By now, everyone has heard the expression \u201cmarketing in tough times\u201d so often that it\u2019s become a cliche. But, then, most cliches have the ring of truth–that\u2018s why they\u2019re cliches–and after while it is true that if something goes on long enough it will become the \u201cnew normal\u201d and people will adjust their expectations to whatever that might be.<\/p>\n
At some point, \u201ctough times\u201d gets \u201cbaked in the cake\u201d as they say on Wall Street. This doesn\u2019t mean the economic conditions still won\u2019t be a factor, it just means certain conditions will be taken for granted as we discuss future business plans.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019ll still need to be marketing. Why consumers buy or don\u2019t buy has always been something of a mystery with many different factors to consider, but \u201ctough times\u201d is an overlay that has dynamics of its own.<\/p>\n
They might come down to three factors that we\u2019ll have to consider as part of our overall marketing plan.<\/p>\n
1) Uncertainty<\/strong>. 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\u2019s 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 \u201cno increases in price for a year\u201d (provided you can afford it), or other guarantees you can carry out without putting yourself in harms\u2019s way.<\/p>\n 2) Value<\/strong>. Obviously, if people are being more judicious about spending, they\u2019re going to want to know that the spending they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0 Connection<\/strong>. If customers are harder to come by, it\u2019s necessary to make sure we have as tight a connection with existing customers as possible. This might mean an \u201cafter sale care\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Even in \u201ctough times,\u201d there is always demand, and there is always supply. It\u2019s just a matter of working a bit smarter to bring the two together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By now, everyone has heard the expression \u201cmarketing in tough times\u201d so often that it\u2019s become a cliche. But, then, most cliches have the ring of truth–that\u2018s why they\u2019re cliches–and after while it is true that if something goes on long enough it will become the \u201cnew normal\u201d and people will adjust their expectations to whatever that might be. At some point, \u201ctough times\u201d gets \u201cbaked in the cake\u201d as they say on Wall Street. This doesn\u2019t mean the economic conditions still won\u2019t be a factor, it just means certain conditions will be taken for granted as we discuss future business plans. But we\u2019ll still need to be marketing. Why consumers buy or don\u2019t buy has always been something of a mystery with many different …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[7,185],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing-advice","tag-marketing","tag-tough-times"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}