Stay Upbeat in a Down Market

The headlines paint a gloomy picture these days. Volatile markets, bank bailouts, tumbling stocks and falling confidence. While the economy is struggling, many advisors opt to cut back on marketing expenses to weather the storm. You may be tempted to do the same. Don’t. If you’re serious about sustaining and growing your company, the last thing you want to do is slow things down. You don’t bail out. You look for ways to overcome the obstacles. You keep marketing.

Spending wisely, and cutting unnecessary expenses is always a wise strategy. Now may be a very good time to review your overall business expenditures and make some cuts. The trick is, which ones? Expenses that do not give a good return on investment should be the first to be scrutinized. Take a look at your operational efficiencies, such as reducing employee turnover. Review you systems and processes to see how your team can function more productively. Consider things like seminar venue expenses and scale back a bit. But, don’t cut back on the marketing.

Marketing is All About Momentum

A short moratorium on advertising may not hurt sales too much and it will cut costs and improve profitability for the short-term. However, is it worth saving a few dollars now if it puts your sustainability and growth at risk? The answer is no. The trouble is that stopping advertising may be a ticking time bomb. Marketing is all about momentum. A doctoral thesis on milk advertising in the United States revealed the delayed nature of the time bomb. Nothing happened to sales in the short term after ceasing advertising. Nothing, that is, for 12 months. But after 12 months there was a sharp decline. The milk industry started advertising again. However, it took 18 months to get back to previous sales figures. What kind of profits do you think the industry lost in that 18 months?
The same holds true for financial advisors. Here’s a story about a senior financial advisor (Sue) who stopped advertising in her local paper, hoping to maintain profitability in an economic downturn. There was no immediate difference in revenue. A year later, Sue ran into an ideal customer she had been prospecting for years. The prospect greeted her and congratulated her on her retirement, assuming she had closed her business when she no longer saw the ad in the newspaper. This prospect continued by noting her current advisor had left the business after 30 years and that she had been looking for a new one. Thinking Sue wasn’t in business any longer, this prospect had already moved to someone else.

And so, years of faithful business building and visibility went right down the drain. This story reinforces a key principle of marketing: protect what you have already built. This is particularly important in economic downturns. Clients and prospects will remember that when times are tough, you’re still around. They’ll be more loyal, and they’ll be more apt to trust you if they know they can rely on you in good times and bad.

Keep On Keepin’ On In Economic Downturns

Being in the right place at the right time can yield opportunities. To keep your client base healthy and your business successful, you need to be in the right place all the time, so that when your buyers are ready, you’re right there, ready to take care of their needs—that’s how you build a business.

If you think marketing and advertising is a faucet you can turn on and off, think again. One of the challenges of marketing is getting recognized in the sea of sameness and having your message stand out from the crowd. Imagine that the crowd disappears for awhile and you’re one of the few players out there. Now, breaking through the clutter and getting attention isn’t so tough. Keeping your business visible in a time when most prefer to hide says something that matters.

Your challenge is to navigate the course during this period of adversity and turn it into a time of opportunity. Go ahead. Execute your marketing and make the call. If you don’t, someone else will.

If you think you’re not getting a good return on your marketing investment, you need to ask yourself why. Are you making frivolous expenditures? Are you targeting the right customers with the right message? Are you sporadic with your marketing, or steady? Are you working to your plan? Most importantly, do you have plan? Think long term, and focus on how you want to grow your company. If you’re not happy with the answers to the questions above, call us. We can help you devise and follow a plan to build and sustain your success.



Comments are closed.