“When times are tough, the tough get marketing!” – Doug Williams

Sure, tough economic times have major impact on buying habits. The focus shifts to results. People begin looking for value, on budgets and work to eliminate the unnecessary. You just need to make sure that your product or service is considered necessary. You need to market smarter during hard times.

1. Focus on what’s important: Get clear on what is important. What are your true objectives? Invest your time, energy and money on those things that will help you reach your business goals. Set your marketing strategies. This may mean getting rid of services and products that are not profitable or ones that consume large amounts of your time without a payoff.
2. Measure Everything: Your orientation has to be toward results. Don’t be afraid to try new things as long as they don’t require large investments and long term commitments. Your orientation has to be toward results. If something doesn’t work, then stop and try something else.
3. Communicate: In most businesses, 80% of the sales come from 20% of the customers. Stay in touch with your biggest customers on a regular basis. You aren’t trying to sell anything, you are just touching bases. You will be surprised on how much more business can come from this.
4. Start a Blog: Use a blog to strengthen your relationships, build your brand, develop a loyal readership and to get new customers. The key to effective blog marketing is to regularly write interesting original content that your targeted customer will be interested in. A major benefit of blogging is that it can dramatically improve your search engine ranking of your website.
5. Create a Niche Website: Target a new market niche and generate a new income stream. A niche website business is the great way to profit from a downturn because the cost of entry is lower and the upside is enormous.
6. Pricing: Keep your pricing up. You are trying to attract great long term clients. By lowering your prices, you shift the focus to price and you will attract price shoppers. They will generally have very little loyalty except to the next deal.

Related posts:

1. How to Grow your Business in a Down Economy
2. How to Market on the Web During a Recession
3. Using Social Media to Grow Your Business
4. The 5 Rules of Pricing: Price Psychology
5. Niche Blogging