How to beat your competitors during the recession
Everywhere you look in the news, the message is the same: The world is in an economic downturn and we’re heading for a recession. The Governor of the Bank of England was saying the same thing just a couple of days ago.
One thing that struck me was that the recession was predicted for 2009 which suggests that it’s not just a case of trying to get through the current ‘downturn’ but trying to actively adapt to to what will become the norm. For a long time, people are going to be extremely careful with their money and they will be very selective about who they choose to spend their money with.
An opportunity
For the small business owner, it’s a difficult time, but if you approach it in a positive frame of mind then there are a number of fantastic opportunities for you to take advantage of.
For a start, much of your competition is going to become invisible. This is because one of the first things companies cut when times are hard is the marketing budget. Quite how they hope to attract new clients when they’re invisible to them, I don’t know, but that’s their problem. It’s great news for you because it gets rid of a whole load of your competitors and gives you a superb opportunity to get in front of a large number of potential clients. And you don’t have to do anything differently! Just don’t have a knee jerk reaction and start dropping marketing activities that have been effective in the past.
With companies cutting back their marketing, that also means that they may well be cutting back on their search engine optimisation (SEO). It could take a few months for the results to be seen but you may want to look at your competitor’s websites and see if they are slowly moving down the search results. If you continue your SEO activities or even ramp them up then you could start to dramatically move ahead of those pesky websites that have been in front of you for the past months or years!
What else can I do?
If you are finding that you have less money to spend on your marketing then you may want to consider other internet marketing activities that won’t cost you any money at all!
- If you’re not using Twitter then start using it and building a following. This introduction to Twitter article can help you.
- If you’re not carrying out regular SEO actions on your website, then start looking at what you can do yourself, or looking at what SEO companies can do for you. The MMD eBook is a great introduction to SEO for your own website.
- If you don’t have a blog, or if you haven’t been updating it recently then get back to it and start updating it regularly. See: How can blogging help my business.
- If you have a blog but haven’t been promoting it then then look at the various social networking and social bookmarking tools around, and start writing content that will attract people to your website.
In general, now isn’t a time for being rash with your marketing activities. If something has worked for you in the past then it’ll still work during these lean times – especially when your competitors are doing their best to get out of your way! But now is also the time to start being creative with your marketing. You can bet that plenty of other small businesses will be adjusting their marketing to try to attract new clients. You must do the same!
Try some of the suggestions above and please let me know how it works out for you. If you need any help then leave a comment and we’ll help you out.
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I couldn’t agree more that the easiest way to beat your competitors is website marketing.
I’ve invested heavily in my companies website to ensure that all of the key phrases for products we supply, that we are in the top 5 entries!
We’re even higher than the manufacturers website for one of their products!
SEO sounds complicated, but it’s all about thinking of the bigger picture and what you are looking to achieve. Focus on one key area and then it all grows.
Sheps