A VC in Vacationland

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So you all of a sudden realized that your sales pipeline has dried up?  That is clear from the hundreds of "new" emails I am getting every day from people I do business with.  Forget about it.  You are just irritating me.  I do not care if everyone else has stopped buying your products.  I am not going to make up the difference.

Which brings me to the point of this blog.  Any marketer who goes into panic mode and sends an email a day, instead of one every few weeks should be fired. You really need a consistent and well planned approach to the market, dude.

How can you do more effective marketing in a down economy?  Here are a few suggestions:

1. Change your Messaging. When I was a supply chain consultant, we sold revenue growth opportunities when the economy was doing well and cost savings ones when in a recession.  It worked every time. Think about the pain your customers are now feeling and suggest ways that your solutions can help reduce the misery.
2. Focus on Success. No one wants to be told time's are bad.  They already know it.  Buying your solution should not be positioned as grasping a life raft in the storm.  They want solutions that will have lasting, positive impacts on their bottom line, hopefully through good times and bad.
3. Increase the Frequency. Yes, I said earlier that more messages with the same focus only irritated me. But it was because the basic marketing message had not changed, or it was all doom and gloom.  Sending the same old stuff out more times is not the answer.  But sending new messages offering compelling evidence of revenue growth or cost savings through your solutions is the right path.

So take a few hours to review all your marketing plans sooner rather than later in 2009.  We are still many months (or years) from being back to some normalcy in the economy.  Spending will continue to be reined in by both consumers and businesses.  Marketers will need to be very creative to attract new customers in 2009.