Aboriginal Buying Group

This just seems to be the way the world is at the moment and by no means is your company the only one suffering. However are you doing what many companies are doing and just blaming things like a poor marketing agency?

The thing is advertisement has a lot to do with the failure of a business. The big companies like Pepsi and Coca Cola can afford to have huge advertising campaigns that include television ads, magazine articles and even mobile phone ads. What can you do to really boost the way in which your company is seen? Well for starters it might be worth looking into hitting your business’s local town. Sometimes this is a lot cheaper and can be a good way to start out advertising for your company. By doing this you will start to bring in a few customers that may give you enough money to take it a bit further. There are a number of ways to advertise and they don’t always have to be £20,000 television ads. For most companies it started with a simple ad in a local newspaper, it can happen for you too.

Is your website a bit rubbish compared to your competitiors? Every year more and more business is undertaken online, a movement led by pioneers such as amazon.{com and ebay}. If you think you could do well by having a decent website then think about going to a specialist team. Searching for a local web designer would be my advice to a business looking to save costs, because often the best deal is right on your doorstep - for example enter something locally specific in your search engine such as Web design in Brighton

Don’t ignore your offline presence either - ensuring you have the right printing design can take you along way because the combination of a seamless online and offline presence for your brand can really work wonders. If you can this to be something unique and something that will stand out then you are well on your way to success.

The credit crunch is like a hurricane rolling through town: merciless and brutal, sweeping up and destroying anything that’s not properly secured.The UK has seen the fall of some pretty big and well established retailers such as Woolworths and MFI in recent months. Now its the turn for diamond and pearl jewellery retailer Diamonds & Pearls. The jewellery retailer, based in Bedford, just north of London, have recently announced they’re going into administration. Over three hundred jobs could be lost, with 91 high street stores across the UK under threat of closure.Global accountancy and management consultancy firm KPMG have been named as administrators. Myles Halley, and Richard Philpott, the administrators appointed by KPMG Restructuring, said they plan on selling up the business and are looking for a buyer.It was clear from their statement that this is going to lead to branch closures, and, in their words, “a number of redundancies”.

So another one bites the dust and joins the growing list of recession casualties in 2009. Yet fairly recently the chain described itself as ‘one of the UK’s fastest growing fashion retailers’. So what exactly went wrong? Does this mean it’s set in stone that if you’re one of the smaller players in the retail industry, you will not survive? Not in my opinion. While Diamonds & Pearls’ physical stores may have been doing well in recent years, a quick look at their website, www.diamondspearls.co.uk - and you’ll quickly see the problem. Leave aside the poor web design and head straight for the ominous sounding Online Shop link - you get the message “Our Online Shop is currently under development, Please call back soon”! Well I never! End of mystery, to my mind. There’s no doubt in my mind that Diamond & Pearls suffered because they completely failed to complement their stores with a web presence. The one defining feature of consumer behaviour in the credit crunch is that people are going online to find the cheapest prices. This is especially important for small to medium businesses. If you are not at least holding your own in the online world, and relying purely on traditional methods of retail, its simply become a question of how long before you go bust, not whether you do. Even retail giants such as MFI, Woolworths and most recently Principles have suffered greatly. One of the key failings of all these retailers was that they didn’t have a strategy for online sales and marketing at a time when their competitors were staying afloat by these means. If I was looking for information on saltwater pearls, or browsing for freshwater pearl jewellery for a Mother’s Day gift, the first thing I’d do is search for those things. The same as hundreds of thousands of internet shoppers would also do - and they wouldnt have found Diamonds & Pearls this way
. If you run a retail business, take note, or you could end up in the same state as them.

The advantages far outweigh the drawbacks during a downturn when viewed from an online marketing perspective.

Every dollar spent on marketing whether online or offline give you much more during a recession if you apply your resources in the right way, like your ability to get the maximum from you publisher with your negotiating skills. If you take it positively, this is a god-sent opportunity for a marketer to get more return on your investment on marketing and advertising of your products.

Actually, businesses benefit more during a downturn provided you continue investing in marketing and advertising. This can be confirmed from various studies conducted by highly-acclaimed researchers. f you compare the statistics, you will notice that those businesses that promoted aggressively their products always gained 4% to 5% in market share when compared with their competitors who did not hike their spending on marketing/advertising during a downturn.

The key factors that you should take into account when marketing and advertising during a downturn are:

Customers: You know very well that in any business, customer is the king. It is highly recommended to provide all benefits to your customers like discounts and gifts and extra facilities like free downloads and free tools to help the customers to get more value from their online experience. This will ensure your customers will come back again and again to your business and thereby generate more sales.

Flexibility: For you to be flexible, you should be alert and oriented of your customers search behavior pattern. In other words, monitor your customers for what actually they are searching for, and then change your marketing/advertising strategies accordingly. Any rigid approach on your marketing strategy will backfire on you.

Cost-Affective Targeting: Please note that not everybody will succeed in cost-affective targeting. For any business to succeed, you should have certain key elements like well-known brand name, multiple products, targeted advertising, after-sales service, and support. These key elements are vital for any business to succeed. Any missing elements will have an adverse effect on your cost-affective targeting.

If you have studied recession or downturn long enough, you will find that this phenomenon does not last longer than 11 months or a year. Take recession positively, study it well, and apply your marketing and advertising strategies accordingly without compromising or downgrading your marketing and advertising costs. The key elements like well-known brand name, multiple products, targeted advertising, after-sales service, and support are to be incorporated into your business if you want to succeed.