Time moves on and we are all struggling to survive the tough times and strive towards a place where the economy is not an issue for us
If you ever have the chance to talk to the CEO of a Public Relations firm, take advantage of it. You can learn a lot about how companies operate that work on a business-to-business platform. The social media that you may talk about has a large role in the marketing business, and why marketing is so essential during a recession. You can use this marketing to help your customers and their customers.
If you ask a PR person whether social media is valuable or not, they may bring up the point that average everyday people are really torn in their answers. Similarly, PR people will tell you that you can use social media like blogs as though they are tools, to deliver industry and marketing knowledge and insight. But your customers don't want to waste their time with fluff posts.
When you consider using social media, and how valuable it is, look at the whole marketing mix. Email, direct mail, advertising, webinars, seminars and trade shows all have a role in business. Social media is really just a technical way of delivering public relations. It is the best and least expensive way to reach your target audience with a very specific message, without a tremendous amount of effort.
If you're worried about your marketing people having their budget cuts cut during this or any recession, you should look back to a tried and true adage – You should advertise in good times, but you must advertise during bad times. You can't go dark while you're in a recession, but it's easy to cut your marketing budget, thinking that you need salespeople more than marketing.
Look closer. Salespeople have their own function, but that doesn't include educating potential customers or building on the credibility that your company already has. That's where marketing comes in, and it has immense value during a time of recession.
Every dollar counts in a recession, so everything your company does must have value. This means that your marketing department can help your sales team to assist customers. This can be done by finding out how you can best help your clients turn around and sell to their clients.
Marketers need to ask what your customers need in order to win more deals. Then they need to decide how you can position your services and products to get the key benefits that your company hasn't yet explored. They can look into how to change your wording so that you are offering solutions from a perspective of how they can gain extra revenue for each user.
Some companies now are throwing ideas against a wall and keeping what sticks, thus keeping only the cheapest of their marketing tactics. Their head of PR may be telling the higher-ups what they should do to remain effective, and marketers might agree without thinking about the way those tactics fit into their plan for business. The right plan for marketing during a recession? Evaluate and measure everything. Know where you are going, and don't be distracted by tactics that don't have any intrinsic value. Be consistent and be patient, especially since the recession appears to have turned the bend.
http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au
