How to Handle Tough Economy

By Grace Kisner




Commercial cycles are inescapable. If you adjust your marketing section formula accordingly, you can survive the difficult times and grow in the good times, for an overall effect of quicker expansion and higher profits than the standard marketer who fails to adjust quickly to changing business weather. What to do? These steps help smart marketers get through that tricky period and appear stronger.

Control your own costs. Sales fall because your clients are attempting to control their spending. If you do not cut your is more expensive offensively than they do, your profits will be squeezed. Renegotiate contracts when possible. Switch to cheaper price suppliers or ingredients. Lay off idle workers. Find out how to cut back your use of energy, even if it suggests doing your baking at night when electricity is most cost-effective or closing off part of your space and not heating it. Be a miser.

Don't make the error of waiting to see what occurs.

Take the lead in changing the guidelines of your business. Two. Change your offerings. The things people buy in good industrial times are different to the things they buy in bad times, but folk still buy. Work out what you should be selling in a down economy by imagining that you are beginning a new business for this economy, using the assets of your old business as building blocks. As an example, if you have a luxury cafe, think about what sort of food firm you can change it to that'll be profitable with a menu primarily based on lower priced ingredients, a smaller,less very skilled kitchen staff, and fewer waitstaff. As quickly as you've worked out the details, print a new menu and make the changes.

To hesitate is to lose cash, so make those changes straight away. You can always return to the old formula next year or whenever the economy turns around. Ideas for adjusting your offering ( if you are a restaurant adjusting for a down economy ) include smaller portions, more cost-effective ingredients or parts, shorter term contracts and options, and anything that reduces the price, risk, or up-front investment for your clients. Downsized offerings are considerate and appropriate in harder times.

Three. Keep marketing! Don't vanish from shopper radar screens.

Once you've controlled your costs and changed your offerings for the current position, get back out there with modest, short term investments in new signs and local paper advertisements, lists in Web directories, radio advertisements, a mailer, or what ever you suspect might work to reach gunshy shoppers.

Boost your use of key phrase adverts ( pay per click advertising ) on Google and Yahoo! Because these search engines target only those patrons who are still shopping despite the bad economy. Although sales are down, some folks will purchase. Be the plain, pragmatic choice for them, and you will even grow your business in the bad times and appear a stronger leader come the subsequent economic boom.