Successful Marketing Tools Blog

Recession Proof Your Business

Who knows whether we are in a recession, a downturn, or a slowdown? We do know this. You will find it harder to separate money from your customer’s wallet. Here are seven simple things you can do to recession proof your business.

Prepare a worst case scenario. If over the next 12 months you were to lose 10-20% in revenue, what would you do? What changes would you make to make this reduction workable? Planning always beats reacting.

Stay focused on the long term. You are in business for the long haul. You expect bumps along the way. Do not sacrifice your long term direction for short term fixes. You still want a business after the slow down is over.

Audit your marketing and advertising. Every business has marketing or advertising efforts that don’t produce results. This is a good time to drop the losers and enhance the winners.

Improve your customer service to new and existing customers. Make sure you are providing a wonderful buying experience for your customers. Friendly greeting, good phone manners, courteous service, clean wash rooms—go after every point of contact. These changes will not cost money and will win you more customers.

Sell more to existing customers. In a slow economy, customers are harder to come by. McDonald’s “Would you like a coke and fries with your hamburger” generates 25% of their profits. Do more up selling, cross selling and add on selling so that you get more sales from each customer. What is your coke and fries?

Listen to your employees. Get employees involved to generate new ideas for the business, for customers, for product and for ways to save money. They know things you do not know.

Don’t discount your prices. Discounting will hurt your business. You will lose immediate profits. It will harm your image. It will take years to recover. Price is not the main reason most customers buy.

Implement these simple business steps and you will find your business will be much stronger on the other side of the economic slow down.

To be continued, your comments are welcomed...

Digital Economy and Slow Economic Times

It was recently reported that internet traffic to retail sites through the first week in March this year was up 16%-24% higher than the same week last year! These findings are interesting, according to InternetRetailer. There is usually a downturn in internet traffic to retail sites in the months following the holidays. This year is different, and experts speculate it’s because more and more consumers turn to the internet to access information and make purchases!

Economists tell us that 60% our current economy is fueled by consumer spending. Consumer confidence drives our current economy.

If these statistics are correct, then it becomes even more evident that we have embraced a digital economy.

What we discover with this economic slow down as we do in all economic slowdowns, not everyone is affected by the slowdown. (In the Great Depression 34% of the people were out of work. That meant that 66% of the people were still working!)

When lightening starts a natural forest fire, it destroys many trees and other forms of plant and animal life. It also gives birth to new forms of trees, plants and animals.

So too with economic slowdowns, recessions, whatever we call them. Many businesses will cease to exist when the economic times are harsh. Other businesses will prosper and grow as a result of the economic times.

How do you act in a digital economy when the slow down or recession occurs? What are the things you can do to not just survive but prosper in such an a recession? These will be the subject of my next series of blogs. How can you use your web presence and your belief in the digital economy to prosper in these tougher economic times?

I will start with some general thoughts on how to recession proof your business. Then I will dig deeper into the areas of a digital economy business where you can use the internet and their web presence to strength and enhance your business position in slower economic times.

As always your comments are welcomed.

The Power of Email Marketing

Small Series of Tips: Break Up the Monotony

To learn more about multichannel campaigns, check out the MineThatData blog. http://minethatdata.blogspot.com/

The other ideas discussed so far are all for creating "primary content" — the main focus of each campaign you send.

Even with an idea of where to start, and plenty of writing experience, you may find it exhausting to continually crank out thoroughly outlined, researched and proofread articles for your email newsletter.
Quick tips/ideas can supplement your main email content. They fit well in the sidebar of a 2- or 3-column

HTML email, or near the end of a plain text one.

The tough part about motivating yourself to keep doing those types of campaigns is that you know that some people simply won't end up reading the article thoroughly. They won't have time, or they'll want something they can scan through quickly.

This is where little "asides" or "mini-articles" can help. Since these are short, people are likely to read them, and they also require less of your time than a full-fledged article (so you can write a bunch of them in advance, and then just drop them into your campaigns as needed!).

Take a topic that you'd planned to turn into a full-fledged article — the primary content for one of your email campaigns — and break it up into bite-size packets of information. Then, put each of them into a different campaign under its own heading.

For example, a chef could use part of each email newsletter issue to highlight a little-known cooking tool and what it's used for (maybe linking to a page with more details, a demonstration by video, recipes and/or a purchase link).

Multichannel Marketing: Sync Your Communications

If you're taking advantage of other marketing channels like direct mail, radio and/or print media, think about how you can tie your email marketing campaigns in with those other media.
You might use email to alert subscribers of an upcoming promotion, or to look out for a flyer/catalog/postcard you're sending them (or vice versa — you could use email to follow up after a campaign run in another media).

Marc recently blogged on multichannel marketing and gave an example of how a retailer coordinated email and postal campaigns to raise their response rate.

To learn more about multichannel campaigns, check out the MineThatData blog. http://minethatdata.blogspot.com/