40 Marketing Tips To Survive The recession

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1 If you do one thing in this recession do this. Optimise your website.

Website optimisation is too large a topic to cover here but the key points are:

• It is THE marketing activity that will result in the largest amount of relevant traffic to your website.
• You need to get your meta tags optimised, the keywords within each page need to be optimised, the image tags within each page need to be optimised and you need to generate lots of relevant inbound links to your website.
• Each inbound link should have a key search term in the anchor text.

SEO is far more complex than the brief points above. If you do not have much of a marketing budget and want to invest in one marketing activity that might see you through the recession then this is it. Either attend an SEO training course or ask a marketing agency to optimise your website.


2 Become remarkable - Develop a clear value proposition and competitive positioning.
The topic of being "remarkable" is large and important enough to be covered in another guide. The essence is that when your company or product is different from competitors in a way that people find remarkable, and mention you to friends and colleagues then you are almost guaranteed success.  Even if your business is not yet  truly "remarkable",  if you make it easy for people can see how your offering is different than your competitors, it is easier to generate new prospects. If you cannot differentiate, it is more difficult and costly to show prospects why they should choose you. The result is that you often end up competing on price. Therefore, you need to differentiate and position your offering.

One of the key elements of your positioning strategy is your value proposition. There are three essential types of value:
1. Operational excellence (efficiency allows for most competitive prices),
2. Product leadership (innovative products or services that differentiate you) and
3. Customer intimacy (passionate about customer service).

You need to decide which of these three positions your business has taken and then you need to
communicate that clearly to your potential customers.

3 Develop a lead management system.

In a recession customers are more risk averse and can take longer to make a decision. Therefore you need to generate or utilise a lead management system in order to score and nurture the leads and ensure each is followed up at the most appropriate time with the correct message.



4  Develop website metrics.

Imagine owning a shop and you didn't know how many people came through the door. Or if you didn't know that 50% of visitors to your shop came to the door and immediately walked out again?

In a recession, if you have a website that is important to your business and
you do not have web traffic stats or you have a package but you do not know
what traffic you are getting from where, then this needs to go into your top
five priorities.

5 Be fanatical about website conversion.

Website conversion has got to be up in your top three priorities in a recession. If your customers make bookings or purchases online ensure that you know what your onsite conversion rate is = number of purchasers/day as % of number of unique visitors.

If your conversion rate is 0.01% then you have a major problem. If it is 1% it
is probably very poor - depending on your industry. If it is 3-4% you are doing very well - again, depending on your industry. Conversion rate is crucial  because marketing is a numbers game. If you drive 1000 visitors to your site and you convert 1% of them you deliver 10 customers. If you want to double your number of customers would you prefer to increase your unique visitors to 2,000 or increase your conversion rate to 2%?


6 Be fanatical but ensure you understand how to test online conversions.

Undertake mulit-variant testing which can be run in conjunction with Google pay per click campaigns. Test which combination of headline, image and body text results in the best conversion rate and once you know which one works
best, change your website page design to the optimal one. Ensure you have dedicated landing pages for marketing campaigns - in particular email and pay per click campaigns. Having a landing page that matches what the user is expecting to see - rather than driving to a homepage - can increase conversion by over 200%.




7 Ensure you understand the market better than your competitors.
By quickly understanding how your customers' needs are changing in a recession (either by market research, asking customers directly, capturing customer feedback) you can win market share from your competitors by responding more quickly to your customers' needs.

Your customers might now need more cost effective solutions, need more flexible pricing options with the result that you need to focus more on products that were not a priority in the past and you need to offer more price points.



8 Relook at your product quality.

Your customers will now be focused on quality, reliability and performance. Develop an action plan to improve the quality and focus on communicating the quality to customers.

9 Identify segments with growth potential.

In a recession there will be new customer segments and market segments that offer growth opportunities. Think about your market and brainstorm what customers will be more interested in now they are in a recession economy. Develop a plan to win these new customers.


10 Repackage & reposition your products.
Look at how your products are currently positioned in terms of features/benefits/offers and develop a plan to relaunch them. Now that your customers are in a recession you need to reposition every
product and frame its benefits in terms of the customer's new mindset and priorities. Add an offer to every product and ensure it is compelling.



11 Understand your margins.
Ensure you have a very clear understanding of your gross and net margins. Be clear about how low you can reduce your product price yet still be  profitable.

Don't reduce prices for the sake of it - test and measure. Explore new pricing models such as regular price promotions, customer incentives or quantity discounts that were previously reserved for your biggest spending customers. Run these discounts for a limited period and during this short period it is essential that the impact on sales and product levels is tested and reported for each of these pricing strategies. You should then focus efforts on those discounts that deliver the most sales at the highest margins.


