The Secret to Marketing in a Tight Economy

I was reading an article on another blog that was talking about the hard times and how to survive in the rollercoaster business environment. Then it struck me.

The secret to making money (with marketing or anything) in a tough economy is 1) Keep it simple and 2) Deliver something of greater value to your customer. People will spend money if they see the value in what you are offering. Pretty simple.

I know what you were thinking the minute you read the paragraph above and thinking well how do I create more value? My advice is to get on the horn and ask your customers and ask your prospects what they need to make it more valuable. Send out a survey, put a "quality Introduction" card in everything you send out (this is the new version of asking for a referral but much less threatening to the person you give it to).

So be proactive, upbeat and take whatever you have as a product or a service, and add some more value. Team up with several others in your industry that complement your product and offer joint value.

The value I offer my clients is helping them generate more leads for their educational and training products and then help them close them and get better results (and it is free to the training owner).

Cheers
George

using low cost marketing to help generate leads

I am not sure what is worse, watching the daily news about all the financial meltdowns or trying to grow a business among the termoil but one thing is for sure, people are still buying and people are still selling.

I received an email from the president of CEO Space (BJ Dohrmann) and he was giving an update on the retail crisis. It was pretty stunning as to how many retail chain stores were closing down stores. Even Home Depot was shutting down 18 stores. This is crazy but the corporations are buttoning down the hatches for 2009. Everybody sees it coming.

So what am I going to do to help grow my business in 2009 and can you use the same methods to be a survivor - absolutely.

I just finished a 3 day (friday, Sat,Sun) workshop that was very cutting edge about leveraging the internet to grow. We talked (and built) squeeze pages, integrated shopping carts (www.kickstartcart.com) into our products and it also had a powerful auto responder module that can deliver your drip marketing. Did I sign up...You bet I did.

Next, you leverage the social networking sites, twitter, facebook, linkedin and hundreds more like fastpitch, qalias etc. and talk about your squeeze page and point people to it (go to my new pages and let me know what you think at www.moremoneybygeorge.com ). The power is if someone is interested in what you have, they will take action from your squeeze page and this lets you know they are a qualified prospect which you can begin to market to. They are now coming to you instead of you constantly digging for leads. Add press releases, internet articles and even blogging like this, you now have a low cost way to create some new business.

My investment to launch this new marketing:
- 1 Year of www.godaddy.com hosting and domain name (moremoneybygeorge) $62
- 1 Subscription to the kickstartcart site, $29 a month
- Time to build a squeeze page, write a press release and articles - a weekend (and ongoing about 2 hours a week

So that is a total of under $400 a year. If you want to discuss it more, respond to my blog, email me at ss2br.com or visit the course owner, Ann Preston at www.freedombuilders.com to see when her next awesome class it.

Marketing - Should I do marketing In this financial crisis?

The natural tendency right now is to cut back on expenses to keep either profitable or afloat and I have been asked my many people recently what I thought as an expert marketing guy, should they cut back on marketing.

My answer is absolutely - No - and I follow up with the concept that you should shift your marketing to more low cost solutions that help you generate more revenue from marketing then you spend. Let's take a look at both answers:

1) One basic principle about a recession or depression is it is caused by the slow down of "Money Changing Hands". When we have a recession, people spend less. You see it in the latest reports about Macy's and JC Penny that the average consumer has cut spending by 12% (that is what their sales are down by). So what should Macy's do? Should they stop marketing, lay off people and perpetuate the problem? If they lay of people, those ex employees will certainly be spending less because their income is less and that supports the recession. T

2) So the answer I would give them (and to any business) is cut back on the newspaper advertising and divert the money to post cards back to their existing customers offering personal discounts directed to them or a "Good Deal". Call it Bring a Buddy discount where you both get an extra discount. It could be just marketing the same discounts you offer but by making it special to the end user. Internet marketing is also a much lower cost solution.

One other critical point is we know the the amount spent on advertising is slowing down and that is important for those that continue to spend on marketing because the competition is less. You most likely can get a better deal on your media buy also. You might also ask your media contact for their deal on filling spots that are not filled. A little know fact is if you give them your commercial, you can buy spots that are usually not used and they fill them in with your commercial when they don't sell that spot. You see, time is what they sell, and if time passes and they do not fill that spot, they lost it so if you are willing to get more exposure but let them dictate the time, your cost goes down dramatically.

Let me know if you have questions about your marketing at pr@ss2br.com or just give me a call at 770-352-0662.

George

This is my first blog

Hi, I will be writing on sales and marketing for mid to small businesses and also how to help people make more money with passive income