There’s an advertising crisis at the moment, as publications on the news-stands feel the pinch of the recession on their revenue budgets. Sales and readership are reducing, as more people go on line to get their answers. It’s a toss up for many between buying the daily or having that coffee and cake in the morning before work. In the wider business world, companies are reducing their marketing budget previously allocated to classifieds and advertorials.

We have been here before… About a decade ago, recession bit and companies experienced a drop in their sales, as belts were collectively tightened. Marketing, because poorly understood by many small and medium enterprises, is the often the first area to pull back on. Ten years ago and no doubt in every recession which has gone before, companies, unsure of the return on their investment, reigned in their budget for marketing and advertising. It was a vicious circle, as sales dropped as those same companies dropped off the radar of the consumer, distracted by the messages of their competitors heard all the more loudly in the reduced clamour.

When the economy is suffering, there’s a downward spiral that business owners feel powerless to prevent. Customers buy less, so there’s less revenue monies available for marketing, which means in turn that there’s less investment in persuading customers to buy in the first place, and eventually the ripples continue to spread into darker pools of self-fulfilling prophesies.

Unless of course your marketing has been proven to work in your business. You are confident that your marketing results are specific and measurable and you know the direct correlation between your advertising budget and your return on investment. These businesses continuing to be out there during recessionary cycles know that advertising can be both the first point of contact for new business and it is also the connection to their existing customers and more importantly, their copy-writing has delivered ‘message-to-market’.

Ironically, the reality of marketing is counter-intuitive. Whilst recession sends some businesses running for cover, in fact, innoculation by reverse psychology is needed in your marketing and it is based on this simple tenet. We create the very conditions we seek to avoid through fear. Beware of self-fulfilling prophesies. Ask any therapist and they will verify this simple cognitive principle. Transfer these same lessons which apply to individuals to organisations or businesses… In fact the outcomes might be greater via economies of scale!

Here’s another interesting psychological lesson for those gripping the advertising purse strings with white knuckles and holding on for dear life on the present roller-coater ride. Behave ‘as if’, until you get the results you desire and become the ‘thing’ / ‘person’ you wanted to be in the first place! Call it faith, belief, positive thinking… FACT: You will attract those people (or customers) who seek those qualities and the cycle of ‘poverty of thinking’ is broken, as is the financial spiral downwards for your business.

But here’s the rub. In hard times, companies cut back on advertising, when they are not fully convinced of a direct correlation to their return on investment, i.e. they fear that their hard earned returns are potentially wasted on empty marketing, so they withdraw from that business operation which they believe hurts them and in so doing shoot themselves in the foot at a time when it can really count!

So how do you get over this psychological and financial pain barrier? In short, to borrow a phrase from one of my mindset heroines, Susan Jeffers: “Feel the financial fear and face marketing facts anyway“. Look at those advertisers in your industry who are still in the marketing game in spite of recession. What are they doing? Chances are they are simply telling customers why they still need to consider buying their product, how purchasing their products or services benefits the buyer and what their particular company offers now / next week only / this coming holiday season. In short, the smart marketer will be promoting SPECIFIC FEATURES and BENEFITS they know their customers respond to, no matter what the economic climate.

Some sceptical business owners might be reading this thinking, “but that kind of advertising space COSTS!” Well, first off, remember these publications wanting your advertising custom are suffering too right now, through desperation brought on by diminishing advertising revenues. Times are hard for them too, so your business is now in a stronger negotiating position with sellers of advertising space than in otherwise normal market conditions. Tell the advertising agent you “want a ‘suck it and see’ trial run”. Then if your marketing works, they will benefit from a continued commitment from you thereafter – and you know “much of (your) custom is generated online anyway!”

Second – and this is crucial – remember if your product is so great, that the market gobbled it up before the recession hit, those hungry consumers are still out there; customers just need stronger reasons perhaps to buy now… So give them what they want… REASONS… FACTS

As a teen, I was a HUGE music-head. If I was a fan of any particular band, I wanted to know everything about them and wanted to hear EVERYTHING they produced and buy whenever I could afford it. If necessary, I saved up to indulge my passion! OK there was a blip when Roger Waters dampened my passion momentarily with ‘The Final Cut’, because he had run out of interesting ideas and the music followed suit…Still, I moved onto other musicians and bought their records instead! This is my point – Pink Floyd had nothing more to say that I wanted to hear… I haven’t bought an album by them since…The power of lyrics?

