Repositioning Your Business for the New Normal

My business partner and I attended an Agency Management Roundtable (AMR) meeting in early November with some pretty savvy marketing and public relations professionals who own small agencies across the country.  These entrepreneurs meet semi-annually to share best practices designed to improve the performance of their businesses.

After two days of swapping new ideas and advice about their agencies and doing business in a recession, it became clear that most of these agency owners face many of the same business challenges I do. Our discussion also reaffirmed that we need to plan for what likely will be the new “normal” way of doing business, even long after an economic recovery.

Here are a few of what we marketing types call the BGOs, or “Blinding, Glaring, Obvious” takeaways from my AMR experience. Many of these BGOs are not new concepts. But all are worth revisiting as we adjust our business plans for 2010:

Supporting a Good Cause can Increase Loyal Customers

Now more than ever, your customers are being bombarded with messages from your competitors demanding their attention and motivating them to open their wallets.

When consumers are presented with competing choices to your offerings that appear equal in price, benefits and quality, one sure way to stand out from your competition and gain customer loyalty is to support a charitable cause that your customers care about.

Boston-based Cone and Duke University completed a consumer behavior study in October 2008 indicating that consumers are more likely to purchase from socially minded companies that support important causes like education, job creation, health, hunger and the environment. They also are more likely to refer socially minded company’s products and services to their friends and family members to support causes important to them.

Lots of Great Information to be Heard in November

Whew! Was it me, or did Summer finally blow away today?

Well dig out your comfy sweaters because we have plenty of opportunities for you to learn about marketing, social media and business development this month. (I’ll be the half-awake one with a Venti Zen tea from Starbucks clasped gingerly in both hands!)

There’s Still Room in Saturday Boot Camp for Beginners

The Social Media Boot Camp for Beginners will walk participants through the creation and establishment of three profiles via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter; examine the free tools available online that will make managing your profiles easier; and strategies for successful social media communication.

The Fine Art of the Soft Sell and Social Media

I’m a huge fan of the Corporate Curmudgeon, a syndicated columnist who appears locally in our Arizona Daily Star doling out wry advice to the green, unsophisticated or just plain clueless employee. Yesterday’s column touches on an art form that, to me, is highly underrated:

The fine art of the “soft sell.”

Why, might you ask, should a marketer/copywriter/pr practitioner/social media guru/flack/hack/car salesmen care to know what a “soft sell” is? Well, my dears, because we as a society are burned out. And when audiences burn out, they shut their ears.