Ideate

5 Tips for Advertising in a Recession

by Fred on 07/07/09 at 3:53 pm
3 comments

Your Profit and Loss spreadsheet is looking mighty thin. The same creditors that phoned yesterday are phoning today, asking the same question as they did before – expecting you to give a different answer. Your budget is being crucified, but, at the same time, you have to deliver the single most important thing on your priority list: Sales.

So, what’s a business owner to do? Well, here’s a way out thought: Advertise!

So, before you click away, muttering “What kind of crazy fool be this?” (I’m hoping in your best Mr. T voice), think about it carefully…

a) all your competitors will be cutting their budgets
b) in the words of  Marty Neumeier ”If everyone else is zigging, zag!”

So, to clarify, here’s Ideate’s advice on this strategy – let’s call it the “Crazy Fool Strategy” – on how to advertise in a recession. We’ve compiled a list of 5 tips for advertising in a recession:

Tip #1: Don’t spend all your money on misplaced media placement
This is tip #1 purely because the trap is to slap a few ads together and start dishing out money to your favourite print and radio channels. There’s a reason why all those magazines are going bust. They’ll sell their soul to convert your 30 pieces into a double page spread. Guess what? Your 30 pieces… is about 9970 pieces short of being effective. Unless you’ve got the big bucks, your media plan will fail. Dismally. Consumers will only recognise you (let alone trust you) after seeing you for the 7th time. You can’t afford it. Look for other ways to advertise.

Tip#2: Figure out where your customers are
Things are changing. Rapidly. Your customers are behaving differently than they were 2 years ago. They’re no longer going out as much. They’re looking for ways to enjoy themselves, but without coughing up their hard earned cash. They’re eating differently. They’re exercising differently. They’re entertaining themselves differently. Most importantly, they’re consuming media differently. The sooner you start mapping these patterns out, the better. Before you even think of starting your ad campaign, get in your car. Visit some customers. Ask questions.  Take notes. Most importantly, listen and learn.

Tip#3: Get Strategic
Once you’ve figured out where your customers are hanging out, you can start putting your strategic plan together. The most important thing here is to ask “What does my customer want?” Figure out what he’s looking for, what challenges he’s facing, where he’s feeling pain – and then figure out the best way to communicate that you’ve got the solution. Hopefully it will become clear that you can get to your customer a lot cheaper than mainstream media channels. Think direct mailers. Think niche, highly targeted magazines (who will give you big discounts). Community newspapers. Think of hooking brand ambassadors who communicate to your audience. Think mobile, email, e-marketing, point-of-purchase and other, more targeted, channels to get your message across.

Tip #4: Get Creative
Let’s face it. You don’t have a big budget and you won’t be able to reach the critical mass that big companies can. Your limited efforts are going to be lost in the wind unless you do something seriously creative. You’ll need to be smart, direct and intelligent. Funny won’t hurt either. This leads us swiftly to point #5

Tip #5:  Hire Professionals
Let’s face it. You don’t have a big budget OR creative nous – you’re going to need help. You’ll need to find some folk to help you on this. You shouldn’t be spending your time on tweaking ad campaigns anyway (you should be spending it on making sales, dummy). So, here’s how you do it. Google the digital marketing agencies in your area and ask them. Or Google the PR agencies. DON’T Google the advertising agencies. You need to be referred to an ad agency or an advertising freelancer by someone who’s not in competition with your future service provider. Meet with a few agencies and freelancers and then brief the one you feel understands your business well… and who looks like they can rub two creative sticks together. Believe me, there are enough small agencies or freelancer advertising professionals in your area to help you. We’ll run an article on how to write an advertising brief shortly.

Bonus Tip #6: Integrate your advertising with PR
Believe us, PR will be your secret weapon. You can advertise as much as you want, but advertising won’t buy you the credibility you need to reinforce your offering. Advertising will get the word out, PR will nail it home.

Good luck – and tell us how it goes. We’d love to run some examples of small business advertising campaigns on Ideate.

Of course, this all flies in the face of previous advice we’ve given here on Ideate, but hey – we’re allowed to change our mind aren’t we?

Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.

Tags: advertising

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