How To Market In A Really Bad Economy

Eight ideas to help your small business.

Even if your company is doing well during a down economy, you need to make plans for customers who may start cutting back. They key is to shift your marketing from image-oriented marketing to direct response, measureable advertising. If your business is already feeling the effects of a weakening economy here are some strategies you can use to market in a bad economy.

1. Place your focus on more direct forms of revenues versus “image advertising.” It’s time to show good, measureable results. Coupon redemption programs and the use of promo codes can be very effective. When the economy is down everyone is looking for bargains. With coupons and promo codes you also get to track what’s working and what isn’t.

2. Learn more about your customers needs. Surveys don’t have to cost anything. If you have an email list, you can build a quick survey to send out using Survey Monkey. It’s free and easy. You can also put the survey on your web site and offer something free for people to take the survey. Since you may not be able to advertise everything during a bad economy, it’s smart to know where to put your money.

3. Call in favors from your vendors. You need to get the biggest bang for your buck. I’m not suggesting hitting up your vendors for such large discounts that it places an undue strain on them. However, get what you can while keeping your relationship good and making sure they stay in business to serve you throughout the downturn.

4. Not all customers are created equal. See who has purchased the most from you and make sure you stay close to them. As your best customers, they should be entitled to any perks you can afford.

5. Stress ROI. All of your campaigns need to convey how your customer will profit from your product. And you need to be as certain as possible that your advertising campaign will pay for itself. When you start a business you obviously need to watch your pennies. However, don’t abandon this practice as you grow your business.

6. Test. Test. Test. Segment your list and try different subject lines, headlines and sub heads. Try different offers. The key is to find the one combination that hits the sweet spot and use that one. This point brings us back to the importance of measuring your results. With limited funds when starting a business you need to know which message gets you the best results.

7. Try to “convert” everyone that comes to your web site. By convert I mean capture their name, company, email, and phone number. Get this valuable marketing information by offering your visitors valuable content. Reports and videos are great things to use. Think about any content and information that would help your customer or prospect succeed – especially in a bad economy.

8. It’s time for family values. When hard times hit, people tend to go back to the nest. Try to position your product in warm, fun, family-oriented scenes. Even if your product doesn’t quite fit that image or is more business oriented, every product will affect someone. The image could even be a coming together of office workers around your product. “Paint the picture” how your product makes a warm, positive impact on someone or something.

While no small business likes bad economic times it can be an opportunity to sustain revenue, build brand awareness and brand loyalty, and strengthen ties with your customers.

How to boost sales even with a slashed marketing budget

Is your marketing budget cut?

If so, you’re not alone.

Marketing and ad budgets have been cut everywhere.
But that doesn’t mean you sit still. There are plenty of things
you can do get results for very little money; and a lot of things are free.
Let’s look at the freebies:

First off, make sure your company comes up higher in the search
engines. Here are a few things you can do at no cost:

- Write articles and submit them to www.ezinearticles.com and other
article sites. Search engines like sites they consider experts in their field.
Articles are one way to show your expertise.

- Create a Site Map for Google. It will help them find you. Google suggests it. Why ignore it?

- Create a blog and get other people to link to it - backlinks. Search engines like sites that other sites think are relevant.

- Comment in other peoples blogs that are in your industry. And make the
comments meaningful. Don’t just copy and paste.

- Subscribe to Google Alerts. You can receive an email every day about
what’s going on with the keywords that affect you or are related to your
industry. It will also give you a list of blogs for your keywords.

- Reuse your content in your blog. It’s a little known strategy but used in
the correct way can bring results.

To get a innovative list of other ideas and talk to an award-winning,
persuasive copywriter, visit www.LouieBernstein.com

Keep the faith,

Louie Bernstein

Five tips you can use to improve your marketing message

I am often asked how to structure and position marketing material to get people to buy. One way: People need to see what’s in the deal for them.
Nobody is going to buy because:
YOU have been in business for 30 years.
YOU have won, Best Dealer of the Year five years in a row.
YOU have more satisfied customers than anyone (so says YOU).

Nobody cares how what you did for somebody else helped you. People want to know how what you offer is going to help them get what they want. Period.

Your prospects need to know you understand them. That you understand their needs and wants well enough that you don’t even have to talk about the features of your product or service. But rather, what that product or service will do for them.

It all starts with a conversation or a marketing message. Here five tips you can use to help turn a prospect into a customer. They work because you speak their internal language and talk to them on an individual level.

Benefits not Features – People don’t want to hear you have a new, innovative tire with inner protection. They want to hear that your new tires have an inner ring of protection that if it get a flat, keeps the car (and the kids in car) moving straight on the street, rather than flying into a ditch or head on into another car.

Talk personally – If possible try to use the person’s first name in your message. People love the sound of their name and will pay more attention to your message if you “talk” to them using their name. And make the tone of your message conversational; like you were talking to a friend of 20 years.

Focus on one thing – You probably have more than one thing to sell. But don’t try to sell everything in one letter just to save money. You may miss some sales because what you are selling in that message doesn’t apply to that person at that particular time. However, your message is targeted and if you get the prospect’s interest, they will think you are talking directly to them. It allows them to focus.

Testimonials – Self praise is not recommendation. While people do care about what’s in it for them, most also do not want to be pioneers. Try to get a satisfied customer (or more) to give you a written testimonial. They are worth their weight in gold – to you.

Be a problem solver – Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think about how much better you would feel after using your product. They bought it because it solved a need or a want for them. Think about the end result your product or service will achieve for your customer.

These tips are small but powerful. I hope by implementing them in your message, they bring you much success.

All the best,


Louie Bernstein