They manufacture big pumps and mixers for general construction, which, in Arizona, has been an industry on its back (to put it mildly).  I’m their “marketing guy.”

I hadn’t been around for a while, but had been doing small tasks for David Jr. “until things picked up.”

I decided to stop by and say hi on my way back from another appointment.  “Well, looked what walked in the door,” was my greeting from Senior (he’s pushing 80 and can verbally spar with anyone).  He walked over to me, shook my hand, looked me in the eye and said “How are you going to help us if you’re never around?”

Great question and lesson.  This isn’t about Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook or who does or doesn’t use them.  The lesson for me: social media includes the social medium of face-to-face.

He was helping a friend set up a new computer.  You’ve been there; all the vendors that paid the computer manufacturer for a shot at pushing themselves in your face.  All the defaults you have to change.  All the opt outs.  All the garbage icons on the desktop.  All the pushing away you have to do.

Godin calls it a “race to the bottom” and that’s exactly what it is.  Especially now.  As things slow down marketers get nervous, then desperate and then, it’s anything goes because they lose all respect for the people they sell to.

Shame on them.  But that’s not the point of this post.  The point: this is an opportunity to differentiate yourself.  To shine.  To find new customers.  Jim Collins (Good to Great, How the Mighty Fail) documents the biggest market share shifts occur in down economies.  Part of the reason is of course because companies go out of business and others pick up their customers.  But I’ll bet you a dollar it’s also because marketers start getting desperate and begin a race to the bottom, chasing away as many customers as they trick attract.

Win the Race to the Top

You know what I mean here.  You work hard to better understand what your customers need (ask them!), improve service, make it easier to buy from you, add value and maybe even change your product.  Your biggest challenge is not another company getting there ahead of you — outdoing you.  In down times the race to the top has few competitors.  Your biggest challenge will be you.  Taking the time and money (yes, it will require some investment).  Fighting the temptation to follow the herd.  Hanging in there when if feels like it isn’t working.

How to Improve Your Marketing in a Down Market — the First Step

There are lots of ways to improve your marketing in a down market.  Stop for a moment and write down the first few things that come to mind.  You have a list in your head — those things you haven’t been happy with.  Those things you’ve been meaning to change when things get better.  Well, you can’t wait this one out, so, get busy.

Then, ask your customers how you can improve your marketing.  Email 10 relatively new customers (not your favorites) and set up telephone interviews.  If you can get five to seven to talk to you you’ll get three really good conversations.  That’s all you need.  Really.

Ask them open-ended questions and listen to their answers.  Ask:

What’s going on in your world right now?

How does that affect the purchase of what we sell you?

How can a vendor like us help you in your current situation?

What criteria were important to you when you were looking for a company like ours?

Why did you select us over the other alternatives?

If you were going to look for another vendor, like us, what would you do; where and how would you find one?

If you were director of marketing for a company like mine, how would you get the word out to more people like yourself?

Asking these questions will start a conversation.  But by themselves, you likely won’t get what you need.  You’ll get “the good stuff,” the answers to your real questions (What’s wrong and how can I fix it?) by listening and asking follow up questions (What do you mean by that?  Can you give me an example?).  For example, you receive this answer to the third question, “A vendor like you can help us best right now by helping us save money.”  That’s fine, but it doesn’t really tell you much.  So, you ask, “Can you give me an example of how we might do that, or how another vendor has helped you save money?”

Next, start brainstorming what you learned and implementing.

Related posts:

Marketing Choices: Truth vs. Manipulation

Transparency as a Marketing Strategy

You have your customers’ emails, right?  You can start collecting email addresses from prospects that don’t turn into customers, right?  Then you have enough email addresses to start an email marketing campaign.

Whatever your reason for not using email, forget about it and start.  There isn’t a good reason not to.  In fact, here are seven reasons email marketing rocks-

1.  Email is still the communication method of choice for businesspeople.

It just is.  It is for you too, right?  The reasons it works for you are the same reasons it works for everybody else.

2.  Email marketing is inexpensive.

No printing.  No postage.

