The Jamison Group

(It’s Not About whether You Fall down; It’s About How Fast You Get Up and Get to the Finish Line.) 

In less than two months, we have seen the value of the dollar skyrocket, gas prices and stocks plummet, a world-wide banking meltdown, a spike in unemployment, and the inauguration of a new U.S. president. That's not just change you can believe in, that's change that makes your head spin.

In this sea of uncertainty, you might not even know what your budget is for next year or how you'll reach out to new - hard to get - customers. For many companies, the budget pie and the customer pie are simply not growing. Just keeping sales and leads flat (let alone increasing them) can be a big win.

Your customers are reeling from the volatility, and as they change, the way you reach them must change just as fast. Whether you're doing B2B, B2C, or both, what worked last month (or even last week) may not work today; in fact, it probably won't work. Maybe last week, customers were looking for reassurance, but this week they might be looking for deals, and next week they'll be thinking of checking out altogether. You need to meet them where they are, and to meet them, you have to know exactly where they are, right now.

Nobody can predict how long or deep the recession will be. But one thing is easy to predict: only companies that can rapidly adapt to customers' changing demands – and prove that their new strategies are actually effective – will have a chance of surviving.

Stay Open to Different Points of View and Different Possibilities Don't assume the plan you created in October is still relevant. It isn't. Right now, any survey on future purchasing intentions that's more than a week old is probably obsolete. The good news is, that new marketing techniques and technologies let you test, measure and respond to the rapidity of customer’ changes very quickly.

Here are a couple examples of what you should constantly be adapting:

  1.  Offers: Value-added incentives that worked in the past may lay an egg now.  The "buy our product and get a free T-shirt" offer from last year was a success, but now potential customers may only be motivated by a cash rebate or a significant cash discount off your product. Throw out a variety of offers and see which ones make your customers move. Test, test, test. 

  2.  Creative: Consumer sentiment changes quickly in this environment, so test your messaging often. Perhaps you promote services that will help your customers weather the downturn. But do your customers react negatively to campaigns that remind them of the bad economy? Then you might need to change your messaging to one of comfort and quality – at least this week – and, of course, test that new messaging. Don't be content with A/B testing; make decisions even faster by creating A/B/C/D/E versions of a banner ad, or email solicitation for example, and analyze the responses to see which one works best.

Don't be content with A/B testing; make decisions even faster by creating A/B/C/D/E versions of a banner ad, or email solicitation for example, and analyze the responses to see which one works best.

You Have to Determine the Real Payoff of Your Tactics

In testing to determine whether a tactic works, don't stop at the initial positive indicators. In this environment, you don't merely need leads; you need quality leads, the kind that drives prospects and sales. The only way to start attracting more of the right kind of traffic is to understand, based on careful observation of your data, which campaigns lead to real-life conversions.

If it takes two weeks to pull these stats from multiple marketing technologies and team members, you're ambling along like an old-economy dinosaur. Are you willing to risk extinction?

In this economy, it's survival of the fastest. The marketers who make it will be the ones who are savvy enough to optimize campaigns all the way from the lead-management process to the CRM system, and quickly apply what they learn to the next tactic. If you can't measure the results of your campaigns easily and quickly, it's time to seriously consider how resilient you are in certain systems. 

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But unless your companyis magically immune to global economic conditions, you don't have a choice. In boom times, the entire marketing team can take credit for great numbers without breaking much of a sweat. But when your marketing team is involved in a crisis, you have to adapt instantly and pull out all of the stops merely to hold your own in the short-term and to anticipate what will come after the crisis in the longer-term. In this environment, that's about the only certain thing.  

 Charles F. Toney, Founder & Principal 

   The Jamison Group 

   Transforming Business Performance