Keep Business Up with the Economy Down

• December 17, 2008
• by Collateral Staff

[caption id="attachment_247" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Keep track of what marketing is working so you can spend your marketing budget smarter."][/caption]

As the economy continues to struggle, companies are searching for ways to trim the fat off their expenses while bringing in new business. In an effort to save money, many companies make the mistake of cutting their marketing budget thinking it is the most expendable line item. In times of financial difficulty, however, companies should assess how they're spending their marketing budget and adjust if necessary before slashing through it with a red pen.

McGraw-Hill Research looked at 600 different companies in 16 different industries between 1980 and 1985 to study the effects of a recession on businesses. They found that over a six year period companies that did not cut their advertising budgets in the year before and the first two years after a recession began saw business rise 256% more than companies who had decided to cut their marketing budget. Even during the recession, these companies had significantly more business than companies who cut advertising throughout the recession. As Bruce Barton, co-founder of leading international advertising firm BBDO, said, "In good times, people want to advertise. In bad times, they have to." Instead of cutting your advertising budget, determine your marketing effectiveness and adjust your marketing plan accordingly.

"I Know Half My Advertising Is Wasted, I Just Don't Know Which Half."

What is marketing effectiveness? Marketing effectiveness is basically determining which advertising outlets give you the most bang for your buck, or how people are finding out about you. Why does this help? If you can tell where your advertising dollars are getting the best return on investment, or ROI, you can target your marketing plan to the places where you are getting the most business per advertising dollar spent.

The first step in marketing effectiveness is quite simple - answer your phone! You cannot get new business if you are not answering your phone or checking your email throughout the day. As a bail agent, you are dealing with people who are confused and frightened. If they get no answer, a busy signal, or an answering machine, they will call the next person who might be able to help them. If you spend a lot of time at the jail or courthouse, get a smart phone such as a Blackberry or iPhone and have your calls and emails forwarded to your phone.

Once you are answering all your calls and emails, keep track of how people are finding you. This can simply be done by asking, "If you don't mind me asking, how did you find us today?" Perhaps the caller is an attorney who met you at a networking event or saw you featured in a story on the local news. While some answers are direct, such as, "I found you in the phonebook," others may require some digging on your part. If a client says they found you on Google, does that mean they found your web page from Google? Maybe their web search directed them to an online directory where you have a listing. Record where people are finding you through the use of a call sheet. A call-sheet is basically a spreadsheet with columns for the caller's name, defendant's name, indemnitor's name, amount of the bond, contact info, and how the client found you. Train every member of your staff who may answer the phone to ask the client how they found your business and to record it on the call sheet. While this may seem tedious, it is essential for determining your marketing effectiveness - if you don't know how people are hearing about you, you can't know which marketing outlets are successful.

Now that you know how people are finding your business, sit down and evaluate your marketing strategy. Compile all the data from your call sheets for either a month or a quarter, and list all of the places you are currently marketing and how much you are spending at each place. Record the number of calls you received from each marketing source, along with the amount of business you received from that source. Now comes the potentially hard part - determining which marketing outlets brought you the most business or inquiries and which brought in the least. If advertising in an online directory is bringing in a lot of business, consider increasing your online exposure. Free up money for advertising that is working by analyzing marketing that is not working. Perhaps sponsoring a little league team and advertising in bathroom stalls didn't bring in any calls. While you might want to move your advertising dollars from bathroom stalls to the internet, sponsoring a little league team is not only a branding experience but allows you to give back to the community, and therefore may be worth keeping. Consider short term gain versus long term value when updating your marketing plan.

"Always Be Marketing"

In addition to evaluating your current marketing plan, consider easy or low-cost additions to increase your brand exposure. Look at your email address. Does it identify that you are a bail agent? If not, get an email address that does. Do you have an automatic signature attached to every email that is sent with your name, business, and contact information? If not, add that immediately. While these may seem like minor things, it takes seven exposures to a brand for it to become ingrained in a person's mind. Any time you can get someone to associate you with being a bail agent, you are increasing your branding opportunities. By having an email address and signature that reminds people you are a bail agent, you brand yourself every time you send an email.

Another easy way to market yourself is so simple people tend to overlook it. Carry your business cards with you wherever you go. You never know who may be a potential client, or when you will run into a lawyer who may send you clients. Your business card represents who you are as a professional.

The final way to increase your branding opportunities is to develop an online presence. If you do not have a web site, now is the time to build one. Make sure you include your contact information at the top of every page - you want to make it easy for people to contact you. If you already have a web site, consider updating it. Stay away from music and animation; you want to make it quick and easy for a potential client to see who you are, what you do, and how they can contact you. For more information on building a bail website, see . There are also free ways to market yourself online. Lawyers are quickly establishing a web presences on popular social networking sites such as LinkedIn, which is essentially a giant online professional networking site. Create a LinkedIn account which allows you to create a profile outlining your professional experience and skills and lets you interact with other professionals in your area. If you are not internet savvy, consider taking computer classes through your local library or community center, which are often offered at little or no cost. In the meantime, explore the possibility of hiring an intern from a local college to help you establish an online presence in exchange for school credit.

"Marketing is not an event..."

In the words of Jay Conrad Levinson, "Marketing is not an event, but a process...it has a beginning, a middle, but never an end. You improve it, perfect it, change it...but you never stop it completely." When the economy suffers, improve your marketing, try to make it more effective, and add to it where you can - just don't stop marketing to save money. While you might not spend your marketing budget, you will have a near impossible time getting new clients if no one knows who you are. By targeting your marketing in an effective manner, you can continue to increase business without increasing costs.