My point is this. Marketing messages should be about sharing value and information people want to know about. A loyal customer wants to indulge their passions; fresh prospects may want to find solutions to their problems that you have. Any quarter page advertising in a well-selected journal is going to get the eyeballs of your fans – old and new! Your fans are your repeat buyers who pay for your advertising! Your loyal customers are who you produce your products for, right? So take a leap of faith, invest in them and let them pay you right back!

You need to keep that love affair alive and trust in your customer’s commitment to buying from you. If you do not believe your customers have a good enough reason to act on your advertisements, you just need to re-focus your own passion and get over that fear holding you back from giving your ‘message to market’. Your repeat customers AND those you have not reached out to yet are definitely worth your marketing investment right now whilst the market is quiet.

As your competitors drop off, your opportunities to grab attention, generate fresh interest and even incite new curiosity could significantly increase your market share! When your message is clear and your target audience responds, your apparently expensive investment can more than pay for itself.

So, think afresh about what excites you about your own products or services. Make a list of features and benefits you can offer consumers, then put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Do they still want to know about what you can offer? OF COURSE they do! So: What do they want to know? Be specific! “Does it save me money?” “How much can I save by buying now?” “ Is there a unique production or delivery process involved?” “What inspired the company to create your (unique) product?” “What is the story behind the story?” But just stick to the facts and drop the frippery and fluff! Be proud of your business and share what you have to say with people who will still seek you out and plan their next purchase.

In short, information marketing can be your anti-dote to market depression if you take a more clean and clinical approach to your message delivery.

(My thanks to Perry Marshall for his marketing messages about the importance of Information Marketing which inspired this blog today – ‘Sense and Nonsense in Business To Business Marketing‘)

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Direct mail, whilst one of the more time consuming methods of direct marketing, can be extremely effective for a relatively low cost – less than £0.40 in the UK. When that marketing message comes through your door, if you are not a huge brand, managed correctly, it can generate curiosity about who you are, whether they know who you are already and what you can offer that reader. It is certainly a powerful direct response marketing tool.

As the well-worn marketing tenet goes: “The fortune is in the follow up”. Direct mail is an excellent marketing strategy for following up on sales leads and keeping your company at the forefront of a prospect’s mind. I recently signed up for some information online about a conference hosted by the well-known national marketing expert, Chris Cardell. I did not sign up immediately, but a week or so later, I received what looked like a personalised and hand-written note from this marketing guru, which made me curious enough to open it up. What had got my attention, was that the script on the envelope looked as if it had been a hand written letter originally – it was of course printed, but he had the ‘novelty factor’ combined with the flattery factor: “Ooh, someone has written me a letter!”

Generating interest can also involve printing your sales message on a customised graphic post-card template, such as a money bag if the reader is being offered opportunity to win or earn money, an ironing board for the local dry cleaners; you get the picture. This of course, increases price, but it also increases eye-balls on you.

Ideally a target prospect should hear from you immediately for instance, after they have signed up for a newsletter from you and once or twice again at least that week via email if possible, whilst they are still hot prospects. Thereafter, Perry Marshall, international marketing guru to many big-hitter direct marketers out there, recommends getting in touch with your prospect at least 6 times a year.

Direct response marketing this way does not have to be expensive; with a letter and a stamp you can communicate with your target market relatively inexpensively; compare this marketing strategy to sending out brochures regularly, which can get costly. Of course, if you sell large ticket items, this might work well. One particular national home furnishing company sends out a brochure twice a year to all local domestic residences with a mail shot about offers in the local store. It must work for them to continue doing so.

Some tips Perry Marshall offers for your direct mail marketing strategy are as follows:

Letters are more effective than brochures at generating action. Sales letters are more personal than a brochure; they make the reader feel that you care about your customers’ needs. Perry Marshall claims: “A sales letter… will often generate 2-10 times as much response as just sending a brochure.” This is because the tone will be more conversational, as if you were communicating face to face and it conveys more of the personality of the small business owner. This works well, as people like to buy from people. We might love the convenience of the super-store, but we still enjoy the intimacy of corner-shopping.

A sales letter is a letter that answers Four Key Marketing Questions. AND importantly invites the prospect to do something which brings her closer to buying from you (e.g.fill in a survey in return for a limited period coupon or call the office to receive a special bonus). In other words, it gives the reader a good reason to galvanise them into action.

