Future-proof your business from sales slumps
November 6, 2008 at 1:30 pmThe current market is proof that there are cycles of highs and lows in business. The key to a successful business is ensuring the lows do not go as deep, and the highs last as long as possible. As part of this business sustainability, you need a marketing plan to keep your sales momentum going. In reality though lack of time, resources and cashflow mean that this ideal scenario is not always possible – but it can be.
A marketing plan should not be treated as just a cost of doing business, but as an investment to straighten out the dips in your business cashflow and regarded to be as necessary as a business plan to keep you on track.
In fact, your marketing plan should work hand in hand with your business plan as it’s objective is to help you achieve your business goals. As a result, the following should be applied to both your marketing and your business.
Firstly, put away the shotgun!
That is, a shotgun approach to business, marketing and advertising. ‘Shotgun marketing’ is typically a business owners reaction to a quiet market. But by only acknowledging the need for marketing when you need it or have time to do it (that is, in the quiet patches), you are forcing yourself to spend money when it is at it’s most scarce. In effect you’ve finally decided to be proactive about getting business at the time when it hurts the most to do it. By it’s reactive nature, a shotgun marketing approach only provides a short-term solution without regard to the future goals of your business and is mostly ineffective and a waste of precious dollars.
The other shotgun promotion, ‘shotgun advertising’, is a splatter gun approach to advertising. The human brain can only absorb a few things at a time (when switched on, even less when it’s not consciously looking to find your message) and if you try and cover every aspect of your business, for fear of one being left out, in your advertising your advertising will be watered down, resulting in having little or no impact at all. Alternatively, if your business has focus then your advertising message is clearer and has a better result.
Think of the ‘F’ word
This is a word that Gordon Ramsay is synonymous with. But there is another more important ‘F’ word that he applies in his television show Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – Focus.
In the show, the seasoned, successful chef is called in to help flailing restaurants. The restaurants in question are trying to appeal to every man woman and child. His formula for their success is simplicity and focus. In fact the first thing he does is help them identify what they should stop doing.
By identifying what products and services are making the best profit in your business, and by trying to sell more of the same, you’re actually not risking less sales, but you’re giving yourself more time to focus on the more profitable sales and have the time for these better sales to increase before you need to resort to the reactive approach.
When you can produce a focused, consistent message about your business and when the fear of not being everything to everyone is less than the fear that hard times that will come again, you can finally start to iron out those sales slumps.
Published Canterbury Today Issue 92, November/December 2008
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