Marketing in a Recession

Avoid Premium Market Advertising

There are two types of premium market advertising: The one you buy and the one you sell. Right now, both of those markets are going to have to adopt a budget approach to survive. This can work for you as advertising publishers have to compete much harder for advertising dollars. It gives you more room to negotiate better terms and gives you the freedom to experiment with different formats. If you are in a premium market, you are going to have to adapt to tougher times. Some luxury items might sell well for investors looking to profit in other areas, such as gold. However, other areas like designer handbags and clothing are going to be a really tough sell these days. In that case, you'll have to rethink how to present your inventory to the customers you have to continue to be profitable during a time when consumers have less cash to spend.

Negotiate Better Advertising Contracts

Don't be afraid to haggle a bit with someone who is soliciting you for your advertising campaign. Odds are they want your business very much and they might be willing to fudge the price a bit or throw in a few extra features for the price. It certainly doesn't hurt to ask and it can help you determine what advertising works well for you.

One way to negotiate a better deal is to let the advertiser know that you are experimenting with different formats, but you don't want to buy one package over another. Can they throw in a larger size of the ad for the same price as a smaller one for a limited time to see if it works better? In a way, it would be like a free trial; the incentive for the publishers is that if you like it, you will continue with it at the regular rate. If it doesn't perform the way you expect it to perform, you'll not bother purchasing it for the regular price, but the publisher will still have made some money from the initial sale of the smaller-size ad, making the free trial a win-win for both of you.

Selling Premium Products In A Downsized Market

This is probably the toughest advertising assignment you can do within a recession. How are you going to sell designer jeans to people who can barely afford regular jeans? Obviously, you have to downsize the inventory to less expensive options. You might have to phase out advertising the real premium items and offer direct consultations for people with much more to spend. This not only gets you a contact name, but it also starts to create a one-on-one relationship with people who have that kind of money to spend. For the mass market, focus on discounts and engaging customers with value, even in the luxury markets. For instance, gold chains may not be a necessity, but they are certainly an investment in an atmosphere where gold prices are rising every day. Buying gold chains now is a better value than buying them later when gold prices will be higher, meaning that the gold chains will become unaffordable for many at that time.

Beat the Recession with Your Advertising

Notice And Engage “The Smaller Is Better” Crowd

The 1980's and 1990's were times where bigger was better. Bigger houses, bigger salaries, and bigger cars were the products of choice in the marketplace with excess money to spend. This decade is when many made the choice to come back to more compact lifestyles, whether by choice or through conscience. If you are in a luxury market, you will have to start to engage a different set of values and modify your inventory to take into account less discretionary income in your customers’ pockets.

Trading Down In Size, Not Quality

Even so, Americans are still consumers with very refined tastes. You may find people are being forced to reduce their lattes at Starbucks to once a week, rather than every day. You may find that someone opts to downsize to a town home, but the quality will still be on the higher end. The point is that these consumers are going to make choices to make do with less square footage, but won't be as easily persuaded to give up the quality they've come to expect. That's one habit that will take severe economic distress to break. Once that happens, it's possible they won't even be able to afford to purchase a substitute, so they aren’t in your demographics anyways.

Advertise Quality And Value

For these consumers, they want to go with some of the same products and brands they've come to know and love. They just may not want to buy it in the same quantity or size until the economy improves. There's a couple of ways you can persuade them to still let go of their dollars. You can offer value packages with more product and offer discount volume pricing to persuade them to close the sale. Another strategy is to just create smaller packages that allow the consumer to buy less over a longer period of time.

Trying To Target What Your Consumers Want

The only way to find out which option is better is to have a campaign that targets the two different strategies. You can promote the value package and see how well it performs; if it fails to make a sale, then show them the smaller version, less pricey option. Or you can introduce the smaller item first; if they are willing to purchase, offer them a volume discount for buying the bundled package instead. Either way, you are trying to give the customer choices to either downsize or get a better price for buying more. To learn more just follow the link below.

http://www.mattmare.com/recession

Carpe Diem - Sieze the day!

Matt Maré
Founder of CapturePros.com