So, now what?
If you’re like me, you may be experiencing difficulty maintaining a cheerful outlook as you move into 2009, (especially after digesting the past week’s media highlights from 2008). Being a closet optimist, it’s hard for me to absorb the daily news without feeling conflicted and becoming negative.
If I were a Hollywood film director and this were my movie, here’s the place where I would bring in the superhero. Instead I’m a communications guy – a 25-year veteran of corporate marketing and branding – who wishes to help owners and managers of small to mid-size businesses, (or anyone whose marcom department is being rapidly depleted), maintain their marketing and communication through the economic downturn. I feel I can create the same effect as the film director and bring in the superhero. You!
My goal, in the next few weeks, is to present a few super-simple, powerful tools that will help to get a handle on some basic communication issues your company may be experiencing, such as:
• ensuring your brand has optimum sales strength
• communicating your values and building trust with customers
• marketing your products/services with little or no money
• increasing your customers’ desires to buy from you.
I’m committing myself to a new post every few days that will provide you with new ideas that will help you communicate more effectively with your customers. As we go along, please join in and share any questions, comments or ideas.
One caveat: My main objective with this series is to make these posts easy for anyone to understand. My intention is not to provide an academic study. We can go there in future blog posts, but for now, let’s just proceed in this direction.
With that in mind, let’s try on our superhero suit and test our x-ray vision.
Click here to begin the first step.
rich
Thanks Rich for this resource. One good thing about economic times like these is that they interrupt our momentum and cause us to reconsider our current methods and assumptions. I.e., what is my company’s identity, what are we really offering, which aspects of it are most valuable, what is our market, what is our best message to that market, and which media should we use to convey that message most effectively?
I’ve been reading an old marketing paper, a 1960 classic “Marketing Myopia” in which the author asks “What business are you really in?” It’s just as relevant today as it was then. If we fail to understand our business and how our offering serves the market, we may fail completely.
Again, these times are a wake-up call to reconsider our assumptions and to reinvent our approach to business.
John, thank you. I couldn’t agree more. This time period allows us the perfect opportunity to step back and make sure we have ourselves together. We may decide decide its time to reinvent ourselves. Perfect opportunity. Again, thanks!