The Downturn, Marketing, and Easter Egg Hunting
OK, which one if these doesn't go with the others, right? Well, not so fast.
Here we are in the midst of an economic downturn and marketing budgets are being squeezed pretty tight. Some companies I've spoken with are saying they are just not going to put any resources into marketing efforts. Believe me, I understand that we're all looking for ways to trim the excess spending and make sure that every dollar is wisely invested. But why on earth would a company not want to invest in their revenue generation system? Or as some of us like to call it, marketing.
Well, I think a lot of it falls back to habits we developed as kids. For me, it was one that I seemed destined to repeat each year at the annual Easter Egg Hunt in our little community. My thought then was, "I'll follow everyone else because they all know what they are doing." I mean, some of them were older so they had to be wiser, right? Well, not so much. Usually what ended up happening was I followed everyone else and came up empty, and I do mean empty.
My mother would always ask me why I followed everyone else. She'd tell me that if I'd go the opposite direction and get away from the pack that I would do much better in my efforts. I just thought, "What does she know. If everyone else is going a certain direction then I should go that route too.
A few years of nothing in my Easter basket finally twisted my arm enough to listen to my mom. Well, I'll be damned. Somehow, Mom was on to something. Going the opposite direction, going my own way, meant I loaded up and tracked down the prize egg for several years. Pretty good ROI from not doing the same thing everyone else was doing.
OK, I hope if you're still with me on this and that you understand what I'm getting at. Just because we're in a bit of a slowdown doesn't mean your company should just blindly follow everyone else chopping away at their marketing budgets. In fact, I'm suggesting that you do what my mom suggested to me several decades ago, "Go the opposite direction and clean up!"
I know, you're thinking, "you're a marketer, what else are you going to tell us?" True. I am a marketer, but I am also a business owner with the same revenue and expense issues to deal with. Should you just throw money at any and every idea that comes along? Hell,no. What you should do is develop a relationship with a trusted marketing adviser, develop a well founded plan, implement that plan, analyze how that plan is working, make the necessary adjustments, continue forward, build a strong relationship between your brand and your customers, and ultimately, clean up.
Now this is not just me saying this. Look at AdAge. Look at American Business Media.
They are saying the exact same thing. These are just two of a number of articles I've read saying that now is the time to strike.
All I can do is give you the information. While I would love to have the ability to make you take action on it, I don't want to and simply don't have that power. After all, I'm not your mother.
