No doubt it’s getting a bit old for you, too: you can’t go anywhere or strike up a conversation without the topic turning to the economy. Invariably the question is asked, “How’s business?”
We’ve seen this movie before and lived, and so have our clients. We’ve blogged already about how smart companies will seek to grow market share in such times, avoiding the knee-jerk reaction to cut budgets, reallocate funds and tighten the marketing belt.
But let’s say your company isn’t quite that foresighted or aggressive. You’ve still got a communications budget, probably smaller than originally planned. Clearly, you need to maximize the impact of what you have to work with; so like most companies, you’ll no doubt reallocate still more funds from offline to online. You’ll probably ratchet up your pay per click (PPC) campaign a bit, since you know you can’t rely on organic search alone, even with top-shelf SEO. You’ll reassess your keywords and fine-tune your offers and landing pages. But then there’s the small matter of what you say, and how… i.e.,
So what about the creative?
We were fortunate enough to stumble upon a piece by Jim Castanzo over at the B2B Insights Blog called “Ten Tips for Effective Creative in Difficult Times”. As usual, we won’t recap all 10 here – for that, you can always click on over – but we’ll go through some that resonated with us.
- Make your message relevant …and unambiguous. Like you, your readers are working hard to keep existing business and find new opportunities, so they don’t really have oodles of time to read between the lines.
- Be an authority; speak as one. In this economy, customers and prospects are less likely to take risks. They want a vendor/partner they can trust.
- Try doing some research. Even informal surveys or questionnaires will help you pinpoint what your prospects see as their greatest challenges, which you can then work into your message and use to refine your tone.
- Sell benefits, not features. Your customers and prospects are looking for answers to questions, solutions to real problems. Now is not the time to bury your benefits behind marketing drivel like “Because we care”.
- Analyze this: your competitors. It’s so easy to let this slide in good times, when everything’s working and your competitors don’t seem a threat. But during times of economic upheaval, you need to know: what is your competition saying? …because you must differentiate. The environment will become chaotic, so your message and the way it’s presented must stand out to get noticed.
Oh… and be sure to integrate. Whatever tactics you use, build synergy by reinforcing the same message across all the media you’re still using.
There’s really nothing here that shouldn’t be practiced even in good times. In difficult times, these points just become that much more critical.
For a second opinion on how your creative stacks up – or for help on improving it – your online marketing consultants are a good resource.