12 Review and fix all customer touch-points.
Identify all the touch-points where a customer interacts with your company and your product and review the customer experience. These touch-points will cover the buying process stages of:
a) awareness
b) consideration
c) purchase and
d) product experience
and will include advertising, direct mail, website, call centre, response to
sales enquiries, receptionist, product packaging and many more.


Either objectively assess - or conduct research on - whether there is a poor or an average customer experience and put a plan in place to deliver an excellent customer experience at each touch-point. In a recession you need to ensure that potential and existing customers have a top quality experience at each touch-point.



13 Invest in your brand to engender trust and recall.
Positive brand activity makes us trust a brand and increases the effectiveness of advertising. In a recession customers gravitate towards safety and towards brands they can trust. If you are a small company the recession could be an opportunity for you to gain increased exposure at a time when many competitors decrease advertising and marketing spend so spend on innovative and cost effective activity that increases brand awareness.


14 Increase brand awareness through PR.
In a recession you need to generate as much free publicity as possible and well executed PR should be high on your list. Ensure you build a relationship with key newspapers or journals within your industry and ensure you understand how to write and distribute press releases that will be of interest to editors.



15 Question whether your brand image inspires trust and reassurance.
In a recession buyers are nervous and will question whether your company will still be around to provide the product or service. Whereas value has become more important, so has quality and trust. Therefore, scrimping on your image is a false economy.

Ensure your branding design, advert design, brochure design and web design are of the highest quality and that they inspire trust and reassurance in your product. Use customer testimonials in your communications and highlight the depth and quality of your company's experience.



16 Potential customers have cost you lots of money. Put them in a database.

You spend a lot of money trying to generate leads and enquiries for your product or service. Some of these will immediately turn into sales but most will not - perhaps because they were not at the consideration or buying stage. Maximise your marketing spend by ensuring the contact details of anyone who has enquired about your product is captured (by receptionist, sales, call centre, website) and is placed in a contact database.

17 If your website was not correctly designed as a sales tool, make it a priority to get it redesigned.

Your website needs to work very hard for you in a recession. Ensure that:

• The design inspires trust and showcases your product to best effect.
• If you want to appear high up in search engines it should not be designed in flash, should not have frames, should have an extensive internal linking structure and should not have dynamic urls (plus many other things).
• Design a lead generating aspect in the site. You should be capturing leads from your traffic. Avoid inane requests like "sign up for our newsletter" but offer real incentives and real value for people e.g Free Guides

18 Broaden your marketing exposure with online press releases by getting your company on Google news.

Consider issuing a press release online which is distributed to thousands of journalists in specific industry sectors and distributed via hundreds of news sites worldwide - including Google news. Not only will it increase exposure for your product and drive potential customers to your website, it will increase the number of back links to your site which will increase your performance on search engines.

19 Drive traffic by sharing your expertise via article marketing.
You or someone in your company should write articles that you think your potential customers would be interested in and then submit them to one of many article directories. Your details and your web address will be at the bottom of the article. This article is then made available to countless websites that are hungry for new content and many websites that need material for their regular newsletters.

The result is that your article, if it is good enough, can get distributed to thousands of potential customers, all of whom get exposed to your company and many of whom will click through to your website.


20 If you or your team do not understand search engines book a course now.

On average, 80% of traffic to websites is driven by search engines. Google drives the lion's share of search engine traffic with circa 75 - 80%. Over 40% of people who search Google do not go beyond the first page of search results (which contains ten natural results plus sponsored links). 90% of Google searchers
don't go beyond page three (30 results).

That means if you want to drive lots of traffic to your site then you need to appear in the first page (or two) of Google search results. If you or your team are unaware of how to get your site to appear on the first page of Google search results for key search terms that customers use to find your product you should make it the biggest priority in your marketing plan.



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21 Use pay per click advertising ... but only if you understand your ROI.
There are two ways to appear on the first page of Google results:
1. To run pay per click adverts which appear as sponsored results on the right hand side and on the top.
2. To optimise your website so that you appear in the top ten natural results

It is very advisable to try pay per click as it immediately guarantees appearance on the first page and you will increase the number of people visiting your website who are actively looking for your product. However,
because you pay for every click you need to avoid the biggest mistake many companies make - driving lots of traffic that doesn't make a profit.

You need to understand what percentage of your web traffic converts into a sale (assume 1%). You also need to know your average net profit per sale (assume €50) if you are paying €1 per click, then it costs €100 for every sale (at 1% conversion). This means you are making €50 loss on every customer
gained by pay per click.

Ensure you understand the ROI assumptions for your business and unless you understand bidding strategies and keyword usage use a marketing agency to set up the campaign in order to avoid paying for lots of generic search terms that will not result in customers.


