By Lacey Caldwell Senko
Account Director, Connect2 Communications

All economic indicators continue to point downward, and the combination of popular “doom-and-gloom” predications and increasing financial problems might make you want to run for cover until the market rebounds.

Unfortunately, by the time the media begin to report on a turn-around, it’s already well underway. That’s because some companies have found a way to grow and thrive in trying times–while you were silent.
Sound like a crazy idea?

Maybe, but the market backs this theory. Companies like GE, Disney, and P&G all maintained, and in some cases, expanded their marketing programs during tough economic times, and grew market share.

If you want examples from the tech industry, look no further than Microsoft and Apple, both founded during the recession in the mid-70s and managed to create a fundamentally new market that changed the way we work, live and play.

This isn’t to say that marketing for the sake of having a voice is the answer. These companies didn’t win in a down market because they tried to be everywhere. They spent their marketing dollars wisely and honed in on messages that resonated with their target markets.

The key during trying times such as these is to make sure that the message you are creating demonstrates a key value to your target audience.

A lot of companies, especially in the tech industry, assume that their target customers naturally make the connection between a product’s features and the underlying values that product brings to market. This isn’t so. You need to tell them.

Whatever your message, it is paramount to make sure it relates to and connects with your audience, enabling them to feel a “bond” to and with your company.

A good way to do this is to develop messaging that speaks to the underlying values of your target audience. Mapping your company’s products and/or services to those values helps effectively unite your company with your customers.

Values such as improving ROI, creating peace of mind and instilling trust resonate especially well in a down market as customers continue to try to do more with less.

Now more than ever, it’s important to connect your product or service with how that product can help your customer realize one of their key values.

This is not about what your product does, it’s about how using it helps your customer do something better.

Does it make them more efficient so they can spend time at home with the family? Does it give them peace of mind so they don’t have to worry about a 3:00 am phone call about a problem? Does it allow them do to more while spending less money and possibly making them more successful in their career?

When your company was first founded, it was founded to help your customers accomplish something specific.

Look at your messaging and gauge whether it still speaks to that specific challenge faced. For tech companies, once you’ve identified the market needs, it’s easy to get caught up in the exciting and innovative things your product can do and lose sight of what they were created to do in the first place.

If your messaging is all about “speeds and feeds” and you’re leaving it up to your customer to figure out how to value those products’ attributes, I think you’re leaving a lot to chance.

In any market, but in particular a challenging economic market, you have to help your customers connect the dots. It is in your best interest to make sure your customers understand all the great things your products do; it will help them be more successful, more confident in the overall solution and have peace of mind.

There is also the challenge of companies getting stuck in a messaging rut, saying the same thing to the market place month after month, year after year.

This type of messaging strategy gets lost if there is nothing new for your target customers to hear and certainly doesn’t factor in market shifts, innovation and customer demand.

At Connect2 Communications, we sit down with our customers once a quarter to fine tune messaging to make sure it stays on point with the current and potential customers and accommodates external factors that might impact a customer’s decision to buy.

It’s important to remember that even during the Depression, commerce just didn’t stop dead and fall over. People still shopped and companies continued to spend money. What did happen is that people shopped differently; they shopped smarter and for things they needed or thought they needed.

They shopped for things that they considered valuable to their lives. Your job is to make sure your products are needed and that your customers value the role you play in their success and their ability to make it through rough times.

Lacey brings to Connect2 Communications over ten years of communications industry experience, specifically in public relations, strategic marketing and conference development. Most recently, Lacey served as both Marketing and Conference Consultant and Director of Education for the industry tradeshow, NXTcomm and its co-owner, the Telecommunications Industry Association.

While working with NXTcomm, Lacey developed the NXTcomm conference program, keynote program and consulted on marketing and pr strategies. Before TIA and NXTcomm, Lacey served as a Senior Marketing Program Manager for the TeleManagement Forum where she managed and developed public relations, marketing and conference development programs and strategies.