What differentiates a sales letter from a mere covering letter for a brochure is that a “cover letter” doesn’t say much of anything at all, except perhaps give contact details and refer the reader to the attached brochure. Confusing the two makes a difference in response rates.

That being said, choice of marketing media is not mutually exclusive. Sending a sales letter and a brochure is likely to get a greater response than merely sending out one or the other. Remember all marketing should always be part of a MIX.

Direct marketing is increasingly moving towards building relationships with your target market; i.e. ‘Attraction Marketing’ . Bear in mind that personal always gets more responses than corporate mail.

There is a massive double-glazing firm in the UK ,who are certainly a market leader for their product, but I find myself getting irritated every time I receive mail from them. I know it to be junk mail and it goes straight to the recycling bin. Their offers might be great, but I have never had contact with them and have no need for their information, as I already have double glazing I am happy with, thank you very much! Their profits must be pretty huge too in order to afford mass mail out of marketing information at least every few months and offer at least 40% price reductions! (Sure I opened it once, to analyse their marketing techniques… OK I’m an anorak!)

My point is, however, that the UK marketing guru, Chris Cardell, had a great technique – it was apparently hand-addressed in a white envelope and was written in apparent long-hand, in an unusual colour and not standardised type-font. He got my attention and held it for at least five minutes with a few pages of written persuasion! (Sorry Chris, no sale this time, but definitely in the future!)

This brings me to gimmicks…Sexy chicks, empty slogans and groovy logos do not great sales make! They may momentarily grab attention from all the competing demands on a person’s time, but if you are all style and no content, you will be binned by discerning customers who are seeking good value!

Digital donkey work automation is increasingly attractive to marketers. Owning an internet marketing business can make it tempting to use email instead of traditional mail marketing methods. Certainly you cannot dismiss this potentially powerful form of sales communication. Bear in mind, however, that if you’re dealing with people you don’t already have a relationship with, you are increasingly competing with a gazillion other digital media marketers out there stuffing in-boxes full of unwanted time wasting junk!

Sure your message may be entertaining and informative, even making compelling offers, but put yourself in the shoes of your over-worked prospect who is juggling limited time at work or just wants to get on Facebook to chat to friends. This is a really strong plus in favour of snail mail – it’s easier to hit the delete button than resist taking a peek in the journey from the front door to the recycling bin!

Furthermore, with increasing postage rates and the public being more savvy about services to unsubscribe from junk-mail with their post, there seems to be a trend at the moment; is the pile of snail mail on your doormat shrinking? Mine is… Increasingly online marketers are opting for automated mass email strategies, so more and more and email boxes are filling up with spam. Smart email filters and a nifty delete button can give short shrift to e-spam.

Finally, seriously, you should consider sending out a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly newsletter. It doesn’t have to be long – about six hundred words is ideal. Use the newsletter to build up your own expertise in the mind of your customer. Give them information about the products or services you offer and news about your industry that speaks to them. Talk about your customers’ needs, troubles and possible solutions. Talk about the things they’re thinking about; the more topical the better.

Remember, your headline is crucial to getting your prospects attention, whether you choose email or snail mail in your direct marketing strategies. You have seconds to encourage your prospect to read on, so don’t blow it on showing off with jargon or gobbledegook: “Check out the latest Zingram multi-purpose hyperlingua xl, model T600x”! Impressed? OK maybe if you’re a little boy who cannot grow up…

Your headline and first few lines in your marketing message should tell the customer the benefits of reading on: “Today only 50% off carpet-cleaning equipment!” Or “Need your car valet fast? We come to any home within ten miles of Sparklesville. Total clean within the hour. Top service or your money back!”

Of course, copywriting is a whole new subject, which I explore elsewhere, but you see how it works in principle.

Other types of direct mail employed by marketers include post-card campaigns – with or without gimmicks; for instance: signed photographs of yourself with your customer, reminding them of when you met, or pictures of you leading a seminar; this builds your leadership credibility and expertise; photograph post-cards with photo’s of you and well-known celebrities; these generate curiosity about the lifestyle of the rich person included in the image.

Some firms specialise in sending out birthday or anniversary wishes on behalf of businesses to their customers whose personal data that business may have collected.