22 Do not use email marketing to gain new customers. It is cheap but makes your brand look cheap and nasty.

Because it is inexpensive, lots of companies are tempted to send emails or e-newsletters to prospect lists with a view to turning them into customers. It is spam. It is viewed by the recipient as spam and your brand will suffer. We all receive  spam everyday and we know what we think of it. Don't consider it.

However, E-zines can be a very effective tool for communicating with existing customers or for prospects who have opted-in to receive communications.

23 Create a marketing plan for your business that goes beyond simple advertising tactics to get new customers.

When times were good and your business was easily hitting sales targets, it is possible that you operated without a marketing plan. Marketing might have been a mixture of press adverts and website promotion. Now that you are in a recession your first priority is to develop a marketing plan that will focus on all aspects of the marketing mix. You need to focus on your competitive positioning, brand, pricing, product development, methods to attract new customers, methods to keep existing customers and to sell more to them, methods to ensure that your marketing activities are profitable and you need to regularly measure key marketing activities which indicate the health of your business.


24 Do not cut total marketing spend but prune some... which bits?

This is the time to increase your share of voice and share of mind. Many studies have shown that companies who maintain and increase their spend in a recession are best positioned to survive it and to grow quickly after it. At a time when less customers are in the market with less to spend you need to
ensure you are top of mind and easily found. Therefore, if your business can afford it, do not cut overall marketing spend. You should however identify which aspects of marketing spend you should cut. Ask yourself, your employees or close customers where they think the marketing fat is - what are you spending money on that is perceived to be wasted? Ask yourself, staff and close customers which marketing aspects add value to the customer. Ensure these are the last to be cut.



25 Increase spend on marketing that increases ROI.
Ask yourself which aspects deliver positive ROI (Return on Investment). If you are one of the majority of businesses that went through the boom times without knowing which activities are ROI positive now that you are in a recession period you have to focus on ensuring you measure ROI.




26 Invest in direct mail but only if you calculate ROI.
If you are a consumer business you should have a prospect database of people who have enquired about your service. If you are a B2B company you should have something similar but might also consider renting a highly targeted prospect list. When sending direct mail ensure that:
The message is very targeted and is benefit and offer led - never send
something that simply introduces your product or company.

• Always integrate the messaging and design with your advertising and website as recall will increase response rate.
• Always stagger the mailing and follow up with a telephone call as it will increase your conversion rate considerably.
• Budget for a response rate of between 0.5% and 1% and the conversion rate will depend on your product and industry - if you do not know what it is then test it.
• Unless you know how to calculate a business case for direct mail do not do it on a large scale - test it first. Calculate how much it costs to design, print and post 5,000 direct mail packs and what will the return on investment be based on a 0.5% - 1% response rate? Do not forget that you then need to factor in a conversion rate and then apply a net margin rate in order to see if the campaign costs in.

27 You should not stop advertising.

Advertising in a recession is very advisable because there are less customers with money to buy your product so you need to ensure that you are in front of them and top of mind. However, some advice regarding designing and booking advertising in a recession market includes:

• Ensure your adverts focus on the purchasing triggers and always includes an offer - avoid bland adverts that talk about what your company does.
• Always include your web address as the majority of prospects now check a company online before they respond.
• Negotiate on advertising rates - every media agency is open to negotiating in a recession.
• Always calculate your ROI before running an advertising campaign.
• Ensure you know what your average order value is, the average order profit  and how many orders it will take for the advert to generate a profit. If you do not have advertising response rates of your own ask the advertiser what a typical response rate would be for an advert of that size/length.

28 Get hundreds of other websites promoting your product but only pay them for each sale. It is called affiliate marketing.

Depending on your product you can get hundreds of other sites to sign up to advertise your product on their site. If a visitor clicks through to your site and purchases a product you pay the other site a commission. You only pay when a sale is made and not for the traffic. It is like having a huge online sales force
working for you. The key is to ensure that you are registered with a leading affiliate network and that you build a good relationship with your affiliates.



29 Partner with other companies to cross promote your products or services.

In a recession you should be maximising your own customer database to the full. The next step is to partner with another relevant business in order to cross promote your service and their service to each other's customers. The partner should offer a related but non competing service and the key guidelines are:


Ensure it is a partner that you would be happy to refer your best customers to.
Ensure the partner's service adds value to the client in a recession and by recommending the partner's service you are in fact helping your customers through the recession.



30 Understand how your customers have changed.
In a recession your market has changed and will continue to change as the recession deepens. The survival of your business could depend on whether you really understand what is going on in your market and how your customers' views have changed due to the pressures of recession. You should conduct or commission a market research study in order to understand:

• What now constitutes perceived value for money in your market - it has probably changed dramatically since the recession started.
• How customers and potential customers perceive your company in terms of value, price and quality.
• How they perceive your key competitors.
• How have customers' needs and priorities changed in a recession and how that impacts the product you are offering.

