Time To Re-Evaluate Your Market Niche
If the economy is making you uneasy, you’re not alone. Most people are feeling very uneasy about the situation. Will my current job provide for me and my family? Will I even have a job? Even in the short term, businesses are going into bankruptcy everywhere. Not even the big three are safe anymore. How does that affect you? If you are in any type of marketing, it affects you to the bone.
In times of prosperity, people are eager to buy the latest electronic gadget or to get the latest bath accessories or more importantly to you, the latest product you are marketing. So, your market niche may have done well when the economy was doing well, but now you’ve noticed a slowing or even a stoppage of your sales. What’s going on? Don’t automatically assume that this is a product of the economy alone; a better approach would to be proactive and try to determine what factors are affecting your sales. While it certainly could be the economy, there are also other factors to look at. There may be a shift in demographics, or it could be that your sales strategies don’t work in a downturn, What about advertising? Do you even have an advertising campaign and if you do, have you re-evaluated it lately?
Shifting Demographics
When you first set up your business, you probably had a good idea of what demographic you wanted to serve. With the current economy, that demographic may have had shifts in their income level or even their living situations. A good case in point is the boomer generation. They are experiencing an epic shift in their income as they retire; they are seeing their retirement accounts battered from poor market results. While you once could rely on this demographic to purchase certain products and services as they continued to dominate the market, this may no longer be true in the future. This is why you absolutely must re-evaluate the demographics that you are serving in your market niche. To do otherwise is simply setting yourself up for failure.
Sales Strategies
Are you running the same promotions but having worse results? That’s not really surprising considering that the psychology of the market place has changed dramatically and that the consumer may not be in a great buying mood for a while. When times are good and people have disposable income, status is a great psychological trigger to use to create a buying opportunity. The same trigger is somewhat meaningless in a downturn unless you are marketing to the very rich. The biggest strategy for the downturn is going to be value; you need to make sure that most of your strategies reflect a trigger for value.
Bad or No Advertising Campaigns
The immediate impulse of business owners in a downturn is to slow down or even to cut out their advertising since there are fewer buyers. This is a huge mistake and can be a self-fulfilling prophecy for poor sales later on. So, if you haven’t already evaluated your advertising campaign, you need to do so now. Look at where you are advertising, what psychological triggers and sales strategies you are using, and whether you can provide value offers that put you ahead of the competition during this tough economy. You cannot afford to just run with the pack, you have to different and have enough perceived value to distinguish you from all the others who are marketing to the exact same people you are.
And Finally
A downturn in the economy does not have to mean an end to your sales, quite the contrary. Use yourself as a guide. What makes you feel good about buying? Your target market has the same fears and aspirations as you do. Do you buy from someone you don’t trust? Of course not, neither do they. Be that someone who people trust. Over deliver and always do what you say. Don’t hype, just give consistent, honest value and trust the judgment of your audience. You are loyal to what you believe in and so are they. Value and honesty always succeed.
This free eBook Marketing For Newbies has some really good points.
(I didn’t much care for the cover but the information is good.)
“If you’re good to your staff when things are going well, they’ll rally when times go bad.”
Mary Kay Ash
Success in all your endeavors
Fred Villareal
