Turning It Up in a Downturn

Slump. Recession. Looming depression. Opportunity.

"Opportunity?" That's a joke, right?

Nope. Granted, in a cooling economy there's postponed purchases, trading down, and buying less. But people (and companies) still have to—and often really want to—buy. The opportunity lies in leveraging knowledge of your customers, and identifying strategies that deliver good returns on your marketing spend.

In a recession, the search for value grows more important. How, exactly, are your customers redefining it? Quite possibly, by more than price: in dicey times we value trusted brands more and care less about unfamiliar ones. Discern which individual products, brands and services are moving. Sub out unpopular ones. Display brand logos, product info and links to manufacturers to add value.

Identify the benefits that your customers seek, and exactly how much they're willing to pay for them. Reposition your products, services, and company as solutions to their pains. Adjust your offering to comply with their new search for value: online (site and email), offline (print and direct mail) and of course, in-store.

Be ruthless about your marketing ROI. Online, the best ROI is email to your customers and leads. Second: higher ranking of your Web site in major search engines via search engine optimization. Third best ROI: pay-per-click (i.e. Google AdWords) to display your ads in the for-hire portions of the search results pages. These are a good start.

Web site content should always be current and relevant, and the modern site's CMS lets you easily add to, or edit, content any time—consider getting one. Some of the best tools for evaluating your site performance are free: Google Analytics tracks how traffic arrives, and how it behaves once there—revealing where you should improve tactics and messaging. Measurement and content management give you the control to quickly adapt to changing times.

A more general tactic: segment your customers. Identify the 20% most and least profitable. The top 20% probably generate over 150% of your yearly profits—you'd need to acquire 10-25 new customers of average profitability to replace every top one you lose. Likewise, the bottom 20% costs you an amount equal to your entire profit. "Fire" them, or better, learn how to take them to the break-even point to double your profits.

While no one knows how this "game-changing" economic uncertainty will shake out, some will choose paralyzing despair, and others, actionable paths to measureable success. As inspiration, businesspeople might consider the counsel of the 6th century mathematician/philosopher Pythagorus, for whom both measurement and improvement had the highest significance: "Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No person is free who cannot control themselves."