Marketing Consultant

Recession calls for innovative marketing planning to keep a business afloat, even when dollars are short. All experts agree the worst thing a company can do during a downturn is to slash the advertising budget and fall off the radar entirely. “A lot of business people hunker down during a recession, hoping they can just ride it out without creating too many problems. That’s actually more risky (and scary),” writes DJ Francis over at the Experience Matters blog. “It’s OK to be afraid of new marketing tactics, but it’s not OK to allow that fear to stop you from taking risks.” Given the current climate, there are many reasonable market plans that will give you a good return on your investment.

“If firms blatantly go out and increase their spending on marketing, a lot of them are going to fail,” warns Dr. Gary Lilien, author of a Penn State study about recession business marketing planning. He says successful firms need three characteristics in order to succeed during an economic downturn. First, he says, “You need a marketing emphasis. You can’t all of the sudden start focusing on marketing… but if you know how to do it, if you had a marketing emphasis before, that’s one characteristic.” He adds that companies also need to have the guts to increase marketing. “You need the will to do it, which is characterized in our research by an entrepreneurial culture, a willingness to say, ‘Things are getting bad, should we push harder?’ Firms with entrepreneurial culture are used to doing that,” says Dr. Lilien. Lastly, you need the capital. “The technical term is slack resources, in other words, having the budget to do it. Even if you have the first two, a marketing emphasis and an entrepreneurial culture, it’s risky. Make sure you’ve got the resources to do it,” he said. “The firms that had all three characteristics did very well in a recession. But firms that are missing any one of them, they’re in trouble. Frankly, most firms in our analysis cut their [marketing] budget in a recession.”

Media planning is also an important part of recession marketing. Far too often, business owners hastily throw together a marketing planning budget based on “what others are doing” or based on “previous years,” without really analyzing what is or isn’t working. For a small price, business owners can hire Search Engine Optimization experts who can take a good look at the company homepage to see which areas are driving away potential sales; they can also see where these potential sales are going once they leave the page and identify what sort of keywords their target market is searching on the web. Email providers can give you valuable statistics on your email marketing efforts as well. Likewise, media planners can also help you put together customized market plans that allocate your funds to the most effective strategies for your products, your target market and your geographic location.

It is important that those involved with marketing planning understand the various vehicles available to them and where each vehicle can plausibly take them. For instance, many business owners get wrapped up in social networking, thinking, “Let’s dump all our money in Web 2.0: we’re sure to get tons of sales!” However, the main function of social networks is not to convert direct sales, but rather, to build a brand, establish trust and gain supporters. Your followers can also give you some hints as to your primary target market. Similarly, some people go into marketing newsletters, trying to cram the pages with useless company news that no one cares about. Instead, well-written, journalism-caliber copy that “hones in” on the interests and needs of your target market, along with coupons and contests are much more likely to drive sales.

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