Any marketing expert will tell you that if you advertise more in a down market you can capture market share. Unfortunately, down markets are expert at draining marketing budgets. We’re seeing this in the mortgage lending business today. While advertising in the trades is quickly becoming a luxury that few firms can afford, there are other ways to gain market share in this environment. Here are five ways you can do more marketing with less in 2008.
1) Create a place for your good news.
The harsh reality is that you’re going to find fewer places to publish your good news in a down market. Most of the traditional public relations outlets are going to be accepting fewer pitches and bylined articles, which will render most traditional PR firms far less effective. There are a number of reasons for this and the sooner you accept responsibility for disseminating your own information through alternative channels the better.
First, a down market means fewer advertisers, which means fewer pages in the trade publications. This is probably the largest of the traditional PR outlets for company news but in a down market the opportunity here dries up fast. Unlike the mass media or consumer-facing publications, trade pubs are generally only supported by firms in their industry. When the business suffers, those advertisers hold onto their budgets more tightly. The result is that the trades print smaller editions and there is less room for editorial material like yours.
To make matters worse, a down market provides plenty of bad news to print, which almost always takes precedence over good news. Companies going out of business, executives out of work, these are the stories people in the industry pay to read. The pitch for your feel good story is less likely to be well received in this market as no reporter wants to look like he’s ignoring the real news.
It can feel like the publication is adding insult to injury when this happens to an advertiser because the company feels like it is doing its part of keep the publication going and deserves some space to tell its story. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. Editors know that their readers will assume that the only reason the company got the space was because it was an advertiser, making this even more difficult for trade publications that want to appear objective.
Even for those trades that get most of their “editorial” material from the industry, fewer advertisers still means less room and fewer stories. No one should be surprised that the stories that do make it into these smaller issues come from the firms that support the rag with advertisements.
The worse part of all of this is that unless the story is very well written, telling good news in a down market almost sounds like its being made up, which means it will never get printed. Corporate marketing people are the worst for this. They make their money by consistently sending out messages that will benefit the company, but when everyone else in the business is crying and they’re smiling like a guy in a TV spot for natural male enhancement, it just doesn’t ring true. There is an art to telling good news in a down market.
To get past these problems, the company must develop a new strategy for creating and disseminating its stories. This involves both telling the kinds of stories that the company’s prospects expect and need to hear as well as taking more responsibility for getting these stories in front of the company’s target publics.
To accomplish this, companies are producing more content and making better use of their websites and prospect databases to get that information disseminated. Web 2.0 newsrooms, retained freelance writers, Businesswire distribution and multimedia are some of the ways companies are getting their good stories told in down markets.
2) Make sure your market can hear you.
When ever a market experiences a slowdown, those firms that have a marketing budget will begin to leverage it in an attempt to capture what ever business is left. During a downturn, a lot of marketing noise can make it impossible to get a clear read on anyone’s marketing message. Some might argue that making any noise during this time will benefit the company, and that’s true to some extent, but firm’s stand to gain much more if they can somehow rise above the din.
The best way to be heard above the crowd is for the company to let someone talk that their target market wants to hear. In general, people listen to people they feel are important. In the consumer space, that’s generally celebrities, as evidenced by the holiday spots currently running for Dell Computers. In the B2B space, markets generally listen to experts or those who sound like experts.
You can always tell an expert because they make bold statements, avoid ambiguities and speak with authority. Angelo Mozilo is an excellent example. When he said Countrywide would never outsource offshore because it was un-American, his comments made the front page of the industry’s largest trade publication. A year later, when he said his company would embrace offshore outsourcing because it was good for the company’s shareholders, he made the front page again. People want to hear what experts have to say.
In order to be heard in a down market, companies need to formulate a strategy for developing inside experts of their own and presenting them to the industry effectively. Creating an expert involves choosing an executive that both understands the business very well and that can present themselves effectively in as many media as possible. While some companies have effectively promoted a technologist, it takes a special executive to excel at both the technical side of the business and at performing well in the limelight.
Companies can create experts by creating content that showcases the expert. This includes bylined articles, multimedia, and white papers. Speaking engagements are also helpful in establishing the executive. Company-produced audio and video are excellent ways to create experts as they can be edited to perfection before dissemination.
Once created, the internal expert must then be actively leveraged to promote the company. There are many ways to do this, some of which are covered later in this article.
Not every company is large enough to have internal experts that it can afford to parade around for the industry. In these cases it can be helpful to borrow them from other companies. Journalists, consultants and advisors can often be hired or otherwise recruited to comment on the company’s products or services. Hiring a well known consultant to moderate an online webinar, for instance, can give a company some of the same advantages of having its own well-known expert.