Watch your own mail box for those sales letters and emails which grab your attention. Start to build up your own list of favourite headlines and notes on what you think works and what doesn’t.

Whatever marketing method you choose, remember, it needs to be part of a mix. There are no simple solutions to marketing in today’s markets and you need to get it right. The market is NOT getting any easier folks.

Alternatively, invest in your own marketing skills and knowledge with online marketing training . Possibly your best investment for your long term success in direct marketing.

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Your investment in advertising now more than ever has to count. Knowing how it counts is what keeps you ahead of your competitors in terms of return on investment. Sadly, too many businesses are not clear about the fundamentals of their advertising campaigns or about what works.

This article explores the four basic ingredients of your unique selling point (or unique selling proposition ) to make you stand out as the ‘go to guy’ , versus many competitor companies out there who are throwing parties out there in the big bad world of marketing in the hope of being liked. If you are looking for what counts in the mind of your customer, here’s some basic customer focussed marketing reality to both brand yourself and stay in the mind of your target audience.

Think Dominos Pizza branding. In the UK, an under-cover investigation on T.V. showed how they exploited foreign workers abominably, forcing people into conditions of servitude. Nevertheless, they remain ahead of the competition, because their terrible treatment of their staff are over-ridden in peoples’ minds by their ability to deliver what customers want:

“Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.”

The question for you as a marketer – online and offline – then is whether your mission statement and tag line covers the four crucial things people want to know when they are tuned into “WIIFM” (‘What’s In It for Me’) when seeking solutions to their problems.

Your marketing advertising should answer four questions from the standpoint of your customer:

· Why should I listen to you?
· Why should I believe what you tell me?
· Why should I act on what you tell me?
· Why should I act now rather than later?

Perry Marshall, a multi-million dollar advertising guru, argues that if you have a unique selling proposition in your branding ‘slogan’ which covers all four of these bases, you are onto a killer hook!

Does your company unique selling proposition describe what’s truly unique about you, compared to your direct competitors? Do you speak directly to your target audience and give them what they need to galvanise them out of their passivity to act on information you give them NOW, before they become distracted by the million other demands on their attention daily?

If not, scrap your woolly minded marketing campaigns and start to brand yourself from scratch. If you have your niche market’s ear and eyeballs on you, you are in their minds and ultimately you will have their business…

FACT: The world of marketing is cut-throat, no less in online marketing than advertising offline. Every business is vying for dominance to raise their voice above the herd. Competitors often compete on issues of price and delivery; you may need to offer more unique value than merely these basic tools to stand out and avoid cost-cutting wars you may lose when launching online advertising and marketing campaigns. You need to shift the agenda in your favour.

Figure out who your ideal customer is, your perfect match for the goods or services you provide and then go after them in your marketing messages using unique marketing messages which set you apart from the rest of the market. Refer to specific benefits offered for specific buying activities. If you take a scatter-gun approach of ‘pleasing all the people all the time’, you please nobody ever and your marketing budget is wasted. Do not assume that even if you hook a customer once, their future loyalty is assured. Be clear from the outset that the reward of any marketing campaign investment is in its ability to generate repeat custom.

Positive return on investment is about attraction marketing, i.e. finding your ‘match’ with the customer whom you can build a lasting relationship with and benefit from their loyalty and return sales. There should be mutual respect and trust for each other. This is a true mutually beneficial arrangement – as opposed to sales and marketing based upon quick turn-around and fast bucks. These well-founded principles of attraction marketing are now agreed upon by the top earners in the marketing industry and have spawned a whole plethora of new marketing strategies.

Knowing the needs of your target audience and having confidence in your own unique selling point means that your customer is more likely to warm to you when you offer what they are looking for and then some. If you are an internet marketer, putting out the solutions they seek in your online marketing campaigns means your customer is closer to buying when they eventually make contact with your business and you. They understand your services and products; they know what benefits you specifically offer.

The initial prospecting process of marketing your business’s products and services, along with your unique solutions can be automated online or in repeated offline campaigns, saving you time for the main element of your unique relationship – your giving the customer their tailor made solution in exchange for that person’s business and longer term loyalty to your brand.

This is the truly mutually beneficial outcome of your ability to answer your customer’s four key buying considerations and the result of developing your skill in setting yourself apart from the clamour of voices from your competitors. You go from being just another peddlar to THE professional in the mind of those you seek and market to specifically.

