Small Business Recession Marketing

Michael Delpierre, President of Conversion Pipeline, stated “we were surprised to see a lack of internet strategies in their marketing mix. What most small business owners don’t know is that internet marketing strategies such as search engine optimization, pay per click, email marketing and others, are typically cheaper to execute than traditional marketing strategies as well as yield a higher return on investment”. Most consumers in the U.S. have heard of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other major social media outlets. Most businesses view these websites as “time killers” not as “marketing strategies”. With the proper focus and guidance, companies can increase their marketing reach by utilizing social media tools that are inherently free.Marketers would love for small businesses to deploy internet related marketing and advertising strategies to help them raise their brand awareness and drive traffic to their website. Mr. Delpierre stated that small businesses should “submit a press release, start a blog, create a corporate Facebook profile to see who in your customer base is online. Start the online conversation, get input on your business, determine new market trends, redefine your target customer, offer promotions, gain competitive intelligence, and more importantly, take control of your marketing efforts. Now is the time every business should spend more time and money on marketing”. Statistics show that companies who spend more money on marketing in today’s environment will be the ones to ride out this recession and exit with a stronger foothold in the marketplace.

Marketing does not start and stop at the small business owner. Every person working for that business should become a marketer and help promote the company and it’s value proposition. Marketing is something that employees should do to ensure that their company will prosper during these hard times. Harvard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter summed it up best when she said, “are you facing falling customer orders? Slower renewals? Cancellations? Requests for even deeper discounts? And you have probably cut budgets and jobs more than you like. So now what? When you can’t (and shouldn’t) cut any further, you can leverage the creativity of the people on your team. In a recession, everyone should be in marketing.” What Ms. Kanter is alluding to is that marketing is not a single player game. In times like these, everyone needs to be a marketer.