3.  Email is immediate.

Ninety-plus percent of your response will happen within 48 hours.  You can send, assess results, make adjustments and send again in a matter of days.  Compare that learning cycle to direct mail.  Days instead of weeks.  Heaven for direct marketers.

4.  Email marketing builds relationships.

When you send something in the mail you have a real investment.  So you feel the need to ask for the order.  “Hello, I’m Hamilton, we just met, but here’s who I am, here’s what I’m selling, how many would you like?”  Sounds stupid, right?  Why would a mailing that does the same thing be anything but stupid?  Email isn’t expensive, so you’re more inclined to have a more natural relationship with people.  “Hello, I’m Hamilton, we just met, so I thought I’d share an article with you that helps you understand more about this topic we’re both interested in.”  Isn’t that relationship off to a better start?

5.  Email marketing is convenient.

Click to read.  Click to read more.  Access just about anywhere, anytime.  If getting your message, if beginning a relationship, if doing anything related to you is difficult, I’m not doing it.

6.  Email doesn’t kill trees.

No printing.  A nice reason to use email marketing.

7.  Email isn’t hard.

It might be hard based on how you have done it in the past, but it isn’t.  Use an email service that provides design templates for the email messages, manages your name list, sends the emails and tracks results.  I use myemma, MailChimp and Constant Contact for my clients.  MailChimp is free.

But wait, there’s more. . .

You sort of have wanted to use email marketing but you don’t use because starting small just doesn’t feel right.  You wouldn’t bother with a 65 piece direct mail campaign, why bother sending email to 65 people?  Old rules, new world.  For all the reasons above, you should bother sending email to 65 people.  Because as you add email addresses every week and every week, those 65 people will grow to 75, then 90 and eventually 300 or a 1,000.  And by the time you reach those types of number you will have communicated with most of those people 50 times.  That’s called having a relationship.  Compare having a relationship with, say, 300 people — contacting them 12 to 18 times over a year’s time — to mailing four times to 5,000 people during that same year.

Yeah, I know, email still rocks!

Related blog posts:

Boost Email Readership 3 Way

8 Lessons Learned from My First Million Emails

Smart people invite me into their companies all the time.  They’ve done things I could never do–build a product, patent a process.  And they’re blocked by some aspect of their marketing.  In the process of pushing for a solution they often gravitate down a more complex path,  setting up more layers between where they are and discovering the core of what’s holding them back.

The marketing problems I see as a marketing consultant are simpler than you think they should be.  Simple doesn’t mean easy.  It means not complex.  If the marketing problem you’re facing seems complex, go one level below the complexity, as many times as necessary, until you can state the problem simply.  Chances are good THAT is the problem.  I can honestly say that all the marketing problems I’ve seen can be put into just a few categories.  Trust me, the nuances in each category can be real beefy!  But the problems I’ve seen break down these ways:

People don’t understand why what you sell is better.  They don’t understand early enough in the decision cycle to make a difference.

Your message sounds like everybody else’s message.

You aren’t reaching enough of the right people with your message.

You aren’t reaching enough of the right people with your message often enough.

No congruency.  A little bit of this from two years ago, a face lift over there and nothing really fits together.

You simply aren’t doing enough to break through.  Or you just stopped.

A technology company started up around a patented manufacturing process that was truly cool.  It allowed the manufacture of their product, carriers for processing silicon wafers, to custom specs in low quantities.  Instead of having to order dozens of custom carriers to get a reasonable price, they could sell you five custom-made carriers for the same per piece price you were paying for 48.  At several thousand dollars each, this was an advantage for my client and something they translated into impressive sales growth.  Until their growth slowed.

The problem I found: over time they had muddled their message, making them sound like all their competitors, all of which were far better known and funded than them.

In conversations with customers they kept saying the same thing: they bought because they could get custom-spec carriers in low quantities at standard prices.  Over time, the client had added layer upon layer to their message until the thing that made them unique became one of seven bullet points in their literature, website and sales presentations.  With the other six bullet points also available from better known, better funded competitors.

We simplified their message (custom-spec carriers in low quantities at standard prices) and, as if by magic, sales started growing again.  Simple.

