On the Harvard Business School Blog Professor John Quelch provides the following tips for Marketing during tough times (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5878.html):

1. Research the customer. Instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers take more time searching for durable goods and negotiate harder at the point of sale. They are more willing to postpone purchases, trade down, or buy less. Must-have features of yesterday are today’s can-live-withouts. Trusted brands are especially valued and they can still launch new products successfully, but interest in new brands and new categories fades. Conspicuous consumption becomes less prevalent.

2. Focus on family values. When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village. Look for cozy hearth-and-home family scenes in advertising to replace images of extreme sports, adventure, and rugged individualism. Zany humor and appeals on the basis of fear are out. Greeting card sales, telephone use, and discretionary spending on home furnishings and home entertainment will hold up well, as uncertainty prompts us to stay at home but also stay connected with family and friends.

3. Maintain marketing spending. This is not the time to cut advertising. It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times. Uncertain consumers need the reassurance of known brands, and more consumers at home watching television can deliver higher than expected audiences at lower cost-per-thousand impressions. Brands with deep pockets may be able to negotiate favorable advertising rates and lock them in for several years. If you have to cut marketing spending, try to maintain the frequency of advertisements by shifting from 30-second to 15-second advertisements, substituting radio for television advertising, or increasing the use of direct marketing, which gives more immediate sales impact.

4. Adjust product portfolios. Marketers must reforecast demand for each item in their product lines as consumers trade down to models that stress good value, such as cars with fewer options. Tough times favor multi-purpose goods over specialized products, and weaker items in product lines should be pruned. In grocery-products categories, good-quality own-brands gain at the expense of national brands. Industrial customers prefer to see products and services unbundled and priced separately. Gimmicks are out; reliability, durability, safety, and performance are in. New products, especially those that address the new consumer reality and thereby put pressure on competitors, should still be introduced, but advertising should stress superior price performance, not corporate image.

5. Support distributors. In uncertain times, no one wants to tie up working capital in excess inventories. Early-buy allowances, extended financing, and generous return policies motivate distributors to stock your full product line. This is particularly true with unproven new products. Be careful about expanding distribution to lower-priced channels; doing so can jeopardize existing relationships and your brand image. However, now may be the time to drop your weaker distributors and upgrade your sales force by recruiting those sacked by other companies.

6. Adjust pricing tactics. Customers will be shopping around for the best deals. You do not necessarily have to cut list prices, but you may need to offer more temporary price promotions, reduce thresholds for quantity discounts, extend credit to long-standing customers, and price smaller pack sizes more aggressively. In tough times, price cuts attract more consumer support than promotions such as sweepstakes and mail-in offers.

7. Stress market share. In all but a few technology categories where growth prospects are strong, companies are in a battle for market share and, in some cases, survival. Knowing your cost structure can ensure that any cuts or consolidation initiatives will save the most money with minimum customer impact. Companies such as Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines, with strong positions and the most productive cost structures in their industries, can expect to gain market share. Other companies with healthy balance sheets can do so by acquiring weak competitors.

8. Emphasize core values. Although most companies are making employees redundant, chief executives can cement the loyalty of those who remain by assuring employees that the company has survived difficult times before, maintaining quality rather than cutting corners, and servicing existing customers rather than trying to be all things to all people. CEOs must spend more time with customers and employees. Economic recession can elevate the importance of the finance director’s balance sheet over the marketing manager’s income statement. Managing working capital can easily dominate managing customer relationships. CEOs must counter this. Successful companies do not abandon their marketing strategies in a recession; they adapt them.

Mar 22, 2010 1:39 PM, By Andrea Hribar–Chiefmarketer.com

One of our clients recently lamented that, “All people care about now is price.”  While price is no doubt an important driver of purchase decisions, even in this economy value (a.k.a. quality for dollars paid) still matters to consumers.

According to a Marketing Charts.com  newsletter, recent research from Nielsen on top CPG trends for 2010 supports the theory that consumers are seeking value for the dollar. Nielsen predicts that consumer constraint will become the “new normal,” with US consumers have unemployment and other economic concerns at the top of their mind. Concurrently with this tendency toward restraint, consumers will also focus on value, with widespread discounting forcing brands to differentiate themselves beyond simple low price. Read more at Marketing Charts.

Over the past few weeks, as we’ve worked with clients, three key questions have emerged (many other questions have emerged, but these are the most important). We’ll share them with you, as they might spark some of your own intuitive insights.

1. Are you building for the customers you want to attract, or those you already have?

2. What is the lowest level of familiarity with your industry product,service, or technology in your intended target audience. Is that the level that you want to address with your communications?

