The Marketer’s New "Business as Normal"

Since the end of last year retailers have pulled out all the stops to get customers to enforce their buying power. From educational webinars to online/in-store discounts and big savings coupons, retailers have been using their resourcefulness and marketing savvy to make the best of a gloomy economic year.

Even with all their efforts retail numbers were down last year and the outlook for 2009 looked even more desperate. Perhaps the very profile of the retail environment has shifted as consumers settle in for what may be a prolonged economic change and preparing themselves for the new "business as normal" standard. Here are some smart, manageable tips on how to cut back and survive through the second half of the 2009 to keep your business on track.

Keep the Driving Force Going
Now is no time for a vacation. It’s important more than ever to stay focused on the goal which is survival in this tight economy. We are doing it at home and work is no different if we plan to keep our lively hoods. No matter how tired you are or how discouraged you might feel, it's time to think positive, rally and continue marketing to your customers. A cutback in marketing efforts is not an option. Marketing keeps you in front of current customers, engages prospects, and positions well for the economic rebound. Don’t lose the momentum…stay on the ground running.

Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More
Although statistics can vary by type of business, product, and service, one thing is undeniable...it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. A loyal customer base can carry you through even the toughest times. Whether asking customers to sign up for your newsletters, encouraging them to join your community forum, or by offering upgrade discount incentives, you have ways to re-engage buyers.

Don’t Just Go on a Hunch
Customers make or break your business. You need to listen to and accommodate your clientele and that means knowing what they want. To find out what they want you can use your newsletter or toolbar to distribute an open-ended customer survey. Review your customer feedback and make some enhancements, this way customers can see you're making real changes based on their feedback. Make sure to track the success of those changes in your marketing strategies on a monthly basis.You will want to modify your campaign content if it isn't producing results and switch out elements of your toolbar if they aren't being used.

Make that Investment Back
Stop any spending activity that isn't directly resulting in new business. Dollars are tighter than ever, so managing them properly is critical. You might not need the latest hardware, but you do need well-designed web site and toolbars to expand the value of your site. Stick with those tools that work. Make an objective to review one new free tool for small businesses that is popular or new. Consider how best to apply that tool for account management, marketing or sales; for example, not every business needs a Facebook page, but for some it can help. Find out where your customers go to speak with or about the companies they work with and then make your decisions from there.

Realize that today's customers are different from those just a year ago. They expect more… more information, more choices, and more convenience and they are looking for you to bring that to them as quickly as you can.

Offer better software demos using the data you already collect

All marketers use lead capture or registrations forms in their marketing programs.  How else would we generate leads for our sales departments?  Some marketers keep things simple and only ask for the necessities, some ask for everything under the sun and some assess what they really need to know and conduct testing to see what their audience will bear before increasing abandonment rates.  By the way - I highly recommend balancing the information you need with what's nice to have and test your conversion rates, but we can save that for another post.

In most cases registration forms will include a few optional questions outside of the contact fields, intended to help us understand more about our visitors - whether the information is used to help marketing define their "buckets" or to help sales target their pitch -  is really moot when it comes to your visitors.  What if you used this information instead to help provide a more customized experience for your visitors?  If you positioned the questions in a way that made it obvious that the answers would better help your visitors find what they're looking for, I can almost guarantee that your visitors would be more likely to answer the questions.

Here are a few examples:

1. Ask a question that provides the opportunity to offer a specific demo suited to your visitor's needs
 One of our clients, Intuit Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions (QBES), uses the question "What is your business type?" to identify the visitor's vertical industry.  This is important to the marketers so they know what verticals they need to be targeting, but its also helpful for the visitor because QBES develops different versions of their product for different verticals.  In the screen shots below, you can see how when I answered "Distribution & Wholesale" I was offered the TestDrive online demo of their "Manufacturing & Wholesale Edition", saving me the effort of figuring out which version of the software I should try.

2. Find out who your competition is and take the initiative to show why you're better
Intuit QBES also asks their trial visitors what their current accounting solution is.  Not only does it give the marketers insight on which competitors they should be paying the most attention to, it also gives them the opportunity to target that competition specifically. Depending on your selection, you will receive an automated email, addressed to you, either explaining why you should upgrade to the new version of QBES (with a special discounted offer) or why QBES is better than the solution you're using now - also providing links to resources that may help in your information gathering. 



In the example below, you'll see that I selected "Peachtree", then I received an email with the message "Upsize" as well as a link to learn more about the Free Peachtree to Quickbooks Conversion tool.  "WOW! So if I switch they will take care of moving all my data over to Quickbooks and I don't have to worry about a thing??  I'm SOLD!"

You can even take it a step further and make your registration forms "dialogs".  Instead of just asking a series of questions, let your visitors know why you're asking them.  Instead of "tell us about your business", position it as "So we can provide you the best demo of our software, please tell us a bit about your business.  We'll provide a customized demo to suit your needs".

Give your visitors what they want and you will have a much higher chance of converting them and closing the sale.  Make it easy for them to see why your software is the right solution for their needs and you can get the same results.  So why don't we ALL do this??

I can think of a half dozen, but the initial ones that come to mind are:

I just didn't think about using my data that way.
I don't have time to go through this exercise; I have so many other marketing programs to implement!
It's going to take so much time and I don't have the resources to create the content needed.

We're all being asked to do more with less, and for software companies your software demos are one of the key sales tools and I'm sure a lot has already been invested in them.  Putting a little focus on this process and what you can do to better meet your visitors' needs and creating more customized experience can really pay off in spades.  And remember, you don't have to do it all at once!  Start small and build up from there.

Are you doing anything right now to make better use of the data you are collecting or doing anything to provide a software demo that actually addresses what your visitors are looking for?

Could Twittering be the end to blogging as we know it?

I for one believe the ease of Twitter will spell the end to a majority of blogs as we know it today. Sure we will still have the media blogs and your industry blogs but the Average Joe blogging about whatever happens to be on his or her mind will be replaced by Twitter. To be honest this is probably a good thing as blogs can be very useful once you find a good one to read; the problem is finding the right one then and then when you do hoping the writer keeps blogging at a regular pace.

Although I don’t find twitter to be that useful as a social media tool today I do think it has its place in the social media industry, just how big who knows, probably the same as Facebook or MySpace. The remaining question though is...will Twitter have staying power?