31 Create a rolling dossier on each of your key competitors noting:
How they have adjusted their prices and product offers - undertake competitor intelligence in order to track their prices.
Whether they have maintained of decreased their marketing activity.
Where they appear in search engine results for key search terms.
Whether they have improved their website design and product positioning/messaging.
Question whether you are positioned better or worse than your key competitors and identify the areas where you are weak. Develop an action plan to address the areas where you are weak or where they are growing stronger.


32 Create a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Program
Your existing customers are your biggest asset. They have responded to your message and have tried your product or service. These customers are the future of your business  because they can result in repeat purchases or referrals which are cost free.

Some guidelines in a recession are:

•  Segment your customer database by value - identify the top 20% of customers who generated the most revenue for you. For most companies, these will have generated 60-80% of revenue. Ensure you have a special relationship programme in place for these customers.
•  Ensure all new customers have an excellent initial experience so that they bed in with your product/service. Identify the top five things that make customers feel happy when they experience your product or service and make sure they are delivered.
•  Telephone customers to ask them if they are happy with the service they are receiving.
•  As much as is possible, telephone customers to let them know what is going on with their order or the purchase. Your customer is your best friend.
•  Depending on your business put in place a system which flags whether a
•  customer is upset/complaining or is about to leave.

33 Say Thanks - and thanks again.
If a customer recommends you to another potential customer that recommendation is worth more than any advertising you have paid for. Ensure you thank the customer and that they are fully aware of how appreciative you are. Depending on your industry put in place a system that identifies whether customers have been recommended. Always ask how a prospective customer heard of you and if they received a recommendation, ensure this is captured by a receptionist, call handler, sales agent etc. and passed through to the loyalty marketing team.



34 Start talking to those old customers.
Create a database of customers and flag those who have not purchased your product for some time. They might not have been major customers or very profitable customers but they have experienced your product/service so they are very hot prospects. Develop a specific offer for these customers and make it clear that you want to win them back. Be creative with the messaging and the offer.


35 Create a cross-sell and up-sell plan
Segment your customer base by the type of product or service they have  previously purchased from you and market other relevant and related products that they haven't yet purchased.

For new customers, start asking if they would like an additional
product or service e.g., would you like fries with that?


36 If you do not test you do not know what is working...  so you are wasting money.

Marketing is all about testing what is effective. In a recession, always ensure that where possible the response rate of your marketing campaign is being measured and also the conversion rate. In order to do this consider:
Putting in place unique telephone numbers for major campaigns
e.g., press/ radio/tv and ensure the response rate per day is reported.
Ideally have unique telephone numbers for major media (tv
adverts). Have a unique number on the website so you know how many
telephone responses it generates. If your objective is to shift awareness or brand perception always try to run a control group so you can compare the impact amongst those who were exposed to your campaigns and those who were not.


37 If you do not know who is visiting your website - you are wasting money.
Get a market leading site statistics package installed on your site such as Google Analytics and you will know:-
 How many unique visitors are going to your site and how it is trending over time?
 Where the visitors are coming from - search engines, third party links or people inputting your url?
 Which search engines are driving the most traffic and which search terms are driving traffic? Importantly, which search terms are not driving traffic for you?
 Which countries and regions your traffic is coming from?
 What percentage of your traffic bounces off the site having taken a glance at it?

Lots of companies still have a package that tells you how many page impressions you are receiving and little else. Bin it.


38 Imagine driving a car without a dashboard with fuel and oil levels? You need a marketing dashboard for your business.

In a recession you need to have a regular (weekly, or at least monthly)  dashboard which tells you key metrics about how your business is trending. These need to be trend graphs so you can see whether things are improving or declining. If declining you need to take immediate action. The dashboard should include metrics such as number of enquiries, number of sales, sales conversion rates, average sales value, website traffic, website sales etc.


39 Ensure you know what customers are saying about you online.
Web 2.0 has forever changed how consumers can impact a company's reputation. In the leisure sector, consumers post reviews of restaurants, hotels and B&Bs on sites such as Trip Advisor or Goireland.

Are you aware of what is being posted in reviews about your business and
are you responding to negative reviews in order to protect your brand? If
not you should commission an agency to monitor your online reputation
and receive a weekly report containing all the reviews that have been posted
about your business across a wide range of sites. This will enable you to identify key problems within the business that need to be addressed and you can post a response on the relevant websites in order to apologise and explain what is being done to address them.

40 If you don't have the marketing expertise to realign your business for a recession - ask a marketing agency

Not every company has the marketing expertise necessary to put the necessary marketing basics in place to realign your business for a recession. A marketing agency can help with one or a number of the key areas that need to be dealt with.


About The Author
Evan Mangan is founder of The Marketing Crowd and was previously Head
of European Marketing for Yahoo! Mobile, Head of Direct Marketing at BT
and Head of Direct and New Media Marketing at Orange.