3. If competition is encroaching on your territory, what can you change to defend your position. Or, more importantly, where can you go to infringe on someone else’s market space?

Stagnant marketing efforts are no longer an option for organizations looking to fuel their growth. To succeed today, your brand and the messages you deliver must flex to meet the needs of each unique target audience. Brandeli provides the perfect platform for collecting information from prospects and generating audience-specific, data-driven, completely customizable communications to support qualified lead-generation initiatives and the integrity of your brand—while satisfying your appetite for measurable results.

Sometimes it’s tough to feel inspired when writing the all-important call-to-action (CTA) in your promotional or corporate communication vehicles. The driver, of course, is a verb. For example, “Log-on to hamblincompany.com to read our latest blog.” In this CTA, ‘log-on’ is the word describing the action that you hope someone will take when they’re done reviewing your message. Some other CTA gems:

Call

Visit

Stop

See

Shop

Stock up

Save

Act

Share

Email

Refer

Start

Do you have some favorites? Share them with us!

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: all the beautiful, brand-centric communications in the world don’t make a dime of difference if there’s a disconnect at the point of sale or service. For example:

1) The stylist at the salon can’t stop gabbing on her cell phone long enough to give a haircut 100% attention.

2) The cashier at the gas station carrying on a conversation with a co-worker and eating a donut while ’serving’ customers.

3) The annoyed-sounding lady who answers the phone at a gift shop and sighs when she has to take a message.

4) The sales rep who only returns calls if there is a sale to be made.

5) The staff members standing outside a corporate building smoking.

6) The employee who trashes her boss and the institution she works for on a daily basis on Facebook.

We’re sure you can think of a few more to add to the list! The only way to guarantee good brand-building behavior by employees (and other representatives of your business) 99.9% of the time is to create the policies that will support it. And don’t forget to train staff regarding these policies, and then enforce them.

As we all know by now, the fact that most Disneyland experiences are nearly flawless from a service and presentation standpoint isn’t an accident. There are rules, processes, and checks in place to ensure that the magic remains.

The point here is simple: Don’t spend time building your business with marketing, product-development and strategic planning, only to have it knocked down in your customers’ eyes by the behavior of employees, who, for the most part, don’t have a vested interest in your success.

Be specific about how you want the phone answered, what the expectations for upholding the reputation of your business are, and provide descriptions of what is appropriate work-time behavior and what is not. Put all of this in writing. Have staff members sign and keep a copy of these guidelines.

Creating behavior standards might take a little time, however, when deviation from the desired behavior occurs, everyone will have a common reference point from which to do better next time. Which is key to continuing to grow your business.

Looking for a way to add relevance and credibility to your marketing message? Consider integrating some fact-based numbers into the equation.

Anecdotal endorsements and testimonials are good marketing tools, however, stating percentage improvements, number of product users, financial results, and other numerical facts in sales and fundraising copy can win over skeptics and solidify your persuasion by communication.

So next time you’re at a loss for convinicing copy, consider crunching some numbers instead.

We had the pleasure of participating in the Adrian Area Chamber (http://adrianareachamber.com/) Conversations on Marketing forum today. It was a great group of business professionals sharing ideas and the challenges of finding the right marketing formula for their unique organization.

One thing (actually one theme, with may components) became very clear as the conversations progressed: the more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, even though there are more people in the world, more competition in the market, and more marketing media/tools that can be used, the basic principles of marketing still apply. Here’s a brief rundown of the very fundamentals of successful marketing (i.e. persuasive and engaging communication) for those who missed Marketing 101:

1) Know your customer.

2) Know your target market (s) and the issues important to them.

3) Understand what your organization offers that is of value to those individuals in #1 & #2.

4) Define objectives and measurable goals for your marketing efforts.  

5) Select tactics based on your market’s preferences, not your own.

6) Clear and concise words beat clever and convoluted messages every time.

7) Remember to measure and evaluate. DOn’t keep doing the things that aren’t delivering ROI.

8) People respond to marketing, not organizations. Speak to people if you ar in B2B.

9) You and your company don’t matter. The value and benefits that you provide to the market do.

10) Plan ahead.

11) Start small, evaluate, then go bigger if the results are good.

12) Always spellcheck, proofread, and let others read any written words you are sending out to the world.

13) Ask the experts what is important: see point #1.

14) THe combination of credibility and creativity are extremely powerful.

15) Define and defend your brand.

16) Consistency is crucial.

17) Never stop learning.

Those are the very basics, and of course, we’ve probably missed many other important points…feel free to add your own thoughts!