Answering the four crucial WIIFM marketing questions above is the difference in market invisibility and return custom and the difference between being the 95% who struggle online and the 5% who are making silly money. Fine tuning your marketing messages will demonstrably show a bigger return on investment for your focussed efforts.

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I’m writing this blog post today on a topic I do not usually get too deeply involved with here. But an email I received from Mike Maloney of GoldSilver.com made me think about what many of my readers may be increasingly looking at as they build their wealth and net worth as their business grows. I wanted to share with readers who are both business owners and careful investors the shocking realities of where your financial investment is going if you are on the derivatives gravy train.

If you are a fan of Robert Kiyosaki (Author of: ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad‘ and more recently ‘Conspiracy Against Your Money‘) or you know about Wealth Masters International, Mike is the guy who advises these big hitters on how to use precious metals to create wealth and maximise return on investment .

There’s another reason I felt compelled to write this post too… Increasingly, I find myself becoming frustrated at the fate of the little guy’s struggle to survive, in the face of the massive bail-outs of the banks going on … The more I learn, the more determined I am to make time to empower those prepared to listen, in order to learn more and to make different choices about their life, which make all the difference in terms of having greater freedom and control over their own and their family’s future.

My ambition is to become wealthy – I make no apologies for this. After personal life crisis and experience of poverty, I am committed to increasing my financial literacy and lift myself into a position, where I am financially free to make choices about my own future. So if anyone else reading shares this aim of achieving a dream lifestyle of your own design, you too need to be thinking about where to take your money to where you can be more sure that your accrued wealth is safe.

What has this to do with business ownership? Answer: EVERYTHING! It’s about PROTECTING your ASSETS. Many business owners do reinvest their profits back into their business, but no doubt financial advisors will have recommended ‘spreading risk’ or ‘diversification’.

Even if you are not one of the millions of independent business owners, but you are one of those careful savers, financially savvy enough to be already in the process of investing in your nest egg, or at least researching your options and wondering if it’s still going to be there by the time you are ready to retire, this eye-opening discussion is for you…

Recently, Goldman Sachs was cited for unethical financial practices, as the activities of the financial giants come under greater scrutiny. Meanwhile, back in May, quarterly eye-opening reports from the big Wall Street banks declared that NONE of the big four banks had a single day in the first quarter in which they lost money trading. So, in other words, for the 63 straight trading days in the first quarter (Q1) of 2010, the beneficiaries of the average Joe’s taxes, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup made money trading for their own accounts.

These very banks benefited from a redistribution of wealth from the taxpayer when ‘bailed out’ as “too big to fail” at 0% interest.

Trading, of course, is supposed to be a risky business; lots of little guys get gobbled up! But so risky that these …….. (my first ever self-censorhsip on my blog – they can afford better lawyers than I!) apparently deserve to be paid millions for protecting their firms’ precious capital, whilst NOT lending back to the “high-risk” people and business “liabilities” who paid for their satin cushion for their fat-cat ….. to land on in the first place!

So tell me, reader, what is so shocking about generating profits paid for by the average person, at the behest of government? Let’s look at the maths….

Borrow $1,000,000 @ 0% interest from taxpayers, represented by the government.
Then lend that money back to the US government at 3%-4% interest rates = 3%+ gains

Then take into account LEVERAGE: i.e. banks can borrow at least $10 for every $1 of equity capital they have, to thus increase the size of their “bets”; so in turn, relatively small amounts of equity borrowed, can be transformed into huge profits.

What is really hard to swallow, is that the taxpayer pays twice if they then want to borrow from these financial institutions, but are told that they are too much of a risk to lend to! That is insult to injury! This, of course, is the reality that many business owners are facing right now, both in the USA and the UK. Austerity only applies to the majority, it seems…

Recently, it was also reported that the lending rates between banks were rising steadily, thus ensuring the position of the big boys in the future… It just gets worse, the more you focus on the money games going on.

In view of this, as business owners, I think we have a duty to ourselves and the communities we serve, to not add to the already swollen coffers of fat cats getting the cream… The fate of the fiat currency which they trade in with you and me is destined to crash… That gravy train is on the way to being derailed… Check out this video, Mike Maloney posted to his site.

If some of this was gobbledegook, it’s absolutely time to start to focus on your financial literacy – knowledge is power! Financial ignorance will get your pockets picked!

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