Recession vs. post-recession marketing

The landscape of business is intensely challenged during a recession. This process forces marketers to precisely redefine their brands and know exactly what they stand for during tough times. There is a tremendous challenge in interacting with and engaging a nervous recessionary consumer. It is still critical, however, to build your brand personality by highlighting ease of use and an unmistakable experience. This encourages your target consumer to spend time learning about your brand, even though they may be holding back on making a purchase in the short-term.

Post-recession marketing presents a great opportunity to capitalize on pent-up demand and growth that will quickly ensue as the consumer reenters the market. Here are a few ideas to help keep you ahead of your competitors during this time.

Research the consumer confidence in your brand offering and expect that your target market has evolved their purchasing behaviors into a "new normal". Some industries may not recover the trust of the marketplace for years and years to come if they were dramatically effected by the downturn in the eyes of the public. If this is your industry, make sure to test your creative in advance to measure if the copy content and imagery is building solution-oriented comfort in your brand. There is no substitute for a well detailed analysis of your campaign before it goes to market.

Capturing new leads is essential to growing your business in a post recession economy. If your target consumer has been out of the market for some time, there is the potential for pent-up demand to catch fire quickly if many return to the market at the same time. Marketers who satisfy the needs of this demand consistently will position their company to gain market share quickly. Make sure to measure how many of your sales-ready leads score compare with your ideal customer profile on a month-by-month basis. Watch this measurement closely as a key velocity metric that demonstrates the momentum your brand is gaining. Don’t be afraid to spend aggressively as the market finally shows signs of life through an increase in inquiries from campaign-specific landing pages.

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Don't make them wait

You spend your precious marketing dollars on exhibition space, collateral, give-aways and travel to a large tradeshow. Your efforts produce record breaking lead numbers. Now what? Are the leads housed in a spreadsheet somewhere for follow-up sometime? If marketers, in conjunction with their sales teams, don't have a solid plan for tradeshow follow-up it's likely that a good portion of money spent on the tradeshow was for not.

Most marketing managers are so focused on lead generation and brand development that they give little thought to what communication is sent to prospects after they have responded to a marketing event. But once you have spent the dollars to generate that lead, doesn't it make sense to ensure the prospect has an exceptional experience during the rest of the sales process?

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Listening – the key to being "social"

Social Media has quickly changed the meaning of short term reach and long term success in modern marketing. In today's internet-based society, daily users that had no voice or medium ten years ago have become influencers on an unprecedented scale. In addition, the rate of speed at which their messages reach others through outlets like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress is astonishing. Most consumers enjoy the sense of having their voice recognized and appreciated, especially after exchanging their hard earned money for your product and investing their personal time engaging with your brand.

Companies from every corner of the world are recognizing this shift of voice and are finally engaging. Executives are shifting budgets to embrace unique social mediums that pull the individual consumer's attention through by initiating relevant dialogue and actively listening to the voice of the customer. Ten years ago words like Facebook and Twitter were unheard of. Today, it is relatively impossible to imagine life in a technology-based economy without some type of impact from these communities.

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The Politics of Lead Management

... "Just give me the leads who are ready to buy" says Sales.
... "Just let me know the outcomes of leads so I can find you more" says Marketing.

Sound familiar?

I imagine even in the streets of ancient Roman trading areas there was a similar sentiment.
I’ve thought long and hard about the ultimate solution to this conflict, and here’s what I’ve conjured up having observed this for years. You have to have buy-in from top management and you have to have a real understanding of what lead management is and what it can do.

I wish I could promote the sheer adoption of marketing automation technologies as the way to satisfy the appetites of both Sales and Marketing's "Hatfields and McCoys" sniping, but I honestly can't. To really put the argument to rest, you have to get the blessing from top management. I mean C-level management who really believe in the importance of lead generation, prompt lead follow-up and reporting outcomes to enable ROI analysis.

There are many marketing and lead management technologies out there ­ ours is NitroMojo ­ but if there isn't a commitment to embrace its value as a corporate asset and to really promote its USE as a condition of employment, a company will be flushing cash down the drain.

Read the rest of the article on the MillerPierce website here.

Link exchange and daily updates

In today's SEO best practices you often read about link exchange and you wonder what it is. It is basically the "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" for webmasters. In other words, in order to climb higher in the search engine ranking you need votes from other websites; so if another website is featuring an article about your website, or a PR release, a case study ... etc ... they should link to your site somewhere in the text. It's like saying "I know this website and I recommend visiting it." In return you can do the same for that website on your own website. The more links you have out there to your site the better, more links mean more votes and recommendations to visit your site.


Read the full article on the MillerPierce website.