In less than two months, we have
seen the value of the dollar skyrocket, gas prices and stocks plummet, a world-wide banking meltdown, a spike in unemployment,
and the election of a new U.S. president. That's not just change you can believe in, that's change that makes your
head spin.
In this sea of uncertainty, you might not even know
what your budget is for next year or how you'll reach out to new – hard to get, customers. For many companies, the
budget pie and the customer pie are simply not growing. Just keeping sales and leads flat (let alone increasing them) can
be a big win.
Your customers are reeling from the volatility, and
as they change, the way you reach them must change just as fast. Whether you're doing B2B, B2C or both, what worked last
month (or even last week) may not work today; in fact, it probably won't work. Maybe last week, customers were looking
for reassurance, but this week they might be looking for deals, and next week they'll be thinking of checking out altogether.
You need to meet them where they are, and to meet them, you have to know exactly where they are, right now.
Nobody can predict how long or deep the recession will be. But one thing is easy
to predict: only companies that can rapidly adapt to customers' changing demands – and prove that their new strategies
are actually effective – will have a chance of surviving.
Stay
Open to Different Points of View and Different Possibilities
Don't
assume the plan you created in October is still relevant. It isn't. Right now, any survey on future purchasing intentions
that's more than a week old is probably obsolete. The good news is, that new marketing techniques and technologies lets
you test, measure and respond to the rapidity of customers’ changes extremely quickly.
Here are a couple examples of what you should constantly be adapting:
v Offers. Value-added incentives that
worked in the past may lay an egg now. The "buy our product and get a free T-shirt" offer from last year was a success,
but now potential customers may only be motivated by a cash rebate or a significant cash discount off your product. Throw
out a variety of offers and see which ones make your customers move. Test, test, test.
v Creative. Consumer sentiment changes quickly in this environment, so test your
messaging often. Perhaps you promote services that will help your customers weather the downturn. But do your customers react
negatively to campaigns that remind them of the bad economy? Then you might need to change your messaging to one of comfort
and quality – at least this week – and, of course, test that new messaging.
Don't
be content with A/B testing; make decisions even faster by creating A/B/C/D/E versions of a banner ad, or email solicitation
for example, and analyze the responses to see which one works best.
You
have to Determine the real payoff of your Tactics
In
testing to determine whether a tactic works, don't stop at the initial positive indicators. In this environment, you don't
merely need leads; you need quality leads, the kind that drives prospects and sales. The only way to start attracting more
of the right kind of traffic is to understand from the get-go which campaigns lead to real-life conversions.
If it takes two weeks to pull these stats from multiple marketing technologies
and team members, you're ambling along like an old-economy dinosaur. Are you willing to risk extinction?
In this economy, it's survival of the fastest. The marketers who make it will
be the ones who are savvy enough to optimize campaigns all the way from the lead-management process to the CRM system, and
quickly apply what they learn to the next tactic. If you can't measure the results of your campaigns easily and quickly,
it's time to seriously consider how resilient you are in certain systems.
If all
of this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But unless your company is magically immune to global economic conditions, you don't
have a choice. In boom times, the entire marketing team can take credit for great numbers without breaking much of a sweat.
But when your marketing organization is involved in a crisis, you have to adapt instantly and pull out all the stops merely
to hold your own in the short-term and to anticipate what will come after the crisis in the longer-term. And in this environment,
that's about the only certain thing.
Charles Toney
Principal
TJG, LLC
Live Person
