How To Survive (Even Thrive) During This Recession
Copyright 2009 by Willie Crawford
We are in a real recession, despite all of the emails
that start out with, “What Recession?”
Tons of my subscribers have declared bankruptcy, or lost
jobs or homes.
U.S. unemployment is creeping past 10%.
Lots of my subscribers have simply given up - many of
them were marketing to the wrong niche - something I’ll
discuss later.
As much as a year ago, I saw more and more people
on discussion forums announcing sales or asking for
handouts to prevent losing their homes.
The BIG question is “How do you survive the recession
and emerge with a business that’s stronger than ever?”
A second question is “What should you be selling now?”
Both questions are things I’ve been asked a lot lately,
and something I’ve done a lot of thinking about. The
answers offered here actually came to me when I stopped
consciously struggling with the questions and simply
passed them questions off to my subconscious mind. In
fact, many of the answers came to me in a series of
rather strange dreams.
I know, that sounds quirky, but it’s true. For
several nights in a row I dreamed of being in
battles with strange creatures, or with roving gangs
of thugs. I faced attack after attack and was
somewhat baffled that they kept coming (seemingly
unperturbed) but I successfully defeated them all.
While sitting and thinking about those dreams, and
reflecting upon conversations with some of my mentors
on the topic of how so many online marketers are
struggling, it became clear to me.
Like the attackers in my dreams, this recession is
unlike anything most business people have ever faced
before. Like the attackers in my dreams, the
challenges are VERY persistent.
Dealing with this recession will require a lot of
resourcefulness, a serious look at what assets your
business has (and how to best use them), and
taking massive proper action.
Exactly how to do that is what I hope this special
report brings into very clear focus!
First of all, your customers are really tightening
their belts. They are more hesitant to buy things
than they’ve been in recent history, making it harder
for you to make sales. That means that you must sell
those things that they aren’t hesitant to buy - those
things that they view as “must haves!”
Incidentally, even your wealthier prospects are
tightening their belts.
For MOST marketers that I’ve discussed the topic with,
email response rates are at an all-time DISMAL low.
For even the biggest seminar promoters (the household
names) seminar attendance is noticeable down.
The belt-tightening is painfully obvious to those
paying attention.
This means that you absolutely must offer the right
products to your customers. You must offer them
quality products that they really need and want.
As has been happening for far too long in the internet
marketing niche, just throwing together shabby
products and doing product launch after product launch
will no longer work. That kills off your customers, and also
eventually kills off your business.
I get a dozen emails many days from people inviting
me to take part in product launches. Those invites
generally come with a free review copy of the
product. There are not enough hours in the day for
me to look at them all, so I politely declined 99%
of them.
All of these product launches seem to be a sign of
the desperation! More and more internet marketers
are buckling down and cranking out “me too”
products that are often of horrendous quality!
Ok, so we know what the problem is - what about the
solution?
Let’s approach this by getting you to examine a series
of critical questions…
1) Who are your customers?
This is something many online marketers never really
seem to have nailed down. You should actually build
an online business by identifying who the core group
of customers are that you’re going to serve. Then,
you identify what it is that they really want and are
willing to pay for.
As an example, my core product is website traffic
generation, and my primary customers are other
internet marketers. When I first decided to enter
the internet marketing niche, I asked the question,
“What is it that EVERYONE in this niche needs?”
The answer was and continues to be traffic. That’s why
my core product is http://EasyPushButtonTraffic.com
2) Are you focusing on customers with money?
The formula is that you sell a product that people
actually want, to those who can and are willing to
pay for it.
Many internet marketers miss that second part. They
either try to sell a product that people are
unwilling to pay for, or they try to sell it to
people who can’t afford it.
As the recession caused noticeable shifts in my
sales to internet marketers, I actually shifted
slightly, and started focusing more on local
offline businesses.
Local offline businesses often have websites too,
they need more traffic, and most importantly, they
have budgets set aside for advertising. My only
challenge was to point out to them that spending
their advertising dollars with me was generally MORE
effective than many other forms of advertising.
While it’s very noble to want to help out people
who are struggling, you do need to ask if this can
make you any real money. Targeting the wrong
customers is why many internet marketers are
experiencing dismal sales!
3) What do your customers really need to survive this
recession?
