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Published Article
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| Marketing
Maxims for Today’s Challenging Times |
These are turbulent times
for all businesses - necessitating streamlined marketing processes
that are finely honed to mesh with today’s sputtering global
economy.
| 1. |
Don’t
stop advertising because the economy is sluggish - increase
it, as many of your competitors are foolishly slowing
down and you can grab market share! Look at what Dell
has done to Gateway in the last eighteen months –
Gateway has lost 10-20% of their market share and are
pulling in their horns, while Dell’s slice of the
pie has grown bigger.
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| 2. |
Negotiate
aggressively with media sources – its tough right
now for online and offline publishers to generate advertising
revenue and they are being forced to consider any and
all deals. Note the number of “house ads” being
run by major portals like Yahoo and Internet.com, 20-30%
of their banner ads or sponsorship buttons are promoting
their own businesses.
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| 3. |
It’s
no secret that many ecommerce sites look like Amazon.com
– it pays to mirror existing market leaders’
web site design. People always resist change and familiarity
is one of key reasons why they shop on and offline in
the same stores.
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| 4. |
Niche marketing
has almost become a homily – but it enables your
company to leverage your marketing expenditures and R&D
costs by concentrating on a narrow market segment. ToolLogic,
Inc. (www.toollogic.com) is a wonderful example of a company
that created/found a niche and then dominated it.
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| 5. |
What’s
unique about your company, services and/or products? When
you understand this you’ve just created “brand
uniqueness” – make sure you integrate these
themes with all of your marketing; customers need to know
what’s different about your company versus your competitors.
Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream (www.benandjerrys.com)
did a wonderful job of developing brand uniqueness in
a commodity market (ice cream) that enabled them to build
a great company.
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| 6. |
A key
attribute for any successful marketing campaign is repetition
– your company may not have the marketing resources
of an Intel (their “Intel Inside” campaign far
exceeded their marketing goals) but you do need to repeat
your message and reinforce the branding and market awareness
by touching your market segment via multiple reinforcing
marketing processes; i.e. search engine ranking, print,
opt-in e-mail, radio/TV, sponsorship buttons, newsletter
inserts, etc.
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| 7. |
Make it easy
to do business with your company by offering pricing and
terms of service that fit your client’s needs –
Digit-Net technologies (www.digi-net.com) sells software
and or ASP services to its customers by offering them
terms of services that can be flexed to fit their needs,
not the other way around.
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| 8. |
Switching
costs are high in this challenging market – companies
and individuals don’t want to change their habits,
as this can cost them more money. So, figure out how you
can adapt your products and services to fit their needs
to minimize their switching costs. Then, communicate this
effectively via all of your marketing processes.
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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. 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.
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