainty and risk to leave your competition far behind just as that world class athlete would. Build Your Brand: Focus on those things that got you where you are today. Support and build your brand proposition. Reinforce the core values of your brand to make sure that your existing customers don't see any deterioration in the products or services that they expect. If you have multiple products or services, make sure that you protect and nourish your core brands first particularly during poor economic times. They are your bread and butter. Never reduce quality to cut costs. Customers: It's common to avoid your customers during tough times in an attempt to "fly under the radar" of their economic troubles. But that's exactly the opposite of what you should be doing. Now is the time to be listening to your customers, understanding their needs and fears, offering solutions to help. Be visible, be a partner, be a resource to them. Exceeding their expectations during tough times will pay off now and even more so when the economy improves. Communications: Cutting back on communications and marketing during tough economic times moves you back into the pack of other companies who are running scared. It's likely that just not reducing spending will put you ahead of your competitors. But, don't be foolish, be smart. Adjust your spending to be more targeted, more frequent and more measurable. Economic recessions call for a focus on marketing that minimizes waste, engages customers and results in a return on investment that can be measured. Marketers move away from mass media during tough economic times in favor of more targeted, measurable media such as websites, custom publishing and community-building. Custom media continues to be proven way for companies to solidify their customer relationships, drive engagement and increase revenues. Staff: Probably one of the most overlooked and neglected areas of focus during tough economic times is your staff. Don't forget that they have a lot less information than you do, that they are being bombarded by bad news from the media and that they're concerned or scared for their own jobs and their financial well-being. Now's the time for increased communication with them that will keep them informed, engaged and with a feeling of purpose and value. Recessions offer a time for opportunity. When everyone else around you is running for cover because the sky is falling, you have the opportunity to move your brand forward. But it takes focus, courage and commitment to be successful. That's why small businesses generally do better than big companies during tough times because these are the type that first drove entrepreneurs to be successful. After all, entrepreneurs are used to flying in the face of adversity, finding success when others predict failure and staying focused every day on achieving their dreams. We all need to exhibit a little more entrepreneurial spirit in these tough times, take risks and stay focused on success rather than failure. 2008-12-09T04:35:57Z

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5-core-marketing-essentials-you-can-take-to-the-bank

2008-12-11T16:50:13Z

Marketing is about value, brand and staying focused in your "direct" communications. The following five core marketing values remind merchants what got them to where they are today!

5 Core Marketing Essentials You Can Take to the Bank!

2009-02-24T09:47:46Z