Business Spirals – WEBlog

On December 11^th our entrepreneurs’ network we will discus this topic with Willem Middelkoop.

For this discussion I bring up the next thoughts for your marketing plans 2009:

1. You need to know more than ever how your customers’ purchasing behavior is changing. They use more time purchasing durable goods and negotiate harder. Trusted brands are mostly valued. Interest in new brands and new categories are fading.
   
2. Uncertainty prompts your customers to stay at home and connected with family and friends. Therefore greeting card sales, telephone use and spending on home furnishing & entertainment will hold up well. 
   
3. Businesses which increase their brand advertising will survive though times. That’s the recession lesson of the past 90 years.
   
4. Customers are searching for product reliability, durability, safety and superior price performance in your portfolios. Customers trade down to cars with fewer options, to grocery owned brands and to multi-purpose goods.
   
5. Elaborate partnership with your distributors. Reduce working capital in your inventories. Don’t expand distribution to lower-prices channels.  Drop your weaker distributors and upgrade your sales force by recruiting those sacked by other companies.
   
6. Adjust your pricing tactics. Use more temporary price promotions, reduce thresholds for quantity discounts, extend credit to A customers and price smaller pack sizes more aggressively. Price cuts attract more customer support than promotions.
   
7. Cuts or consolidation initiatives in your market share will save money. Gain market share if you have strong positions and/or most productive cost structures and/or healthy balance sheet.
   
8. Spend more time with loyal customers and employees. Be aware that the finance director’s balance sheet will be more important than the marketing manager’s income statement.
   
9. Recession times are very good times to start of expand business builders. Costs are low. Media prices will go down. Rents will go down. Talented people will be available.
   
10. Make your websites more pro-active in maximizing visitors’ value. You will make far more money if you create lots of targeted, high value zero cost virtual goodies to give away to your visitors in exchange for their name and e-mail address than you don’t.