You don't need another reminder that we're working through a period of slow economic growth and a jittery business climate, what you do need is some answers and advice as to how to get through it! When times get tough you need to get creative and innovative with your products, services and, most importantly, marketing. It's a time to invest in the future and look inwardly at how you can improve, all so you can prepare for the next boom.
In this post we shall look at what you can be doing to help you through these tough times.
What's In Your Marketing Plan - Is it working for you?
One simple activity I like to do is line up all my advertising spending and how many leads each one is generating for me.
'Leads' can range from phone calls, direct emails, site registration for forum participation, leaving comments, etc - only in doing this do i realise I have a problem - Whilst I can tell exactly what is going on with my online marketing activity through the analytics suite I don't actually know how many customers I'm getting from all my offline advertising...
Print ads like classified ads in the local paper and yellow pages are expensive and have declining reach and readership, so am i using my time and marketing budget effectively? Answer is I dont know! why dont I know? Well I cant see what part of the advert makes people call, or not call, through any reporting facilities and I dont always ask customers why they are calling me, i'm just glad they have!
This is not to say offline advertising is valueless - but contrast this with a fully fledged online business. With concrete and clear metrics, you know the exact ROI of your online marketing campaigns. Best of all, you can optimize and redeploy online campaigns in a few hours - pound for pound, online is where the smart money is.
People are staying home, and staying online more - what are you doing about it?
The current economic downturn has led to many people spending a lot more time at home in front of the TV and the computer. Where are they hanging out online? Have a think about this - you need to be advertising in their space, participating in their blogs and becoming an authority in their forums.
What's your Freemium Strategy?
People love free stuff and they love it even more when they haven't got much to spend. I'm not saying give away your products for free but what about online 'cash' coupons or discounts that they have to register on your website to receive? Once they've registered you'll be able to market to these customers in a monthly e-newsletter. We all have to move stock and attract new customers - so think about some clever online marketing strategies to do it...
Have you had a makeover?
Is your website from 2003 looking a bit tired? Does it match up with your bricks and mortar branding? Does your customer service live up to your promises? Is your content up to date? Are your landing pages and catalogues well laid out and easy to use? Let’s spring clean your whole online business and entice those customers back.
Psy web’s Online Business Websites can provide you with all the tools you need to increase your online presence in these tough times. We can use your existing site and add all the functions of an online business website to it or we can create a bespoke design for you form scratch. All Psy-Web’s Buisness Websites are fully scalable so if you want to start off with the basics and add to your site as you increase your revenue, we have a number of plans that will suit you. Contact us today to find out how we can help YOUR business Do business
Garnering awareness and acquiring customers is one of the great challenges of building a business. It is so important that there is an entire business discipline dedicated to this - known as marketing! 
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