Business Marketing Monday: Five Marketing Ideas to Recession-Proof Your Business
June 2, 2008 by Bridget Wright
Filed under Business
Kristina Hill of Eastonsweb Multimedia Blog offer these five ways on marketing your business, recession proof. These are some sound, low investment ways for businesses to market their messages without spending a fortune. For any business to market effectively, the one thing that they should keep in mind is that it is not necessary to spend a fortune to advertise their message. No matter what the economy is doing or how limited your budget may, your business can still profit from marketing, just as if it is a large corporation.
Here is Kristina’s list, with my own comments and thoughts about them:
Launch an e-newsletter
Very easy to do and quite affordable. There are numerous software templates available online and offline. To get the most out of this marketing effort, develop a distribution schedule and invite guest writers to contribute to the newsletter.
Sponsor a Community Event
This works wonderfully for things like shows or seminars. Make sure whatever type of event you plan, that it has mass appeal to the widest selection of potential customers available. In other words, don’t offer Senior Citizen products or activities to the young families crowd and vice-versa.
Jumpstart your public relations activities
Start this by placing your ads in the community section of the newspaper, doing press releases and attending functions by other community business owners.
Start (or continue) advertising
Rates are pretty comparable for advertising both online and offline. The trick is finding the advertising that is suitable for your business and more importantly, your budget.
Keep your eye on the goal – your customers
This is the most important element of your business. Realizing that your customer is key is the most important step in developing your service business. In a post I made at Slacker Manager, my story on Rodney shows us just how he keeps his customers happy.
What do you do to effectively market your business? How do you keep this expense low for your business?
I love the idea of launching an eNewsletter. Very low cost and high ‘touch’. Especially for professional service providers (doctors, lawyers, accountants…. writers…) the personal aspect and constant reminders really help clients remember you. They feel they know you.
Another twist on this is contact services. My realtor uses one and it’s five years since we bought our home and I get something in the mail from her at least once a month. Her service sends birthday and anniversary cards, little tidbits about home improvement, and our local real estate market information. I know her name and I’ll call her, and refer her. Brilliant and cheap way to keep your clients and get new ones.
Hi Lela! Yes, an e-newsletter is an especially creative way to market your services. Low-cost and high-touch. And, you can update, adjust and tweak the newsletter as often as necessary to meet the growing demands of your client base.
Hi Bridget and Lela:
Thanks to you both for commenting on my post, “5 Marketing Ideas To Recession-Proof Your Business.” Bridget, your additions are on point.
I’m a big fan of e-newsletters, too. I recently launched an e-newsletter for one of my clients, a restaurant, and we already have hundreds of subscribers. One of the keys to our success is giving customers what they want – which in this case is recipes. A well-planned e-newsletter is an affordable marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.