CRM - February 2009 - (Page 24)

Marketing MAKE Megaphone! Marketing Your >> The game’s winding down and you’ve got a 30-point lead. The home-court vibe only adds to your confidence. “What the heck,” you say.“Let’s give the fans a show.” You dribble past the defense and pass the ball over your opponent’s head to your teammate—who, alas, was ogling a cheerleader on the sideline. The ball goes out of bounds— but you can absorb the misstep. When the game’s headed into the final minute with a tie score, though, a wrong move is far less acceptable. “When the economy’s good,” says Renan Levy, president of direct marketing solutions provider Intellidyn, “everything sticks.” Everything, however, is subjective. In good times, he adds, “[Companies] say, ‘I don’t need profiling. I don’t need modeling…. I’m happy with my results…. It’s good enough for me.’” Customers now are coming to him with the same or decreased budgets and expectations even higher than they were before. The recession has surely affected your business processes to some degree. Whether budgets are getting cut, staff is being downsized, or even if nothing’s changed, you have to be cautious given the economy and a customer base that’s less willing to consume. In an economic crisis, the rules of the game change. “When things get bad, you have to think about doing things differently,” says Michael Gale, principal and founder of marketing consultancy Strategic Oxygen. Based on his research on marketing spend, Gale estimates that marketers have shifted from budgets that were 30 percent discretional and 70 percent capital in 2007, to 95 percent capital. “You’re not going to buy a Ferrari in a recession,” Gale says. “Stick to what you’ve got. Things become more valuable as people go back to the basics.” MARKETING 101 The foundation of any marketing strategy, in any economic scenario, should always center on targeted, relevant, and timely messages. During a recession, however, companies are obligated to evaluate costs more closely. More often than not, says Bruce Temkin, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, executives make across-the-board cuts that adversely impact any company’s two core concerns: Who represents the target market you’re serving? What is the value proposition you’re delivering? “In a recession, you don’t have the luxury of making mistakes when it comes to answering those questions,” Temkin says. “You have to more diligently answer those questions because once you do that, you then have a clearer picture of which customer you actively go and continue to market… and what you are going to do or deliver.”In other words, he says, instead of taking a hatchet to your marketing agenda, it’s time to whip out the scalpel. When the economy’s better, Temkin explains, targeting is expected, but “it doesn’t make sense to hold the entire company purely to it.” When budgets are less constricted, companies are encouraged to get outside their comfort zone to uncover new opportunities. In those times, he says, “you don’t need to be as rigorous.” EXPERIMENTATION But a recession is no excuse to simply hole up and pray for the storm to miss your house. In fact, experimentation and innovation are necessary for companies seeking to not only maintain their current client base, but actually grow in a time when everyone else is in hibernation mode. “In a downturn, one could argue that the need to experiment is even greater because you need to be that much more sure things will be more effective,” says Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research at Ball State University’s Center for Media Design in Indiana. 24 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | FEBRUARY 2009 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - February 2009

CRM - February 2009 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Express Service CRM on Twitter Breaking Customer Service Tradition Outsprinted That’s (Not) Entertainment Running on Empty Required Reading Up Against the Downturn The Numbers Tell the Tale Make Marketing Your Megaphone! Hold Onto Your Customers! Spend Your Way Out! Constructing a Virtual Customer Experience Next Customer, Please! It’s Showtime! From A(erospace) to Z(oology) Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - February 2009

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