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Published Article
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Surviving
The Digital Economy Meltdown!
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"Dying
isn't hard for men like us, when every everything around you
has been butchered or slaughtered ... living is what's hard."
— Clint Eastwood to Chief Ten Bears in "The Outlaw
Josey Wales" |
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The bloom is off the rose, the roosters are coming home to
roost. Use whatever metaphor fits your business or culture!
But get the net/net - the "new digital economy"
is starting to get down to some real fundamentals. Don't get
caught in the downturn, learn to grow organically using targeted
marketing and customer referenceability. New rules for surviving
the meltdown:
| 1. |
Cash is king.
Husband your marketing resources as much as you can by
driving hard bargains with all suppliers - or perish the
thought, use equity to leverage your cash on hand. If
your vendor/partners take some equity (as we do in our
clients), then you know they are really committed to the
success of your company! And with the downturn in the
IPO market, you may be saving yourself some money in the
long run.
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| 2. |
Love your
customers. Be absolutely committed to your customers;
do what it takes to make them successful in the marketplace
and they will respond in kind by recommending your firm
to members of their community. And, yes, you can ask them
if they will recommend other potential clients.
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| 3. |
Give your
customers some equity in your company. This marries them
to your firm (see two above) and helps to motivate them
to help your company grow and prosper.
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| 4. |
Co-brand
or partner where you can. Meaning, find a partner in your
market segment who is doing well and develop a revenue
share (classic win/win) model which helps both of you
grow by sharing market information.
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| 5. |
Get
digital in your marketing processes if your business model
is focused on delivering goods and services via the web.
Every marketing type is recommending opt-in e-mail this
Fall, but they are right, it works well. Prices are dropping.
YesMail,
for instance, has an $150 gross CPM Holiday Promo underway
for most of the categories with about 7M opt-in addresses
available!
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| 6. |
Search Engine
positioning/ranking still provides the best ROI of any
interactive marketing. But you have to be patient and
persistent in your processes. Build the right keywords
and integrate these with your site content, then manually
submit your pages to the top tier Search Engines. Or,
if the sheer complexity of the task overwhelms you, then
hire a specialized marketing firm to do this.
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| 7. |
Build sound
fundamentals into your business. Grizzled marketing veterans
like your author experienced the post PC downturn in the
mid 80s. I don't think we are going to see such a radical
meltdown in our new economy, but look at the declining
valuations via the stock markets, slowing PC penetration,
and Internet access signups. Yes, it's still a solid global
economy with plenty of niche marketing opportunities for
growth, but the "digital high tide" is starting
to recede. So don't count on mega million advertising
revenue as your "path to profitability", the
VC buzz word du jour. Develop fundamental profit centers
in your business.
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| 8. |
There
are lots of free marketing resources out there but be
wary of the proliferation of snake oil salesmen (sorry
John D). There is a new industry springing up of people
who are hyping free or low cost ways to instant riches.
Here's how I set my hype filter: if it sounds to good
to be true, then it is, so click your browser and move
on.
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| 9. |
Build
a web site that's popular, one that's linked and listed
by many others sites. This helps you get high listings
via Google, HotBot and other top tier search engines.
Here is a free resource that helps you setup and participate
in a LinkPopularity program. It can be set up in a couple
of minutes via the Fantomaster.com
web site.
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| 10. |
Recruit
and hire with an eye to the variances in the market. Meaning,
don't hire until you absolutely have to and use outsourced
companies for jobs which are not part of your company's
core attributes. This saves money in the long run and
lets you quickly scale up your business when and as you
need to, in turn minimizing your fixed human resources
and/or payroll costs.
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Lee Traupel has
20 plus years of marketing experience. He is the co-founder
of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately
held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com.
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services
to small-to-medium-sized companies that need strategic
and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at
Lee@intelective.com.
Please click here to Contact us or call toll free 530.432.8764
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"Working with Intelective Communications
is pure joy and enlightenment. They are so much at the leading edge that it's
inspiring to be connected with them in any way."
-Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of Guerrilla Marketing
book series and Marketing Pioneer |
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