Given that your customers are tightening their belts
and often spending only on necessities, you need to
make sure that you are selling necessities. Getting
back to my traffic example, an online business
absolutely must have traffic to survive! They can
afford to cut costs in other areas but they know that
they still need traffic.
4) How can your customers actually grow their businesses?
Sales are down for many businesses and some are even in
danger of closing their doors. Anything that you can
offer that your customers can clearly see will make a
real difference is something that they should logically
buy.
Your customers are looking for solutions to stalled
business growth - due partly to the recession. Find and
offer those solutions - real solutions to real problems.
5) What products/services are indispensable for your
customers right now?
As pointed out with the traffic example, there are
certain things that your customers must have. Look
closely at your customers, and figure out what those
things are. If you can’t figure it out on your own,
survey your customers or ask your mastermind
group!
6) Where are your customers and how do you reach them?
Your customers congregate somewhere online. The
formula for getting them to your site is to figure out
where your customers are and to stand in front of the
traffic. I do that with content (articles, podcasts, press
releases, videos).
By distributing my content in article directories,
video sharing sites, etc., I stand in front of the
pools of people who visit those site. Since I
generate a LOT of content, I use automated submissions
to get my content in as many places as possible. I
use http://EasyPushButtonTraffic.com for that.
An alternative to content distribution would be using
pay-per-click advertising, but that can get very
expensive, and most marketers that I’ve discussed the
topic with never got a positive return-on-investment.
Pay-per-click requires too much time and effort
really mastering it to be viable for most marketers.
That’s why I’m so big on content distribution. It
offers tremendous leverage with no risk.
Your customers go online looking for solutions to
their problems. You merely create content that
solves those problems and through the search engines
and directory sites they will find you.
7) How do you communicate with your customers in a
way that lets them see that your products/services
really are the answer?
At it’s simples, you merely need to talk about your
customers most painful problems, and then show them
why your product is an obvious solution.
By talking to their pain, you prove that you
understand them, and reach them on a deep emotional
level.
It is very important that you do this in a way that
leads them to conclude that your product is the ideal
solution, rather than yelling “buy my product” at
them. That method of selling has been described as
implication rather than specification.
Just remember that people like to buy, but they
generally don’t like being sold to.
What do you offer to struggling customers who often
really are cash-strapped?
Depending upon your market, your customers may really
have very little cash. Even with large companies,
cashflow is often a problem.
Often with the above situation, price is not the
issue as much as cashflow. Often the solution to
making more sales is as simple as convenient payment
terms.
The recession has affected different groups of
people in different ways though, so you do need to
ask if you’re marketing to the right group. You may
be able to continue marketing the same product, only
offering it to a different segment of the market.
My example earlier of offering “traffic” but
shifting my marketing slightly to offer it to local
businesses is the perfect example.
You can even segment your market and offer
essentially the same product to different segments
of the market at different price-points.
9) Are there other ways to monetize your traffic?
The rule is that you should always offer your
customers other “backend” products. It makes no
sense to work hard at generating a customer only to
offer him one product, and then go off in search of
another customer.
In internet marketing you capture your customer’s
contact information, and you periodically email him
about other related products. Simple enough.
If you have a website that’s largely a content
website (perhaps a blog) then you subtly
integrate recommendations for other products right
into your content.
One system that I recently tested allows you to
automatically generate webpages that have your
Amazon.com, Ebay, Clickbank, Google AdSense, etc.,
links automatically inserted. It’s finds products
related to the topic of the content, and adds your
links.
Essentially, just by sharing useful content, your site
automatically generates income for you. That system is
called Profit Mart, and you can check it out at:
http://budurl.com/ProfitMart
As you generate website visitors, you must acknowledge
that the majority of them will leave without making a
purchases. The key to monetizing that traffic is
sending them some place where you get paid. Profit
Mart does that nicely.
We’ve just covered tactics to survive, and even thrive
during this recession. All of the issues mentioned
above are important, and overlooking any one of them
could have a significant impact.
There are many millionaires made during every
recessions/depression. There’s no reason that you can’t
be one of them. The secret is taking massive proper
action - all the way through to completion.
If you found this article useful, feel free to share
it with others. An easy way to do that is to post
about it on Twitter.com mentioning my Twitter username
@WillieCrawford Please point out that the article is on
this blog at: http://budurl.com/rqqd
