Making the Best of the Economic Downturn - Part 3 - Shop in Your Customer's Shoes

In our last post, we said that your best response to the new marketing landscape — depressed economy, reduced purchasing, more careful customers and more timid competitors -- is to take proactive measures to ensure that when those more careful customers compare you with your more timid competitors, you'll be their supplier of choice.

But how can you know what proactive measures to take?  Put yourself in the place of a potential customer.  One who has a need for something in your category -- a strong enough need for them to make a purchase despite the fact that times are tight.  Because times are tight, they'll be more careful in their selection.  They'll be less likely to shop where they've shopped before.  Hoping to minimize costs, they'll take a fresh look at the field.

That is, they'll take a fresh look at your competitors — and you.  (This is true of new customers, your competitors' customers and your current customers.)  When they make this comparison, what will they be looking for?  And what will they find?

Very likely, their search will begin (and perhaps end) on the Web.  So first make sure that one of the things they find is your website.  There's an old saying, out of sight, out of mind.  Today's version is, out of Google, out of business.

Amazingly, considering all the SEO, marketing and web design firms as well as business writers out there, this phrase is not in Google at the time of writing (October, 2008).  This is proof that with all the myriad marketing messages pouring out each day, someone with originality and insight can still say something new and noteworthy.

Okay, so they find your website, and they find the websites of your competitors.  What will your competitors' websites look like?  Probably pretty much the way they do now, except perhaps for lower prices and special offers.  As we said, most of your competitors will probably try to "wait it out."  The more severe the downturn, the more likely they'll do nothing.  They'll wait for the good times to somehow return.

But the good times may not return to them.  Not if you grab their customers now.  And it's much easier to be competitive now.  When the market is hot, it's hard to out-maneuver competitors because you don't know what they're about to do.  Everyone is making moves.  But when the market is down, most companies go into slow motion, so if you don't, you've got the dance floor to yourself and can dance circles around your competition.

So imagine yourself as that careful customer, with a tight budget and a strong need.  With that mindset, go to the website of each of your competitors, and also your own.  Shop in your customer's shoes.  It's a good idea to enlist others in this also, who may see with less sophisticated, less biased eyes — people without your insider's perspective.  Ideally, you can enlist people who are similar to your customers, if not actual customers.

At each site, "shop around" with the pretended intent of making a purchase.  What draws you?  What stops you?  What gives you confidence?  What confuses or repels you?  What's missing, that's needed in order to reel you in and close the deal?

And then — well, see our next post.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing