Marketing in “Tough Times”

By now, everyone has heard the expression “marketing in tough times” so often that it’s become a cliche. But, then, most cliches have the ring of truth–that‘s why they’re cliches–and after while it is true that if something goes on long enough it will become the “new normal” and people will adjust their expectations to whatever that might be.

At some point, “tough times” gets “baked in the cake” as they say on Wall Street. This doesn’t mean the economic conditions still won’t be a factor, it just means certain conditions will be taken for granted as we discuss future business plans.

But we’ll still need to be marketing. Why consumers buy or don’t buy has always been something of a mystery with many different factors to consider, but “tough times” is an overlay that has dynamics of its own.

They might come down to three factors that we’ll have to consider as part of our overall marketing plan.

1) Uncertainty. Everyone hates it. Makes it hard to plan budgets three, six or nine months out. If no one is quite sure of what to do, some people will just freeze and that makes it harder for buyers to get off the dime. There’s nothing much you can do about worldwide economic uncertainty, but there are measures you can take to remove uncertainty from your transaction with the buyer. Like “no increases in price for a year” (provided you can afford it), or other guarantees you can carry out without putting yourself in harms’s way.

2) Value. Obviously, if people are being more judicious about spending, they’re going to want to know that the spending they’re doing is the bringing the biggest bang for the buck. Actually, value is something consumers are concerned about all the time, it just make take extra hand holding or explanation to assure your buyers that they are getting the most value they can out of the transaction. One way to do this is to add an extra sweetener to the deal that makes the case convincingly. Sometimes you will be up against the cheaper competitor, so the marketing department has to be extra diligent that you are making the argument that your product provides value, even if it is a few pennies more.

3)  Connection. If customers are harder to come by, it’s necessary to make sure we have as tight a connection with existing customers as possible. This might mean an “after sale care” program of some sort, where you look out for the customer on the product she just bought from you, and we use this to see what else she might be interested in.

Even in “tough times,” there is always demand, and there is always supply. It’s just a matter of working a bit smarter to bring the two together.