Surviving a Downturn

Hi Everyone,

It's good to be typing this bathed in sunshine for once, hopefully this is the turning point in the year and the snow, hail and rain are behind us!!!

I've been speaking to a lot of people recently who are concerned about the much publicised credit crunch and the effect it's going to have on the economy and the knock on effect on their business.

As a result they are cutting back on all advertising and marketing expenditure they can!

Very wise you would have thought, and this may be true. But surely in times of hardship the marketing budget should be increased not decreased? If marketing brings in business then it only makes sense that increasing the spend will increase or at least maintain the level of business you're doing?

This uncovers a massive problem in the industry and almost everyone I speak to is or has been a victim - even me I am sad to say. The problem is investing in ineffective marketing methods and/or not measuring your marketing activity. For the benefits of this post I'm going to split the two down into parts and go through each one.

Inaffective marketing methods.

Ever been sold an advert in a guide magazine or on a website that has been promised to bring in 100s of enquiries per month and it deliver exactly 0% of that figure? If not then your are one of the very few and I congratulate you on your shrewdness. If this sounds familiar then read on....

The truth is the world is changing at a dramatic rate, the internet has revolutionised not only the way we do business but life itself! The old fashioned model of business used to be Advert - Contact - Sale, the new model is Advert - Website - Contact - Sale. 95% of brides will have viewed your website before they contact you so effectively when you buy an advert anywhere, you are essentially buying traffic and visitors to your website. Understanding this then starts to put things in perspective, how many visitors are you likely to get through your site from a half page advert costing £500?

The old fashioned model used old fashioned methods, which means there must be new methods which work with the new model. Damn right there are! Peform any search on Google and contact the person at the top of the results page and ask them how business is - I'll guarantee you that if they say not good they're either doing something seriously wrong on their web site or sales process or they're lying to you! Search engines are where marketing is at at the moment, succeed on there and you'll succeed in your business, whether it's SEO or PPC either way it's the best, most cost effective method of promoting your business.

On this section I'll leave you with this thought, how many times have YOU contacted a publisher after seeing an advert to be included in their publication? I'll tell you that the answer will almost certainly be never as publishers don't advertise. Surely this is a bit strange as they are selling advertising as a successful business generation medium, if this was not the case would they not be advertising everywhere to attract their customers!?!?!?

Measuring your Marketing Activity

If you are spending money on advertising or any marketing method, not measuring the results your investment brings is a cardinal sin! Rest assured that if you don't know how an advert has performed throughout the year, you'll be told that it has been the result of any successes you've experienced when your ad sales rep calls and, inevitably, you'll sign up for another year. Watch and listen to the ad rep squirm when you tell them exactly how your ad has performed that year and how far off their estimates it was!!!

At the very worst this puts you ina position of power and, if you did want to continue with the advert, you are sure to be able to negotiate them down greatly from their initial price.

When you start looking at web based methods they are a lot easier to track. Get yourself Google Analytics (completely free), upload it to your site and it will tell you where all your visitors have come from and which of them turned into enquiries. It will then plot them all on a graph or pie chart for you so you can see 100% which of your marketing methods are working the best. I'd recommend you go one step further though and track each enquiry down to the amount of money they spend so you can tell where your most profitable enquiries are coming from as well.

For more information on Google Analytics visit http://www.google.com/analytics/en-GB/ and keep checking back here as I will be uploading a video walking you through how to upload the prgramme and some of the tools that are available.

So whats the best advice I can give you to prepare for any economic issues? Carry out a review of all your marketing activity, establish which is working for you, ditch what isn't and then redeploy the money in Search Engine based methods.

As always if you are a member of the Evolution Programme we can help you with your marketing review and offer recommendations on where to cut back and where to spend. If you're not a member, click here for more details.

Until next time.




Edward