This one almost doesn’t seem fair it was so simple.  A for-profit university for working adults wanted a marketing plan that would drive growth at their out-of-state campuses.  I found the campuses that did the best had either signage on their buildings visible from a major freeway and/or they were led by a business executive, not someone from the academic side.

My recommendations: move to buildings that allow signage and face a major freeway; and hire branch managers, not deans, to run the campuses.  Duh!!  Right?

They did, and had a happy ending.  If I had only bought the stock. . !

My experience after almost three decades solving marketing problems for small business: your problems and the related solutions are simpler than you think.

Simple doesn’t mean easy. It means not complex.  If the marketing problem you’re facing seems complex, go one level below the complexity, as many times as necessary, until you can state the problem simply.  Chances are good THAT is the problem.

Every marketing consultant worth their salt are telling clients to communicate, communicate, communicate.  And email (email marketing) is still the preferred method by which people do that.

But (small problem) the trick is not sending email, but getting your email read.  Which primarily rests on the shoulders of your subject line and in the first few seconds people spend with your message.  More people will read your email on your next send if you do these three things.

Be Clear, Not Clever, on the Subject Line

Don’t assume people will open your email just because it came from you.   The subject line must convince them it has value as it competes with a few dozen other email messages in people’s inboxes.   So, be clear, not clever.

“Hear Music as You’ve Never Heard it Before” is clever.  “New Shure Travel Headphones” will get more people interested in travel headphones to read your email.

Clever: “How to Solve the Productivity Paradox.”  Clear: “New Time Management Training on CD.”  You get the idea.

Keep Your Subject Line Between 35-45 Characters

While shorter isn’t always better, most preview panes only show about 40-45 characters.  Less for laptops.  So, make sure your subject line doesn’t show “Special Discount: Take Up to an Additi. . .” when you wanted to say “Special Discount: Take Up to an Additional 25% Off!”

Write the Subject Line Last

This ties back to clarity.  If you write the subject line last, it will likely be the most accurate representation of what the message is all about.  And you’ve experienced this.  You sit down to write about a topic and in the process you gain some additional clarity about the issue.  Which shifts what you end up writing.  So, write the subject line last.  And give it its due.  Spend some time with it.

A good way to sharpen your subject line “chops” is to go to the deleted folder in your email program and look down at all the messages.  Notice the ones that get your attention and those that don’t.

Make Sure Your Message is Scannable

Okay, this is #4, but I wasn’t all that good at math.  People scan documents before they read them.  Email included.  If they see a big glob of text, that doesn’t exactly inspire digging into your message.  A mix of paragraph lengths, bullets, indents, bolds, etc., all add interest and readability (scannability) to your message.

In today’s economy it might be said this way: convenience is the enemy of getting results from your marketing.  Okay, not nearly as catchy, but true.

The convenient marketing methods, the strategies we know, the things that have worked for us in the past, aren’t the solution.  Today people are in a fundamentally different place emotionally and, in some cases, financially as well.  This certainly changes why they buy and in some cases how the buy.  Have your marketing methods and message fundamentally changed too?  It’s not convenient.  It’s not comfortable.  But it just may well be necessary for you to move forward.

As a marketing consultant for small business I see companies  in this quandary: “We’ve tried what we know, so now what?!”  Actually, it’s rare when I’m invited in in any other circumstance.  I know, lucky me.

The first thing I do is talk to my clients customers.  I find out what’s going on in their world, how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking.  The first thing I have the client do is answer the following question: If you were starting your business today, fresh, what would that look like, what would you sell, who would you sell to and how would you sell?  Unencumbered by everything that you are literally and figuratively invested in, what type of company would you start?

Those things inform how the message ought to fundamentally change, how the  marketing methods ought to fundamentally change and if a client’s value proposition ought to fundamentally change.

My experience:

Most of the time the message needs to change.  After all, the reasons why people buy today have changed, so should your message.

Some of the time the marketing methods need to change.  Usually, methods need to be added.  It’s rare when I find a company maximizing its website traffic or conversion, and even rarer when they have a presence in the social media space.

