Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

It’s not all doom and gloom. Some marketing strategies are resulting in hot leads despite the recession.

What are companies doing these days?  According to a recent poll by iMedia, it’s all driven by data.  Their survey found that the majority of marketers today are putting their reduced budgets in quantifiable strategies that can prove a good return on investment.

eMarketer very accurately summarized iMedia’s report as “Metrics Key for Winning in the Downturn.”

This data amplifies why keeping your email marketing budget intact is so important in this economy.  The Direct Marketing Association has consistently reported that email garners the highest ROI among all direct response methods.  It is easily measurable — MailerMailer and most other email service providers generate useful reports that illustrate your response rates and other measurable results.

For a business large or small that is experiencing a decline in sales, take a look at what strategies are working for you and get rid of the ones you cannot measure.

Recession Marketing

In previous articles, we have talked about how recessions may actually be beneficial for many businesses.

One area where you may want to think about turning a recession to your advantage is the marketing of your small business.

People Do NOT Stop Buying

Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that people stop buying during a recession. That is a mistake.

The fact is, most people still spend the same percentage of their income on the same items during a recession, it’s just that that income goes down.

Everyone still needs to make purchases from time to time – and odds are that if they needed what your business offered before, they still do.

In fact, even if you have a small business that specializes in goods that aren’t exactly necessary, odds are that you will still have customer support during leaner times.

One only has to look at the role the recession played in election campaigns all over North America in the last six months to see that recession marketing can play a big part in the success of any promotional efforts.

Recession Marketing 101

So just how can you go about taking advantage of the recession in the marketing sense? Well, the first step is to let potential customers know that you empathize with their situation.

The beginning parts of any marketing campaign should demonstrate that you realize there is a recession going on and that your business has made the necessary adjustments to ride it out.

Next comes the part that we call baiting the hook. At this stage, you want to tie your product in with surviving a downturn in the economy.

You might want to relate lower costs to a lack of overhead, incredible purchasing power, and so on. Even higher ticketed items have advantages in recession marketing; make sure potential customers know that product is likely to last much longer, for example.

The key to recession marketing is to remember that a recession isn’t a depression. People are still buying, they are just being much more careful about what they buy.

With some empathy and a little bit of savvy, you can convince people that your product or service is still worth using during leaner times.

My team has a blast running our web sites.  Each site has its own unique personality and enables us to unleash our creativity and utilize our skills.  Our small business site, morebusiness.com, is a favorite among start-ups and currently gets over 10,000 unique visitors per day.  Most seek out sample marketing plans, business plans and other guides to help start a company.  Others seek advice that is more specific to their situation.

To help, we are putting together an “Ask the Expert” section where small business owners and budding entrepreneurs can submit specific questions and get usable answers without the expert pitching his or her consulting services.

Each week, or every few days depending upon how many questions we get, we will pick one or two to showcase on this blog.  Suggestion: the more specific the question, the better the chance of it being profiled (i.e., it is unlikely we will respond to “How do I start a business?” – answer: read our Start-Up section).

Do you have a business issue that is keeping you up at night?  Fill out our morebusiness.com contact form and we’ll try to help with expert business advice!