5 Ways to Keep Your Customers Buying – Despite the Recession

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5 Ways to Keep Your Customers Buying – Despite the Recession

Down, but not out. That’s how you should think of today’s economy.

True, people are spending less, but they’re still spending. People and companies are simply choosier about where and how they spend, so they can come through the down times stronger and safely. By understanding and catering to customer psychology in the following five ways, you can ensure coming out of the downturn a winner.

1. Pursue a more receptive, ready-to-buy audience.

This might mean targeting more upscale prospects than you have been, re-examining the zip codes to which you mail promotions or going after clients in industries less affected by the economic downturn, such as IT, energy, education and health care. For your company, to keep your customers buying, the relevant indicator might be the availability of time rather than money. For example, when the economy slows down, people might have more time for scrapbooking projects, do-it-yourself, home improvements or finishing a manuscript.

2. Look for leverage.

If you work with a group rather than individuals, you can earn more in the same amount of time even while each your buying customer pay less. An ingenious implementation of this is a program called “Fitness by Phone” in which personal trainers keep clients motivated for their workouts by telephone rather than in person. Note also that neither the trainers nor the clients have to travel to work together this way – a relevant factor when gas prices are high.

3. Follow up automatically.

Autoresponder technology from companies like Aweber.com, Getresponse.com and some shopping carts enables you to create a sequence of timed messages that are triggered by a request, purchase or signup. Put this sequence in place once, and it tirelessly continues educating or selling for you from then on. Some shrewd entrepreneur is soon going to enable the same kind of automatic triggering for postcards and other mailed pieces. In the meantime, postcard and lettershop vendors like PostcardBuilder let you design an item online, then upload your customer database for sending on a specific date. Be smart, keep your customers buying by getting follow-up systems working for you now.

4. Collect testimonials.

Here’s something else to take care of if you’re not already doing it: Tell service clients and those who’ve purchased your products that you’re looking for success stories. Ask them how they have benefited from your offerings? Ask permission to use a concise, juicy version of their comments on postcards, on your web site and in sales presentations. If you’ve been collecting written testimonials, maybe it’s time to step up to audio and video ones. Testimonials that describe specific results help persuade on-the-fence prospects to keep buying.

5. Become timely – Pro-active not Reactive.

Look at the the current situations in your marketing segments. Explicitly relate your expertise and what you do, day after day, to what’s on most people’s minds.

Let’s say you run a day care center. These days, you are providing a refuge for children from their parents worries.
Or if you sell home heating fuel. Explain how you’re working hard to help families keep their homes warm this winter.

Creativity, resourcefulness and a can-do attitude will pull you ahead of all the gloom-and-doomers and keep your customers buying. Make a deliberate effort to hang around with optimists. Then get to work.

Master marketer Marcia Yudkin, author of Meatier Marketing Copy, has been selling information since 1981. This article is excerpted from her report, “33 Keys to Thriving During a Recession”