SMEs Recession Survival Tips (Part 2)

Adapting to the Recession and Winning Sales
In the previous article we highlighted how businesses need to get to grips with their current financial situation and covered a few ways to improve their current cash flow.

This article will look at how businesses can adapt to the recession and win contracts and sales to further strength their position.

Adapt to the current economic climate
The recession has forced all of us to revaluate our spending habits, which has had a big impact on consumer behavior. People are certainly down shifting from luxury goods and services making these areas very vulnerable. If a business fails to take these changes into account they are going to find the recession very hard to survive.

Good examples of recession adaptation are retailers like Waitrose and M&S they have adapted their marketing to suit the times. Waitrose has introduced a new essential range to take advantage of the down shifting shopper and prevent losing customers to cheaper retailers.

Meanwhile M&S is pushing the value for money angle with the slogan "Quality worth every penny" plus using tradition multi buy offers. These retailers are facing up to the recession and doing their up most to protect their business by adapting.

Look after existing customers
Recession survival is not all about chasing new customers and certainly not at the expense of existing ones. A businesses current or previous customers are a much easier reselling proposition providing they had a positive experience and still require your products or services.

By talking to their customers a business can find out what it is they want from them and how their needs might have changed. This information can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns aimed at existing or previous customers that encourage repeat sales and reward customer loyalty.

Sadly no business can expect to retain every customer as there are many factors outside their control, which effect customer behavior, however a successful business should expect to always retain a core of loyal repeat purchasers.

Review your advertising and marketing
Businesses should avoid stopping all advertising just to make short term savings, as the cost can be fewer sales and competitors take their place. By being smart with business promotion SMEs can make their advertising and marketing campaigns work hard for them.

Promotional campaigns should always pay for themselves as well as bring in extra revenue. So it’s vital that businesses have clear advertising goals for each campaign and accurate ways to measure them. This way they can make sure all promotional efforts produce the results they want and stop any that are failing to deliver.

For businesses that need extra help in this area a good marketing consultant can assess them by reviewing their current promotional efforts, recommending changes and new campaign strategies, plus collate and measure each campaign results.

Cutting prices
Slashing prices is a tempting solution, but businesses need to be realistic, customers don’t just want cheaper products/services they want real value for money. In addition SMEs need to protect their profits.

By reviewing pricing businesses can make sure their pricing is competitive, but in addition should always look for ways to add value first without cutting prices.

Winning contracts by targeting the right sectors
Targeting the right sectors is one way to win the best contracts like supermarkets or public sector organizations. Both like to use small businesses and have plenty of support and advice on what they require and how to go about bidding for a contract.

These suggestions are just a few steps SMEs can take to adapt to the recession and improve their sales; however, for more detailed and expert promotional advice businesses should consider hiring the services of an experienced marketing consultant.

In the next article we will look at how businesses can make further improvements to both save money and strengthen their position.

Author: L M McMahon - Hedley Basford Management Consultants

Resources: Hedley Basford skilled and experienced marketing consultants are committed to making your business more successful by offering you a personal service with honesty and integrity.