3) Think like a trade publication editor.
When times are tough, a company’s prospects think about what they think about when times are good: themselves. Firms that spend their entire marketing and public relations budgets talking about their own company and ignoring the real needs of their prospects are wasting their money. Sure, it’s important to fully explain your offerings, the features and benefits, but the bulk of your budget should be spent producing content that will help your prospects be more successful.
One way to do this is to effectively leverage your experts. Allowing company experts to counsel prospects before they become customers is one of the surest ways to build a relationship that will lead to a future sale. Leveraging multimedia, such as audio podcasts, video podcasts and webinars, allows your experts to help many prospects at once.
Putting your prospects first in this way requires the company to think less like a marketing organization and more like a trade publisher. Without sending out a near continuous stream of beneficial information to its readers, trade pubs simply would not exist. But remember that in a down market, the trade publication cannot provide as much content, especially as much positive content, as it can during the boom part of the business cycle. This creates an opportunity for firms that are willing to step into the gap and provide this information to their prospects and customers.
In fact, some firms may find that they have the internal expertise to actually create their own trade publications. If the company can truly provide an objective voice, this can be one of the most powerful marketing techniques in any market.
But the company doesn’t have to invest in a new magazine to get the benefit here. The effort can be as simple as producing a well-written, nicely designed company-branded newsletter, delivered either electronically or via direct mail. Freelance writers and designers can make this very easy for companies and e-mail lists can be rented.
For those firms that have the wherewithal to sponsor a real publication, hiring a team to produce an objective, industry-focused, content-rich product designed specially to help their prospect succeed will find that it pays huge dividends.
4) Rethink your trade show strategy.
Trade shows are expensive, but most companies that want to be players in an industry know they have to attend. In good times, companies may spring for huge booth spaces, lavish parties in the company suite and excursions into the city’s night life. Those things are harder to afford when the business is down, but that doesn’t mean firms shouldn’t still try to capitalize on their trade show appearance.
For most firms, a booth will be a necessity, even though they should manage their own expectations regarding traffic on the exhibit hall floor. While many in the industry won’t be able to attend the show in a down market, they will still see the conference organizer’s marketing material. Having your company name in the list of exhibitors is a little badge of success, especially in a down market.
While companies can’t expect a flood of booth traffic at a show held during a down market, that doesn’t mean that the booth needs to look like a ghost town in an old Western movie. In fact, in order to capitalize on the necessary expense of having a booth, firms should ensure that something interesting happens there, even if the only people who witness it are the videographers.
When the market is down and people can’t get budgets approved to visit trade shows, they are more desperate for information from these events. This is an opportunity for companies that go into the show prepared to capture or create content and share it with their prospect databases.
To capitalize on their trade show expenditures, company’s need to formulate a strategy that will allow them to capture as much content during the event as possible and then disseminate it to their target publics. This can include podcasts or webinars created at the company booth, or articles from the show that can be distributed on the company’s website, via e-mail or on compact disc.
5) Get Found on the Web.
When companies don’t have the budget to ensure that their messages get to the desks of their B2B prospects, they have to make it easy for those prospective customers to find them. The Internet is a great way to do this. One of the best ways to be found online is to produce a lot of material related directly to the needs of your target market. Pack this material with keywords that are likely to be search terms for your prospects and they will find you. This makes your website strategy very, very important. It must be far more than an online brochure in a down market.
Launching a blog has been found to be one of the most effective ways to be found online. Blog posts are short and fairly easy to write. By talking about the company’s area of expertise, the posts will automatically be loaded with the key words that Web searchers are most likely to use. Hosting your blog on an industry site is can be a huge advantage. Some will even host the blog for free, with MortgageIndustryTrends.net a notable example.
There have been many books written on effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But the Web is only one way to be found.
Being listed in the directories of trade publications and industry trade groups is an excellent way to stay visible in a down market. Being quoted by reporters is another way to stay visible. These require a company to have a proactive public relations strategy, but it need not be an expensive one.
All five of these ideas require the company to think differently about its marketing and public relations efforts and to take advantage of the new tools that are being made available through the Internet and low-cost audio and video production. The company’s that leverage these new tools will be the most successful when the industry turns around.
Taking the next step
Choosing a place to get started may seem daunting, but the time is of the essence, especially in a down market. It’s important that you start developing your content now, before you desperately need it. If you need more ideas or an easy way to get started, call on us today at 800-979-9049.
By Rick Grant
Principal, Rick Grant & Associates.