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Sell, sell, sell
As a new era of austerity unrolls, many businesses will see their marketing budget as an easy target for cost cutting. More fool them. Unless those printers have a magic wand that guarantees their existing customer base will sustain its business volume and order values (while also paying invoices on time) they will need new customers, fast.
The world has not stopped revolving, there is business to be won, sterling's value makes the UK an attractive place to do business.
My personal advice is reduce your costs but not at the expense of either productive assets or marketing. On that point, it's also worth remembering that marketing doesn't have to be complex, expensive or time consuming. The most important start point is knowing what your market values. One way to do this is to ask your existing customers. You might be surprised by what you find. Only then can you align the market's wants and needs with your company's unique offering and start turning ‘suspects' into ‘prospects'.
In a recent exercise with a software business it took a couple of days to research customers' wants and needs, identify the company's uniqueness, build an enquiry generating offer and get the message to market.
The most frightening thing is that when you actually know what your customers want, you might have to ‘realign' your business a little to meet this demand. It might just be the most valuable decision you have ever made.
Jon Barrett
Editor
