By Hazel Butters, CEO, Prompt Communications
Some commentators are calling it ‘The Great Recession’. Businesses, now more than ever, need to understand their markets, consistently generate leads, and communicate with customers in the right way.
Managing marketing and PR appropriately for the market conditions is essential if a business is to weather these difficult times. With customers watching what they spend, businesses need to be keeping them engaged and ensuring the company’s messages are being well received.
1. When the economy is weak, your sales message must be strong
Who are you? What do you do? Simple questions they may be, but they are also two that a surprising number of companies struggle to answer. No matter how many diverse services it offers, an organisation needs to be able to present a clear identity to the outside world. This should come through with the messages it takes to market. If you have sales people in the field, are they using the same messages, the same presentations, referencing the same customers and ROI?
For example, if the business is a provider of a range of office software, all sales and marketing should remind the customer of this, even if the communication’s purpose is to promote one particular piece of the software portfolio. It sounds obvious, but it’s surprising how many businesses forget this when launching or promoting products and services. In a recession, a strong brand identity is crucial: you need everyone to know exactly who you are and what do you do. So tell them.
2. Explain USPs
Of course establishing a clear brand identity is just part of the challenge. Businesses also need to be able to stand out from their competitors. Every successful product or service has unique selling points (USPs). Look how the biggest brands play up their unique features: messages from Apple about the iPod focus on its design and the iTunes integration; the Nintendo Wii is promoted as fun for the whole family at a time when rival consoles are seen as toys for young adults and hardcore gamers.
Many businesses don’t highlight the little things that make them special. And if you don’t look like anything special, customers will naturally gravitate towards another company that does. In an economic climate as difficult as this, your business needs every edge it’s got, so really play up your USPs across all your PR and marketing communications.
3. Be consistent
A strong sales message is crucial, but it is equally important is to ensure that this message is consistent across every communication and activity you carry out. If, for example, your brochures, sales collateral and news releases are all saying different things, your customers will get confused and spend their money on something that they can understand. Each communication needs to reinforce the core message.
Many businesses treat sales and marketing as completely separate entities. In the current economic climate, this can be dangerous. Even when the two departments have distinct organisational structures, if they run off in different directions, it could tear the business apart.
Organisations also need to ensure that they remove the gap between sales and marketing. It could be as simple as bringing both departments together for product launches and campaign kickoffs, but making sure everyone in the company is on the same page ensures that the customer will be too.
4. As the market changes, so must your marketing
Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As the market changes so do the needs of customers, and the issues they care about. And so must your messaging. It doesn’t matter whether your customers are companies or consumers – they’ll be feeling the pinch. What does your product offer them during this economic strife? Will it save them money during a time when there’s not much around to save? Will it provide them with a little luxury, when it seems everything else is being taken away? Understanding how to position your company to customers in relation to market conditions will help you stay in line with what’s on customers’ minds.
5. Understand your market
Some businesses try to pretend they don’t have any competitors. This is not impressive. If a business has no competitors it means one thing – they’re not in a defined market segment, or they’re not selling anything. It’s critical that you know what your competitors are doing, and also what they aren’t. It’s also important to stay up to date as to what customers want and need.
Investing in market research is something that all businesses should consider – it can be invaluable in a recession. The information you receive will guide your strategy and help refine your messaging, and can also identify the unique selling points that will enable you to stand out.
6. Ensure quality at all times
People make judgement calls based on early impressions. For example, nobody goes to a job interview looking unclean and unkempt, do they? Or at least, nobody gets the job if they look like that. The same is true for your communications. You might have the strongest offering on the market, but customers will see poor spelling, punctuation and grammar as an indication of a lack of quality control, and a lack of effort on your part. And they would be right to.
In short: If youre spelling: punctuation, and grammer is al overe the plac it doesn’t look profesional, dose it?
7. Be transparent with existing customers
Your rivals will be working harder than ever to poach your business, and your customers will be more aware than ever before of their buying power. While growing the business through marketing activities, companies must not lose sight of the need to retain their core customer base. It’s important to keep in regular contact with them, and to make sure that the work you do on their behalf is transparent. When you order books from leading retailers such as Amazon, you receive an order confirmation, a notice to tell you when it’s been despatched, and a prompt notification if anything’s running late. Other companies that leave customers wondering what’s going on, or operate as a black box with no visibility into what goes on inside, risk losing custom to companies that can build greater trust through transparency.
Repeat custom is vital for every business too – show customers that you value them by keeping in touch even when there’s no sale in the offing, and they’ll be more likely to return when there is. Newsletters that carry information of value (as opposed to just self-promotion) can help to keep customers and prospects warm during a long sales cycle, or a long gap between sales.
Conclusion
Whether you’re managing your marketing, communications and PR in-house, or working with outside agencies, you need to be getting it right. The biggest effect that the recession has had is that it has drastically cut the margin for error. With customers spending less, good marketing and PR is crucial for keeping them engaged and spending. And that is what will ensure the survival of the company.
About Prompt Communications
Founded in January 2002, Prompt Communications is a communications agency with Europeanoffices in Chiswick, London and US offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Francisco,California.
Prompt Communications offers expertise across all marketing disciplines, teaming its consultants’extensive knowledge of start-ups, technology market with experience of pan-European andAmerican media, analyst and marketing campaigns. Using highly targeted marketing, PR, analyst relations, social media and corporate copywriting initiatives, Prompt helps its clients gain the visibility they need to achieve their business objectives, from increasing sales to enhancing reputation with stakeholders. The company has five business divisions: PR, AnalystRelations, Copywriting & Creative; Marketing Services and Social Media.
Prompt’s clients include Barros Technologies, Colosa, Corizon, GenSight Group, Hippo, Openbravo, Oracle Corporation, MIT Mobile Experience Lab, Foviance, Steganos GmbH and Webtide.
For more information, visit www.prompt-communications.com
