Marketing Differently

I just read an article which began with this statement: "For years, retailers could afford to be sloppy about running their businesses because customers kept buying. No more." The article continued by noting how customers curtailed spending this past holiday season by the largest amount in 39 years. January spending appears to be down also, which is no surprise.

A few weeks ago I heard a report which stated that mall shopping was down 24% during the holidays. In that same report a shopper commented that "it doesn't matter how much they drop the price, if I don't need something, I'm not buying it."

What all this means to your business, whether you are a retailer or not, is that consumers are in such financial pain that they have pulled back from spending. The days of easy credit and seeming job security are no longer. Fear of having enough to pay their bills, stay in their homes, or just survive is running rampant through the consumers of this country. Realistically, this fear is not going away for a while.

Whether their jobs are threatened or not, consumers perceive that they are in financial peril. Perception is reality. Reality is the world in which business functions. Consequently, we as business people must deal with consumers' perception.

How do we do that?

We run our businesses differently. We run them tighter. We take the actions that make our businesses more profitable.

These actions include marketing differently. Gone are the days when running a sale to stimulate business will have the impact of the past. Today's consumer is not buying something unless that item is needed, as the shopper noted earlier. We must replace giving away items with selling consumers on what's in it for them to do business with us. We must get close to our customers. We must make sure that our customers are satisfied.

While all this may appear difficult and costly, actually it is not. As you market differently and tighten how you run your business, you will discover great efficiencies of scale. You will find that you can sell more to fewer customers and do so more profitably. You will save money by not marking down items and save time dickering on price. You will spend less on advertising and, yet, have profitable marketing.

I understand that consumers feeling fear, the news media proclaiming the business closing of the day, and your business's revenues being down do not appear to be positive. However, the bright spot in this atmosphere of fear is that you have an opportunity to change your business to run more profitably for today and for the future.

Take action now to make that happen