Sounds counterintuitive to even think about increasing prices at a time when people are cutting back on buying, but sometimes you have no choice. Rising costs, for example, will make you choose between a price increase or a profit decrease. Will a price increase cause people to stop buying from you? Not if they see the value of your product or service. The alternative is to leave your prices the same and lower the cost of what you’re selling. Paul B Brown provides input from a half dozen experts.

Not a Bad Time for Small Businesses to Raise Prices [via NYTimes.com]

According to Dr. Gary Lilien, who co-wrote a 2005 report titled “… Does Proactive Marketing during a Recession Pay Off?”, companies must have three characteristics to succeed by increasing marketing in a financial crisis:

1. An emphasis on marketing within the company.
2. An entrepreneurial culture - the nerve to do it.
3. Money.

Should You Up Your Marketing During a Recession? [via BNET Intercom].

Bryan Eisenburg, writing for ClickZ, tells us that innovation and doing more with less are the keys to surviving the financial crisis. Not a surprise, but he’s right. We must find ways to offer our customers greater value at less cost to them and to ourselves.

Online Marketers Can Weather the Financial Crisis [via ClickZ].

Just in case you missed Thursday’s B2B Online / Eloqua webinar on Justifying Your Marketing Spend in a Tough Economy, I’m listing here a few of the more interesting findings. I confess to leaving the webinar before it was over - not because I was bored but because of a prior commitment. I made it all the way through the presentation by Stefan Tornquist, Research Director at MarketingSherpa, and most of these points come from him.

Interesting finding #1:

27% of the attendees at a recent (October) Advertising conference indicated that they plan to increase their marketing budgets in response to the current economic situation.

Undoubtedly, these are companies that understand the competitive opportunities that present themselves when economic conditions force or scare other companies into retreat.

History shows us that these companies - the ones who increase or at least maintain aggressive marketing programs - are the companies that will come out ahead when the economy turns around. » Continue reading “4 Findings that Reflect Marketing in a Poor Economy”

Canadian consulting firm, Arcus, recently researched marketing strategies in a slow market and found 7 key drivers of successful marketing plans. Among these is taking the time to really understand how your most profitable customers are redefining value in a recession. Chances are good that buyers will expect more for their money, will spend more time searching for value and will be less brand-loyal than they usually are.

Marketing in a Recession [via Canadian Marketing Association].

Wondering what kind of person would start a company in an economic meltdown? A very smart one, according to Y Combinator’s Paul Graham. “…it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.” It also means there’s less competition.

Paul Graham’s Startup Survival Guide For The Coming Nuclear Winter: Be a Cockroach [via TechCrunch].

This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared in December 2007 on the Tatum Marketing blog.

Back in December 2007, “rough economic waters” was more a predication than a reality and preparation was key. Now that those predictions have turned out to be unfortunately true, it’s time to act.

In tough economic times, one of the first “expenses” to get cut is the marketing budget. This is a rookie mistake - even though it’s often made by companies who should know better.

When sales get tight, the last thing you want to do is make it even harder to sell.

» Continue reading “7 Questions to Help You Market in a Meltdown”

If you, like plenty of others, have read so much about our dire financial straits that your head is spinning, you might just want to read today’s article on the Kinggame blog. The author claims that our current unemployment rate is around 40% LOWER than Europe’s was in the financial boom times of the 1990s. That around 90% of the U.S. made the same amount of money this month as they did last month. Even September’s 1.2% drop in retail sales should be looked at in context.

Economic Meltdown [via Kinggame]