Occasionally a client’s basic value proposition needs to change.  This is potentially the most painful since it requires you change, to some degree, who you are.

You can do this (talking to customers, answering the “what if you were starting your business today” question) or you can have someone like me lead you through it.  But you need to do it.  Convenient?  No.  Critical to your moving forward?  Yes.

At its best, relationship marketing delivers enough value to your audience that they keep paying attention to your message often enough that when the time comes to buy what you sell, you get a shot at the business.

At its worst, relationship marketing simply fails.  People don’t understand what you do, they don’t see value in your message, they stop seeing your message; basically, you don’t exist.

My advice?  You HAVE to practice relationship marketing today.  It’s something you should have been doing the past five years.  It’s the only way you can create enough “permission” in your target audience, assuming your target audience are prospects, not current customers, to generate enough frequency to create results.

Phew.  That’s a mouthful.

Here’s what I mean.  The more often you reach out to prospects the more likely you are to land on their desk or in their inbox at a time when they need what you sell.  The more interesting and valuable your contacts, the less “salesy” they are, the more often you can make contact.  And that is true for any form of marketing: online; offline; in the social media space; you name it.

Where this breaks down is, as Dunford reminds us, when you forget the marketing part of relationship marketing.  But, as I point out, people can also stop listening if you get too salesy.

Where is the happy medium?  In the social media space, you might engage in “the conversation” 10 or 15 times to add value for every time you mention a new product or offer.  Much better in this space: attract them to a blog post or page of useful content on your site; use a sidebar or insert on the page to make a related offer.  Example: the page gives business writing tips; the sidebar advertises your business writing seminar.  And don’t for get to make them an offer!

How about email or direct mail?  Use a four or five to one ratio of value-added content to selling content for email.  With direct mail, you can always include an “About Us” panel or section of the piece that tells what you do and makes an offer for your product or service.

Take context away and what happens?  You need to “turn up the volume.”  Ninety-five little characters suddenly become a joke.  You need a half or full page print ad, you need color, images.  Or you need a celebrity endorser or exotic locale to display your product.  And on and on.

Deliver your message when someone is looking for what you sell — context — and all you need is 95 little characters.  Deliver your message in more of a broadcast medium, a magazine, for example, and you need to work much harder to get someone’s attention.

I believe how you add context to a print ad, for example, or any ad that isn’t a sponsored search ad, is by taking the time to revisit the problem your product solves.  Too many marketers get right into the solution.  Yak, yak, yak!  No context.  No power.

Take at least 60% of the message and devote it to re-connecting the prospect with the problem your product or service solves.  Let them know you understand and feel their pain.  BEFORE you talk about the solution.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it gives power and context to traditional marketing messages.  Try it.

Actually, on one hand I define marketing as the process of transferring meaning to a target audience for the purpose of causing the action you desire.  On the other hand, and probably more important to truly understanding how to improve your marketing, I define marketing as being most like a garden.

The important things to remember about my first definition are “transferring meaning” and “causing action.”  If what you mean by your message isn’t shared by your target audience, you haven’t communicated.  This is critical because most of your competitors are saying fundamentally the same thing you’re saying, aren’t they?!  If you define your uniqueness as quality or superior support, how similar are your definition and your customers’ definition of your quality or superior support?  Again, if they aren’t the same, you haven’t communicated.

Similarly, if you haven’t caused action, your marketing has failed.  I love it when I hear advertising people talk about creating awareness. . .as opposed to talking about creating action — results.  “Think about all the people who know about your company — how much awareness the campaign generated!”  Translation: “Nobody responded, please don’t fire us!”

All that is important, but more important to helping you improve your marketing is getting you to think about your marketing as a garden.

You can’t expect much from a garden if you:

• Pay attention to it only every once in a while 
• Water it only after things are looking really dry
• Weed it only after the weeds have taken over

You get the idea.  Your marketing is the same.  Don’t ignore it until things start to “look dry” before you start paying attention again.

You’ll get healthier plants faster if you tend your garden regularly.  You’ll get better results faster from your marketing if you do the same.