Their Downturn is Your Upturn

"Strategy" as a cheap, practical activity for leaner times

If you're reading this, you probably work in marketing.

(You're also probably very smart and cool, because this blog is awesome).

While a would-be downturn seems like a terrible time for marketing, it's actually a great time for cheap, easy and invigorating efforts that will elevate you to the top of this tidal wave.

You may be in one of two positions:

1. Your budgets have been magically preserved
2. Your budgets have been vigorously slashed

If you're in the first position, bless you. Dig into the inventiveness that flourishes in tough times. Find unique ways to speak to your customers about your role in helping them through it all.

Emerge as their friend when other brands have gone dark.

If you're in the second position, take heart. You will use this time to fix problems that have plagued your organization for years.

Companies in both positions will benefit from a healthy review of their current state of affairs...

Conduct a marketing audit

A marketing audit is a controlled effort to review what you're doing and either consolidate messages or form new ones.

If you're in position one:

Grab a conference room.

Brainstorm about the numerous ways your brand and product messaging can be tweaked to express value, comfort, longevity, partnership, care and loyalty -- qualities bringing relief to tough times.

Look at all of your customer touch points. Eliminate redundant communication, focusing your efforts on high value, high return efforts to reach customers with inventive new messaging.

Get creative. Be bold in asserting a confidence customers can cling to when everything appears to be falling apart.

Think long-term, however, about more timeless brand values you can reassert. Find ways to sync these up with more trend-oriented messaging. Build a brand that will stay relevant in the inevitable upswing.

If you're in position two:

Grab a conference room.

Spread out copies of ads, collateral, direct mail, letters, website messaging, emails and other communications you still send out. Can any of them be eliminated?

Look more carefully at the combined (or often disjointed) "story" these materials are telling, and start documenting new ways to position yourself when an execution budget arises.

While you're doing this, take a good look at all of your customer touch points to also identify any redundancies or gaps.

The initial cost of these efforts could be as much as, I don't know, whatever it costs in internal hours to rent a conference room and perhaps order one of those big boxes of coffee. If you have an outside someone you trust, you may ask them to facilitate the discussion and certainly assist with the brainstorming part, if it comes to that.

In any case, cost savings can be an outcome of these efforts. Some organizations, particularly health care insurers, save many thousands by eliminating unecessary member communications.

Conduct a mental audit

What? Yes. I am so far from being an economist, but I believe perception and attitude play a huge role in changing the kinds of behaviors that can jumpstart an economy.

Am I deluded?

One way we can act on this is by helping out others who may have lost jobs. Getting out of our own heads for a bit will be a huge relief, and will magically free up our best thinking about solutions to the problems that plague us personally.

Good times are on the way, I swear it. What you do today will help you take full advantage of the upswing when it arrives.