Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Innovate
Moments of economic turbulence provide the unique opportunity to start new businesses, launch disruptive new products, and strengthen customer loyalty - often at a discount. During these challenging time, here are a few pointers on what to do, why to do it, and what to avoid.
- Listen to the market. It’s quieter when it’s less crowded. Unmet needs abound.
- Invest in your customers. Now they need you most. Loyalty hangs in the balance.
- Rather than reduce price, offer more value to your customers and demand greater value from vendors.
- Increase communication with your customers.
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Monday, April 27th, 2009
There’s one good thing about a bad economy that many marketers forget about, since 99.999% of the news is doom and gloom playing with our brains — in a really bad economy, people are more apt to change their buying habits.
Yes, that may mean buying less of a product or service in your category. And this is where some corporate types with lack of imagination will see cutting back on marketing as the band-aid solution to their problems until they ride out the recession. But the question isn’t really whether to cut back on marketing or even spend more on it. You have to start with the very product or service you offer and ask yourself how you are going to adapt that product in order to give it increased versatility and in turn, value.
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Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Over the years hundreds of studies have been conducted to prove companies should maintain advertising during a recession.
In the 1920’s advertising executive Roland S. Vaile tracked 200 companies through the recession of 1923. He reported in the April 1927 issue of the Harvard Business Review that the biggest sales increases throughout the period were rung up by companies that advertised the most.
After World War II, Buchen Advertising, Inc. decided to plot the sales of a large number of advertisers through successive recessions. In 1947, it began measuring the annual advertising expenditures of each company. When they correlated the figures with sales and profit trends before, during and after the recessions of 1949, 1954, 1958 and 1961, they found that almost without exception sales and profits dropped off at companies that cut back on advertising.
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Category Advertising, Economy, Marketing | Tags: Tags: Advertising, Business, Companies, Down, Economy, Marketing, Recession, Sales, Strategy,
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
10 tips for the advertising industry during the economic downturn:
1. Don’t cut your prices - research shows that by discounting your brand during a recession it will take you 7 years to recover to your original price level.
2. Focus on your brand strengths (real not imagined!), and emphasise heritage and classic / traditional values - while the crisis is on people tend to hark back to the memories of the good old days.
3. Do exploit the fact that your competitors may have shrunk their advertising spending - you can rapidly win back mind share as well if you have the courage to act now. Then rely on your operations and product teams to keep you ahead long-term.
4. Brands that invest in marketing during a recession tend to gain market share when the recession ends. It might seem wrong to splash out on a new ad campaign when you are cutting staff, but if the message is right and the campaign is well executed, the investment will pay off in the long run.
5. Bundle up: instead of cutting prices on your top brands, offer something for free as an add-on to your core (non-discounted) brand. So if you happen to sell bags, don’t discount your bags but throw in a free keyring instead.
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Category Advertising, Economy, Marketing, Small Business | Tags: Tags: Advertising, Advertising Industry, Agency, Budget, Economy, Marketing, Recession, Tips,
Monday, April 6th, 2009
Following Boom/Bust Cycle Flirts With Danger
Household and personal care might once have seemed recession-resistant, but last year U.S.-based personal-care marketers actually cut ad spending faster than the general market. That could be potentially damaging for their brands, according to one study that shows that marketers that cut spending during a downturn lost share to private labels — share they didn’t regain.
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Monday, March 30th, 2009
Many businesses that are in trouble are in trouble for a simple reason: they’re the wrong size. A newspaper that only had a few dozen employees would be doing great today. But they have hundreds or thousands of employees because that was an appropriate scale twenty years ago. When I started my first web company fifteen years ago, the idea that you could be successful with six or ten employees was crazy, but today many of the most successful companies have not many more than that. That’s 15,000 fewer employees than eBay has.
It’s tempting to get bigger. But is bigger better?
In many cases, it’s worse, particularly when you can leverage reliable systems that are cheaper and faster and more stable in the outside world.
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Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
Part 1 was posted last week and can be found here.
International advertising agency Oglivy offers 7 points of advice based on their experience in guiding brands through previous recessions, mixed with some of the latest academic thinking.
Here are the last 4:
4. Cut Strategically within a Brand Portfolio
If you have to cut spending, some cuts are better than others. Generally, you should cut the budget for smaller brands rather than for bigger brands. Small brands often take a disproportionate share of marketing spend because they are trying to grow, but bigger brands are likely to deliver bigger returns in the short term.
You should also exploit seasonality to make cuts in off-peak sales periods. The sales losses will be lower. This is also the time to take a hard look at the contribution of different brands to profit as well as at their growth potential. Prune your product lines. Drop support for stagnant brands.
5. Use Price Promotions Sparingly
In a recession, marketers are under tremendous pressure to offer price promotions (such as temporary price cuts, premiums, couponing, BOGOFs, etc.). These are the easiest part of a marketing program to measure, and therefore the easiest to justify when budgets are tight, but they can truly damage long-term profitability. You need to work out the right balance between promotion and stimulating primary demand in your particular case.
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Friday, February 27th, 2009
International advertising agency Oglivy offers 7 points of advice based on their experience in guiding brands through previous recessions, mixed with some of the latest academic thinking.
Here are the first 3:
1. Guard High-Value Customers
In a severe recession, share protection through retention of a brand’s most profitable customers should be the first priority. Losing loyal customers can be very costly. On average, loyal customers who are “bonded” to a brand spend up to 20 times more than the average customer. The key is to identify who they are and what their concerns are. Then you can consider whether a special initiative is needed.
2. Harvest Customers Who are Ready to Buy
The second most valuable target, after existing customers, is those who are about to purchase. Research into the decision-making process can illuminate what barriers people have. With this knowledge, there are two areas in particular where marketers can focus attention: search and shopper activation.
We often say that the first dollar a marketer spends should be on search. This is never truer than in a recession. Customers who have raised their hands declaring interest in your product deserve special attention. Marketers can improve “organic” search by tracking existing search capabilities, understanding key words and then developing strategies for content development, page tagging and linking to ensure that as many active shoppers as possible are directed to the brand’s site. (more…)