GOOD BAD & UNWANTED
RECESSION is bad for you: and that's official. In the most recent slump, the drop in the UK’s GDP lasted longer than in the 1930s. The fall in consumer spending was little short of dramatic. There was major loss of confidence. Nonetheless, more than a speck or two of good will have emerged, helping to get rid of some of the clutter facing businesses.
Survivors will have been making many changes, plenty of them positive, aware, for instance, that during this restructuring process, unreliable or unprofitable customers may have been discarded. Poorer selling products should have been removed from the list. Better deals might have been wrung from suppliers. Under-performing partners, maybe dealers or distributors, could have been dismissed. Unwanted or unjustifiable overheads can have been over-ripe for the snip and snap. If you can find any, money that you borrow is costing less.
The recession was a time to ready yourself and your business for the upturn. It was time to examine your marketing and promotional budgets.
By now, have you adopted the best performing media? Are your channels such that they can deliver a worthwhile return on investment? Have your professionals, such as the advertising agency, the public relations consultancy and the website gurus supported you sufficiently well?
This is the ideal period for planning ahead, to focus your efforts on customers with the highest potential. Ideally, they will be in sectors where demand is most likely to surge as the revival gathers pace.
ADJUSTED ATTITUDES
Cash-hoarding buyers abound. You should not assume a return to normality, however. After this lengthy and deep downturn, consumers are likely to have adjusted attitudes, behaviours and preferences – permanently in many cases.
The actions that they took in order to cope when times were tougher may have defined a new norm. They may look at your products or services through different eyes than before. As a result, you will need to listen carefully to what they have to say: to work out their current level of faith in your brand.
It is an appropriate time to carry out a communications audit, even if only to confirm that your marketing is on the right track. That's about assessing relationships and how people interact with one another. It also involves revisiting and rethinking strategies, along with the associated budgets.
Many organisations use too many vehicles to reach out to their publics, wasting time and effort unnecessarily. Such waste has been made all the more prevalent by online options, such as the mass of social media platforms. Often, it is unclear which technique and routes are having the greatest effect.
STREAMLINE THE PROCESS
The communications audit should streamline the process. If necessary, it will help to redesign approaches around more precise needs of your target audiences.
Typical challenges facing business are information overload, complicated messages, lack of clarity, loss of core principles, insufficient participation and marketing support inadequacies.
This age of accountability makes it essential to deliver unified, clear and consistent messages. Enlist expert assistance for this crucial exercise.
Your communications audit can be such an invaluable tool for improving internal motivation, loyalty and efficiency, while beefing up the market position. It is likely to prod the organisation into looking at what it is doing in reality, as opposed to what it might have believed was happening. The results should help you to swerve past new problems and to stay focused.
Without doubt, recession is not kind to people in marketing and related areas. But marketers are bursting to the forefront again in the next battle for valuable business share. They will be a key difference between success and being an also-ran. Better still when a properly considered communications plan is in place.
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