The marketing lessons I learned from the great recession are probably applicable to any business. You may already know these but there might be a marketing jewel or two in here for everyone.

So let’s get to Lesson #1:

Have a Serious Emergency Fund

I don’t know about you but I almost lost everything in this recession. I couldn’t make payments on my house and was scrambling to get some kind of income going to keep from winding up on the street. I will never let myself be that vulnerable again.

I had always taken every dime I made and poured it back into the business. I was totally focused on growing the business and didn’t even think about the proverbial rainy day. Well, my wife and I now have a rainy day fund and we are building it up with regular payments until it will cover our living expenses for 6 months.

Lesson #2:

Invest More in your Marketing when Everyone Else is Cutting their Marketing

When the bottom fell out, I found myself sitting at my desk without a thing to do. One morning, I got disgusted and said to myself, “You claim to be an online marketing whiz. so why are you sitting here with no work?”

Properly chastised, I started going through my marketing books looking for low-cost or no-cost marketing ideas. I then created a goal and a marketing plan to get there. The goal was being first page of Google for my primary keyword phrase Online Marketing Minneapolis.

I developed a marketing plan and put it into effect; working the plan every day. In two months, I was first page in Google for Online Marketing Minneapolis. You’re welcome to plug that keyword into google and see for yourself. I also plan to stay there.

Almost every business owner I know pulled the plug on their marketing during the recession. That is the worst possible thing you can do. A handful of business owners I know increased their marketing and like me, have gained a great deal of market share at the expense of the business owners who cut their marketing. Which one were you?

Lesson #3

Marketing Alliances Pay Big Dividends

With things so slow, I really started thinking about some of the people I knew who were in similar businesses but were not direct competitors. How could we help each other? I decided to copy an idea from BNI called Synergy groups. Here’s how one BNI group describes it:

You can develop synergy groups that expand your business. Synergy groups bring together related specialties into strategic partnerships.

I had a number of friends who were blogging regularly. I contacted each of them and asked if they’d like to form a blog alliance. In other words, we would subscribe to each other’s blogs and whenever anyone in the alliance posted a new blog post, the rest of us would immediately come to their blog and comment on it.

Why is that important?

Because Google places higher importance on blogs that get regular comments. The more the better. (As long as they’re valuable comments and not things like, “Wow. great post. Thanks.” – Those I delete immediately.) We’ve also agreed to do guest posts on each other’s blogs. Between the two of them, these activities do three things:

1) They expose your content to a whole new set of people (those who visit or subscribe to your friend’s blogs.)

2) As people see your comments showing up regularly on other blogs, they will come and check you out and maybe subscribe to your blog.

3) People tend to comment on blogs that get comments. Have you been blogging and not getting any comments? That’s why. No one wants to be first.

That’s it for now. If you have any lessons you’ve learned from the Great Recession, please share them with us in the comments.

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Bob McClain or WordsmithBob, has been a website copywriter in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, since 2000. He has focused on developing new, more effective approaches to web writing, web content, web copywriting and Search Engine Optimization. Starting with a BA in Technical Communication and a minor in Creative Writing from Metro State University in St. Paul, McClain has worked diligently to end the use of "corp-speak" and "technospeak" online. His approach is to “humanize” the Web, using real information to guide people to buy rather than turning websites into advertisements that people can easily ignore. McClain is also the creator of Cheap SEO Website Marketing, a website devoted to helping people with the best solutions to DIY SEO at an affordable cost with tips and software reviews. More at Cheap SEO Website Marketing

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Originally posted 2010-03-17 09:00:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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