... COVER CONTINUED At one point during the Great Recession, my wife, Mariah, and I were so broke that she did some of that crazy couponing. She’d get a dozen newspapers, and we’d buy stuff for pennies on the dollar. I remember one time when she found a deal for baby wipes that got them to 21 cents per box, and she bought out all the Walmarts across our city. We literally had over 250 boxes of baby wipes, all for about $60. Fortunately, we don’t need to crazy coupon shop anymore and haven’t had to in nearly 10 years, but when we were getting our first business in Boise off the ground, it was necessary. Those offers still exist, but it took hours and hours to find those deals and even longer to buy everything. We simply wouldn’t invest in that today. Getting us to use a coupon is so much more difficult now. I’ve never really used them, and it has to be a crazy good deal for Mariah to do it now. But if you want to attract an affluent person like my wife — or even a solid middle-class consumer — to your business, your offer may simply not cut it in a good economy. One other change you may need to focus on is your messaging. For example, in my business, newsletters really thrive in a couple of areas:
coming in and buying, so the focus on retention simply isn’t there.
stepping up my game and have created a killer referral program to give away a Tesla. If you want to win a Tesla, you can grab more details on that at NewsletterPro.com/Tesla . THE BOTTOM LINE Good and bad economies come and go, and this one will pass, too. You need to be prepared for it when the ride is over. If you’re thinking, “Well, this one won’t pass soon — it just started,” think again. Economists say we’ve been in a rising economy since 2011. It may not have felt like that to most of us, but they use math to figure these things out, and I typically don’t argue with math. Except common core — that’s just BS.
My newsletter product hasn’t changed — newsletters still help with all four of the areas I listed — but we’ve found that shifting messaging based on the economy helps us close more sales. Now, you may think it’s counterintuitive to do any of this in a good economy. You may even wonder why I would spend more for a new customer in a good economy. Why don’t I simply cut that marketing? After all, I’m getting plenty of new customers as it is. This is just the thinking that kills businesses when the economy turns. When the economy is strong, you want to keep your marketing going and improve it where you can. You want to take existing metrics that are good and make them great. This is the time to double down and grow. This is the time to experiment with a killer referral program. I practice what I preach here. I’m “Good and bad economies COME AND GO, and this one will pass, too. You need to BE PREPARED for it when the ride is over.”
• Retention of existing customers
• More referrals
• Closing more prospects
• Additional sales to existing customers
A good economy is the time to double down on your marketing. It is time to be bold with your offers and take care of the customers you’ve got. Do all of this, and not only will you thrive over the next 1–3 years while the economy is rocking, but when we do take a downturn, you’ll be well- prepared to ride the wave and come out on top.
Of course, there are a few more benefits, but you get the point. You see, in a bad economy, the best benefits for us to talk about are improved retention of existing customers and improved sales to existing customers. Why? Because the sky is falling and people are losing customers left and right with few new customers coming in, so keeping the ones they have is a huge priority. In a good economy, the messaging of “retain existing customers” doesn’t work as well as “get more new referrals and close more sales.”
The reason is that many businesses have a higher-than-normal number of new customers
–Shaun
2
www.thenewsletterpro.com
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES SUCCEED.
208.297.5700
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online