Are You Going to Suffer or Come Out on Top? Or Both?

a guest post by Joy Gendusa

(www.bizchicksrule.com) — It’s no secret that the economy has taken a hit, so let’s not belabor that point. I’ve been saying that it is time to quit buying into the doom and gloom and get on the ball with promotion. The reason is simple. Those that continue to promote during slow economic times are the ones that will win out in the end.

Even though my advice rings true for all those in business, no matter the gender, personally feel that this message needs to be said to women specifically. When I started PostcardMania I wish I’d had someone to advise me of things I was clueless about, things after years I finally knew for myself. I should have sought out more advice from those that had done it. Less trial and error, you know?

The renowned advertising guru David Ogilvy said it best when he cited American Press studies in his book Ogilvy on Advertising, showing select companies over the last six recessions that had cut their marketing budget. In each case, they suffered lowered sales and net income several years after.

Those businesses that continue to promote will pick up all the customers and prospects from their competition that has cut their marketing.

You need to look for opportunities that are going to help you further your business — when one door closes, another opens. That’s the viewpoint you have to assume. It works when you do. You have to look for an open door.

I’ve got 7 tips for you. Be wise. Use them.

1. Market like crazy. Pick up the customers your competitors will lose by cutting their marketing budgets.
2. Make better use of your own database. Marketing for new customers is expensive but marketing to your existing customers has a higher return on investment. So step up your marketing to your existing customer base.
3. Don’t “agree.” Don’t buy into the fact that you can’t control your business’s outcome.
4. Stop messing around. Quit doing defeatist-type actions that keep you in the mud… like saying “it’s no use anyway,” or not getting on the horn and doing everything you can possibly do to improve your business.
5. You know what you should be doing, you know which employees are not pulling their own weight, and you know what activities will improve your customer service — so do them! No excuses.
6. Cut out waste. There’s an old saying from John Wanamaker that “I waste half my marketing budget; I just don’t know which half.” If you improve your tracking methods you can get more out of your marketing dollars. At my company we are already total analytics nerds, but we’re even getting more persnickety and digging deeper to understand more. Say you have 2 different ways that you advertise — you promote in the newspaper and send out postcards. You get a bunch of calls and you think “Wow, my advertising is really working.” You spend $10K a month and you make $50K off that, but you do not know which avenue is producing more. The more precise you get, the higher the return on investment you will get. Then you can increase your marketing budget to the channel that is getting you the most ROI and ditch (or at least lower) the other. Modernizing your marketing will help you stay afloat in a recession.
7. Make sure your customer service is at its all-time high by solidifying your core personnel. Get the eternal slackers slacking somewhere else. And make sure your entire team is on the bandwagon to beat this slump.

Remember, you can make a difference in your business. And by doing that your business can make a difference in the recession. And if enough companies do this we can make a difference in the economy.

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Using a powerful, simple, extremely cost-effective way of communicating with customers has earned Joy Gendusa Inc Magazine’s recognition as the nation’s fastest growing direct mail postcard-marketing firm with year 2007 revenues at nearly $19,000,000. Gendusa began in 1998 with zero investment capital. Today, her Clearwater, FL, firm, PostcardMania employs over 160 people and prints 4 million and mails 2 million postcards representing more than 31,000 customers in over 350 industries each week.

Note: A version of this article originally appeared in Joy’s newsletter, and she rewrote it for the Biz Chicks Rule audience.

(image: SXC.hu)

Tags: womens business blog, women, woman, business, joy gendusa, postcard mania, direct mail marketing, economy, change, growth, marketing, responsibility, accountability, recession, biz chicks rule, kristen king