Yes, we’re in a big economic downturn. Yes, it’s going to be here a while. Yes, it’s going to be hard for a lot of people.
Yes, thousands of businesses will close their doors.
So tell me something: WHY DO PEOPLE CUT BACK ON MARKETING when times get tough?
Have YOU ever wondered that?
It’s a curious question, but the first reaction of most business people facing tough times is "cut the marketing"!!!
It is, after all, a very large expense in most companies. So it’s an easy line-item to cut.
But WHY, when you know that customers are going to be tougher to find, would you PURPOSELY stop looking for them?
If the pool of available prospects were shrinking, why do you add to your own suffering by REFUSING TO ATTRACT them?
You’d think — if business owners were rational people — that they would make the path from "prospect" to "customer" as slippery as possible during tough times.
You’d think that people who wanted their businesses to survive would redouble their advertising and marketing efforts during tough times so that THEIR PIECE OF THE PIE at least stayed the same, even as the pie itself became smaller.
BUT THEY DON’T!
It’s as though they’ve decided that they don’t deserve to win — or to even survive.
They give up.
And that is very, very strange.
Don’t you still need to pay your employees? Feed your family? Protect your own future?
I’ve been thinking about this for the last week or so, as I’ve been avoiding cable news, newspapers and talk radio.
I thought a lot about this. And now I understand.
LET ME ASK YOU this question…
If you knew that when you gave away a dollar, you got back two dollars, how often would you repeat the process?
Over and over again, right?
But what if you gave away a dollar, but didn’t know how much you’d get back? What if you sometimes got back more than a dollar, sometimes less, and sometimes nothing at all?
Put another way, what if you had NO IDEA AT ALL how much you were getting back?
You’d stop, wouldn’t you?
Any rational person would.
I would.
QUESTION: What’s the difference between those two situations?
ANSWER: One is measured, and one is not.
In the first situation, the dollar is an INVESTMENT– you gave it away, but it came back with friends. You know because the results are MEASURED.
In the second situation, the dollar is an EXPENSE — it goes away and you don’t know what happens to it. The results are UNMEASURED.
The gut reflex of most businesses when faced with difficult situations is to CUT THE EXPENSES.
Those business owners who cut their marketing to the bone during tough times do that because they are not measuring their marketing. They can’t tell you, with absolute certainty, that when they spend a dollar, they get two back.
And so, out of fear — and PANIC — they cut their marketing efforts.
When food is scarce, they stop eating on purpose. They give up. They starve. Voluntarily.
In business we call this "out of business".
So what are YOU going to do?
What is your plan to survive over the next couple of years?
If you choose to survive — and I hope you do — here are six tips to help your business survive.
1) MEASURE EVERYTHING.
Since you run an online business, that means knowing where your traffic comes from, how it gets there, and WHAT IT’S WORTH.
A few weeks ago, I made you a video that shows you exactly How to set up Google Analytics on your website in 6 minutes.
Analytics can tell you which of your marketing is making you money, and which isn’t.
If you haven’t seen the video, and installed analytics on your own site yet, do that first. It’s free, and is one of the best website statistics programs available.
2) KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER.
Niches are far more profitable than large groups of people.
First, you’ll find that it is far less expensive to market and advertise to a small niche than it is to advertise to a large group. But YOU CAN ALSO CHARGE MORE for your specialty item that solves a specific problem than you can for an item "just like everyone else’s" that "everyone can use".
Knowing your customer is the key to making every marketing dollar more effective.
3) CAPTURE EVERY LEAD.
I hope you’ve heard this before — and acted on it. But if you’re not building a list on your website and starting a relationship with your prospects long before they buy from you, you are truly wasting your marketing dollars.
On average, only 1% of visitors buy from a direct marketing website, but 20% will join a list. Of those 20%, typically a fourth of those — 5% of the total visitors — will buy. That means a list can increase your sales by FIVE TIMES.
And it’s not hard. Learn how to build a list and set up a squeeze page on your site.
4) KNOW YOUR COMPETITION. The traffic is out there. Even in down times, millions of people still buy what they want, and they buy what they need. If the pie is shrinking, and you are gearing up to get a bigger slice of it, then you’ve got to understand where your traffic will be coming from.
And it will be coming from your competitors.
You are going to be taking TRAFFIC that is currently theirs and MAKING IT YOURS. There are some tools on Google and other search engines to show you exactly what your competitors have done to get their traffic, and what you can do to steal it.
I created a video to show you how to steal your competitor’s traffic. I recommend you watch it.
5) INCREASE YOUR MARKETING FOCUS.
Once you’re measuring, targeting, capturing, and locating, it’s time to re-double your marketing efforts.
Like we discussed at the top of this article, the ironic thing is that in down times, most of your competitors are going to be cutting back on their marketing.
Truly stupid, in the conventional sense of the word, if their goal is to survive.
Your opportunity, right now, is to increase your focus on Marketing. You need new customers to survive, and to even THRIVE right now.
Do everything you can to INCREASE THE TRAFFIC coming to your site.
And there are lots of tools available to you: article marketing, web PR, SEO, Web 2.0 tricks, blogs, Adwords — all easy to do — and all CRITICAL to your survival and prosperity over the coming years.
And you don’t have to take my Stupid Easy Traffic course for this — you can do it on your own, over time. You just need to do it, one way or another.
This new fight for business survival is really a FIGHT OVER TRAFFIC. It’s either yours or someone else’s. I’d rather it be yours.
I’ve got one more tip for you. And this may be the most important…
6) STAY POSITIVE.
I was talking with a good friend the other day. She’s recently gone through some very dark times — perhaps the darkest you could imagine. But she’s made it through — with a big smile on her face. And as we were chatting yesterday, she said "Yes, it was tough. But now I’m on the other side of it."
I thought that what she said was profound.
Even now, there is tremendous opportunity in this world for those who choose to create it, see it, and take advantage of it.
You, too, can get to the other side.
Imagine yourself there, for a moment, through the tough times, and into the happy, prosperous ones.
You deserve to be there.
To Your Success,
–Mark Widawer
P.S. If this article impacted you in some way, please leave a comment.
Also, let me encourage you to watch the video about how I showed one regular guy how to steal $125,000 of traffic from his biggest competitor. (It’s not going to be hard). Plus, you’ll learn some cool Google tricks you can use to figure out if you can steal traffic from your own competitors.
Stupid Easy Traffic begins on October 21. If you need more traffic, you may as well get it the EASY way. The expert faculty and I will show you exactly how to get the traffic you need to your site as quickly and easily as possible.
I’m going to hold your hand through the process, and we’re going to make it fun, too.
http://www.StupidEasyTraffic.com
-M