During a recession, the business landscape transforms itself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Lucrative opportunities come about that are otherwise unattainable during better and brighter times. I believe when the going gets tough, truly great entrepreneurship shines. After all, you are forced to be more creative with your efforts to build value. You will likely consider new partnerships; new sales approaches; dump business models, projects and people that don’t perform; empower your remaining staff to do more; and, most importantly, reevaluate your marketing strategy.
Often, the natural inclination to recession-proof a business is to slash marketing costs. That is the last thing you want to do. Studies completed on marketing during the recessions of the 70s, 80s and 90s show that the smartest thing to do is to spend on marketing. In fact, a study published by McGraw-Hill shows that companies that continued or increased their marketing spend during a recession had 256% higher sales than the companies who chose to cut or halt their marketing budgets. Moreover, companies that went into hibernation and tried to reestablish their brand position after recovery paid 4 to 5 times the amount saved by their marketing budget cuts. (If you are a marketer and contemplating how to talk to your CFO, read this).
There is no doubt that marketing is costly, but we have to remember that it is what drives sales. Like every other aspect of a business, when there is less money to spend on marketing, we simply have to become effective.
Mobile marketing is an ideal recession-proof marketing tool. Text-message and mobile site campaigns let you initiate an opt-in conversation with your target audience for a fraction of the cost of any traditional media campaign. Depending on how you do it, you can typically pay only upon success (e.g. when a message has been delivered or a mobile site is viewed). Because of this performance-based marketing approach, you can clearly measure the ROI of your efforts. In August, I published a Techvibes article listing the various studies that emphatically showed the positive correlation between mobile marketing, brand awareness and intent to purchase. Mobile Marketers’ Mickey Khan recently published an excellent SWOT analysis of mobile marketing. It is a must read if you are looking to shake up your marketing strategy with new and more cost effective tactics.
Despite industry analyst forecasted cut backs on traditional media and even online marketing, mobile marketing spend is poised to double this year. Of course, that’s not really all that difficult. Despite the very clear benefits of mobile marketing, it still remains a miniscule piece of the marketing pie. Thus, the only way it can really go is up. In a recession, that is a good sign. We should all be using it to differentiate ourselves and drive sales in the same direction.
I attended the recent Salesforce.com Users conference last week which is now aptly called Dreamforce. Aptly because the overwhelming theme this year, was the ‘Cloud’ and I suppose most dreaming takes place in the clouds.
It’s a gathering that attracts almost 10,000 which is held in San Francisco. This is my second trip there, but the first as an attendee, and in particular for their Partner Summit. The perspective as an attendee is certainly a different one for me, running from one session to another, makes exhibiting actually seem like a breeze.
Salesforce.com marketers rank among some of the best in B2B marketing, and the best practices sessions were very good. These marketers know how to run campaigns, and measure everything. Email marketing is assumed, and marketing automation like ActiveConversion is quickly being adopted. Aggressive doesn’t even describe the kind of energy that the marketers here exude. You wouldn’t want to be marketing against these guys, unless you’re a Salesforce.com marketer as well.
With over 220+ booths, and a packed schedule, it was hard just to get 2 hours in to do the expo justice, as aisle after aisle of Salesforce.com AppExhange partners hustled their SaaS offerings. AppExchange partners integrate their offering with Salesforce.com to produce marketing automation solutions, hosting, integrated email, data cleansing etc. You name it, and it was probably here. Award for the newest innovation at the expo from me goes to Zuora, which is a billing platform for Appexchange partners.
Force.com, which is their platform for creating applications in the cloud, is still a primary focus. I was at the introduction last year, but now I’ve seen and met people actually on it. It has traction, if for no other reason than Microsoft, IBM, Google or anyone else really has a platform for Cloud Computing. Microsoft has announced, but without a credible presence in SaaS, they will need to do some catching up.
There didn’t seem to be much Canadian representation at the expo, except for the CRMfusion guys from Toronto who do a great job of data cleansing with their product. I did meet a number of Canadians that were attendees. Ian Hayes of Breakeven Solutions was particularly noteworthy, as he runs a company that helps non-profits (exclusively) use Salesforce.com effectively. A great idea, and in a way, a great cause.
There were 3 keynote speeches, each taking 2 hours by Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO), Michael Dell and Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point). And the ‘Global Gala’ featured the Foo Fighters for 2 hours of classic rock. An absolutely packed agenda.
A lot to Dream in 2.5 days. But if you ever get the chance, and particularly if you're a Salesforce.com user, it’s well worth going.
ActiveConversion is the technology leader in total marketing measurement (TMM) and demand generation for SMBs. We help companies manage marketing... [more]
Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services. More companies trust their vital customer and... [more]
Renton, WA-based Etelos recently launched Etelos Platform Suite, which lets companies move their application to the cloud. The twist? No coding required. Etelos has offered a CRM and a marketplace for selling apps in the past, but after recently canning their CEO, founder and new CEO Danny Kolke has refocused on more (hopefully for Etelos) profitable ventures.
Etelos is responding to what their customers want, says Kolke.
"Our larger partners want the opportunity to have their own marketplaces and tools to manage distribution channels. Additionally, they have applications that they need to move to the web for implementation and scalability. The future of all software is moving to the Web for distribution, and we are proud to have Etelos powering part of that shift," Kolke says.
There are four components to the Etelos Platform Suite - the SaaS Application Platform enables tech companies to move their application or service to web-based SaaS distribution and the SaaS Marketplace Platform lets you market suites of SaaS applications and developer kits. The SaaS Distribution Platform allows tech companies and service providers sell additional SaaS/web apps to customers - distributors can purchase the marketplace and apps. The SaaS Syndication Platform lets SaaS providers distribute their app to a growing network of marketplaces.
Etelos is revolutionizing the way Web-based applications are developed, distributed and consumed to empower organizations to use Web-based... [more]
Toronto-based online invoicing up-start FreshBooks announced today the release of quarterly industry benchmarks based on anonymized aggregate data of all FreshBooks users. And with over 500,000 users to date, this data is going to have real value for small business people.
We’re releasing these benchmarks because the professionals that FreshBooks serves do not have access to the kind of performance information most other industries take for granted. The service oriented professionals that FreshBooks serves - web designers, copy writers, dog walkers, management consultants, magicians, interior designers, ISPs, computer technicians - can’t go to places like Dun and Bradstreet and buy a report about their industry. Even if they did, they’d find the metrics covered to be mostly useless to their way of evaluating the day to day performance of their business, so I’m hopeful that business owners will use this data to steer their business in the right direction in any kind of weather.
Freshbooks customers or fans are likely familiar with their report card service that gives FreshBooks account holders a quarterly snapshot of their business based on a handful of useful metrics (average time to collect payment, etc). These new industry benchmarks are similiar to the report card service however Freshbooks account holders will have access to far richer data - for example, at the profession level rather than just industry level.
Sounds like a great idea, especially when CEO Mike McDerment explains it:
Our mission is to deliver fast and simple invoicing and time tracking services that help you manage your business. We call these Unaccounting™... [more]
