Local consultant Richard Berger presents the first in seven-article series designed to help Long Beach businesses successfully market themselves in a depressed economy.
With New Year’s business headlines like this: “U.S. growth prospects deemed bleak in new decade,” what’s a professional marketer to do? New business results are hard-earned, the halcyon days of the market have ground to halt and the new mantra is now “do more with less.”
I call this economic state a “freakonomy” because of the seemingly unpredictable nature of the economy and the overall freakiness that tends to pervade the market from businesses and from customers.
In a freakonomy, your work is definitely cut out for you.
By examining efforts and results in your own business, you can identify clear and innovative ways to do more with less. Approached in this manner, you can eliminate or redirect costs associated with less desirable results to specific segmented strategies that can be implemented to produce results which can be measured across multiple market channels.
In this seven-part series, we’ll explore feasible marketing solutions to generate revenues, decrease costs and produce measurable results. We will demonstrate how local businesses are devising innovative ways to market and advertise themselves successfully with:
- Creating an Economic Theme: Bond with your customers
- (Re)purposeful Marketing: Diversify and replicating efforts
- Press, Press, Pull: Cultivate the press and media
- Go Organic: Use the power of free search
- Put Your Net to Work: Leverage your networks
- Let Your Freak Flag Fly: Get noticed and drive traffic
- On the Inside Looking Out: Discover ways to minimize costs
Strategy #1: Create an Economic Theme
The outcome of any successful business development or marketing effort depends largely on the foundation of the message being communicated. After all, engineering consent in your target consumer is difficult work; it’s why marketers and advertisers get paid the big bucks. Engineering consent in a freakonomy is even tougher. A successful message bonds with one of the five basic human needs or emotions, fits your customer demographic and meshes with the times.
Aside from typical coupons, discounts and sales events, creating meaningful and enduring relationships with new and repeat customers is the least expensive and most effective way to keep your business humming in tough economic times.
There isn’t much that can beat FREE services – and Long Beach Transit gets the idea in a very big way by offering FREE rides on New Years Eve. Even though this is a seasonal advert and part of a larger campaign, it speaks to customers on several levels, including economics, safety and community service. “Our 99 Reasons campaign was started about a year and a half ago,” stated Marcelle Epley, Long Beach Transit Marketing Manager. “Riding the bus on New Years Eve makes sense: people can leave the driving to Long Beach Transit, they don’t have to stress about parking and they can help reduce their carbon footprint.”[The 99 Reasons] campaign can be used for so many different messages. It’s timeless. It’s simple,” explained Ms. Epley.
The Gazette Newspapers just recently started a new Discount Coupon Section that essentially aggregates its coupon advertisers into one easy-to-access format for its readers. This sends a clear economic-themed message to both the businesses that want to participate and to the consumers that are looking for these kinds of businesses and incentives. How is it working for the Gazette? “We just recently started in October, I think it’s too soon to tell; though we are getting thousands of visitors each month,” said Simon Grieve, Publisher at the Gazette Newspapers. “We continue to try to find ways to help our small businesses have a presence on the web and attract some different eyeballs to their products and services for a very modest charge. People are starting to demand a higher level of service because of the economy,” he added.
Identifying with your target demographic is key. In a freakonomy, people hold on to their money and do not make purchases the same way they might in a growing economy. Depending on what the economic factors are in your particular market, the challenge is to instill a call-to-action in your consumer. Your messaging and advertising must factor in your market’s unique economic circumstances, thus creating an economic theme with which your customers can identify and create an affinity with.
West Coast VW Repair’s advertisement includes two fundamental advertising components that appeal to a very specific demographic. Their “Volkswagen Only” and “Why Pay Dealer Prices” statements within their advert speak to a select few: specifically and only Volkswagen owners that want to save money on their vehicle repairs and maintenance.
Seeing Eye-to-Eye with Your Customers
Establishing a message of trust and stability in a freakonomy is important for creating a meaningful connection between your customers and your products and services. Trust and assurance can be demonstrated with effective, direct messaging that creates an economic theme to match your consumers’ state of mind.
NHC Martial Arts in Los Alamitos delivers a solid and compelling message via their “hands-down” guarantee. This speaks directly to consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets. They also sweeten the attraction by offering FREE incentives to first responders that see the ad. Seemingly innocuous, this message contains facets of safety, self actualization and emotional investment – powerful combinations in effective messaging.
As another example, your theme can demonstrate a sense of “distributed” assurance and added value to your consumer by leveraging your horizontal and/or vertical partnerships.
Lola’s Mexican Cuisine is running a good example of distributed partnerships in their co-advertising with the Art Theatre of Long Beach; whereby Art Theatre patrons get a 10% discount at Lola’s by showing their ticket stub. “It works good. Real good,” stated Luis Navarro, Lola’s owner. Luis explained that while the advertisement has only been running a short time, it’s already driving about 3% of his business.
By using cost-savings, guarantees, and value-added benefits in their messaging, all of these local businesses are successfully creating an economic theme that helps build a natural affinity with their target consumers.
Messaging is critical because it sets the tone for the customer experience. It formulates the believability of the expectation that consumers encounter with your product and brand. If your message or theme is entertaining, but does not connect with at least one of the five basic human emotions, doesn’t properly reflect the economic circumstances or doesn’t deliver a call-to-action that matches your consumers’ state of mind, then you’ve missed the mark.
Finally, be consistent in your theme. Online and offline efforts need to point to and support each other. When a seamless and consistent experience is delivered across all marketing channels, then rapport is cultivated with your customers at each touch-point.
Next time, we’ll leverage the foundation we’ve created here with our economic theme and talk about (Re)Purposeful Marketing and how your business can be in more than one place at a time.
What kind of economic theme is your business using to connect with consumers? Does it build brand affinity and cultivate customers for life? Let’s have some dialogue on this topic and discover new ways to help your business grow.