Guest post by Alexis Bonari

The Fed says we’re in recovery, but there’s no doubt in my mind that there continues to be a great amount of uncertainty about the economy. Looking at various economic indicators like gold futures, gun sales, and home security systems definitely supports this theory. People feel threatened and insecure, and that fear shows up in their spending habits. These are serious considerations marketers need to take into account in order to prosper under these dire circumstances.

We’ve all seen advertising campaigns based in fear, and as much as we may dislike these techniques, they do tend to work. Given the length of time that our current economic troubles have been going on, an increase in consumer awareness, target demographics, and media fatigue this base strategy will not be profitable for every market. A good marketer knows how to make the best of every situation, and what follows is some advice for how to successfully approach these stagnant markets.

1. Think about how your product fulfills your clients’ needs in this type of economy

For us Internet types, this is pretty obvious. Large numbers of unemployed people have taken to the Internet to try and make some cash. For bloggers, this means an increased opportunity for guest posts, for SEOs it means a larger potential client base. This group of people is not necessarily going to be the most Internet savvy crowd, but they need an income; by focusing your marketing strategy on how you can fulfill this need you are sure to win.

2. Think of how you can add value to your brand for this new demographic

With times being as tight as they are, most people, especially unemployed ones are reluctant to spend money on anything that isn’t clear in its returns. An investment of several thousand dollars, which for example, is quite reasonable for professional SEO services, may be out of their reach. If you are a well established SEO you may not want to split your services and lower your perceived value, but there are other avenues you can take to pick up that business without devaluing yourself. Be a little creative in addressing the needs of this demographic in order to convert their visits into sales. For example, stress your past successes in marketing start-ups and small businesses.

3. Learn to effectively manage fear instead of blindly playing into it

Start-ups inherently have a lot of uncertainty, especially for people that haven’t done them before. Successfully mitigating this fear is essential to prospering in this type of economy. While there is no sure fire way to do this, you’re marketing strategy should have it in mind. Prove to your customer base that an investment in your services will result in returns, and be honest with them what kinds of returns they can expect. Remember that this demographic is taking a gamble, and while you might not be able to guarantee their success, since that is dependent on the quality of their own work, you can guarantee the quality of the service you provide.

About the author
Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and researcher for College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching environmental scholarships as well as political science scholarships. Whenever she gets some free time, she enjoys watching a funny movie or curling up with a good book.

A few days ago I ran across a newspaper article that was supposed to be useful for readers looking to buy a laptop. It seemed to me it was either written by someone who knows nothing about computers and technology in general, or that they had found a very old article and translated it poorly. Either way, any reader trying to get advice from that article would have failed miserably. The paper obviously had no one tech savvy enough to write such an article. They still wanted it written and published it as it was, regardless of consequences.

Thinking of it, I realized there are actually quite a lot of businesses out there who claim to be able to do things they have no idea of. They are clueless about their real knowledge, talen and capabilities.

A great business strategy requires to give the same importance to what you can and can’t do for your customers. Each company has limited resources, be it time, number of employees or knowledge. While they might be brilliant in one field, they may not know enough or be completely unfamiliar with others. Knowing your limitations is important when designing a list of services or products to then be promoted and sold.

Once a potential client sees a product or service you are promoting, they will take it as something you are able to do. You know how to do it, have the time and personnel to do it, so contracting it would obviously lead to them getting that product or service delivered in proper conditions. Failing to do so would entail multi-level losses for a company. First off, they lose the client in queston and all his repeat purchases. Secondly, they lose all potential recommendations that person would have made. And if you’re unlucky enough, you might be facing quite a wave of negative comments and reviews from such customers.

While even the best companies might have unsatisfied customers, continuing to misleadingly claim you can fulfill tasks you are unable to would definitely lead to an increased number of negativity from customers which will help position your company as unprofessional and unreliable.

The best way is to think carefully when launching an initial list of available products and services. Make sure they all come with high standards of quality and that you do not take on more clients than you can handle without reducing that level of quality. For each new customer or newly added product or service, you must consider your resources and knowledge and decide if you can offer at least the same quality, as you should strive to be better at what you do.  This simple, common sense strategy will help you expand in a manner that keeps old and new customers happy and boosts your credibility and overall brand potential instead of shattering your good name.

Those two concepts put together, not likely to win the “couple of the year” award, are they? And they shouldn’t, simply because guilt trips should never be part of business emails, especially when it’s the first email you send out!

Imagine this! You want to introduce your recently launched business. You mention your website, then jump to saying you have a kid who’s just turned two and add a link to cute photos of that kid. Then mention an obscure site you used to have but no longer exist. And finally, in paragraph 4 actually mention one of the services you provide. Nothing on your expertise, no reference to satisfied customers, no detailed skill set of your team. Just throw the baby in, that’s bound to work!

No matter how I twist and turn it, other than guilt trip, no other reason comes to mind for mentioning offsprings and showing photos to potential customers. Maybe, just maybe, if you were a photographer specializing in newborns and toddlers, there might be a reason for the photos. But saying your main quality as a business professional is having a child? It’s crazy! And the image of yourself you put out there has little to no chance to generating leads or sealing the deal.

Remember, you’re trying to build a business relationship! Yes, if you’ve had a client for years, a personal bond develops, you might even become friends and show eachother family photos. But if it’s a new client you’re targeting, keep it professional and tell them how you can help them grow their business. Honestly, they couldn’t care less about you as a dad!

All companies developing commercial software products offer support services. Even open source solutions benefit from this advantage. Be it promoted as free (included in the license price) or as subscription-based service, the technical assistance seems more of a must than an additional benefit.

However, the types of support services and their quality play an important role in buying decisions, both for end-users and savvy IT personnel. For end users, it’s a question of abilities and knowledge they lack. They buy software products to make their lives easier, not to spend hours and hours trying to debug them (unless that’s their hobby). For IT professionals, it’s a question of time and resource management. If you need to invest in a certain solution, why not save crucial time and resources by acquiring one with technical assistance included. If you’d like to know more on why it’s recommended to call support instead of toying with a product yourself, I recommend this article I wrote a while ago.

Given the high importance potential customers place on tech assistance, support services need to be designed so as to represent a strong competitive advantage. And there are a few aspects you can think of to sketch a strategy to tune what you offer your customers.

• Availability – the longer support services are available the better. Non-stop is what you aim for, given that more companies provide such services, part of them free of charge. Nine to five is not that hot, given that software issues have this bad habit of not waiting for it to be a business day to happen. They also show no preference to business hours.
• Diversity – Email, chat, phone, forum, blog, the more channels you open, the better your reputation will be. Besides, email and live chat are not always available. Especially if the problem affects your customer’s internet connection
• Language barriers – do you sell your soft worldwide? Sometimes through local partners to people who are not that good with your mother tongue? Then you should work hard on assisting them in their own language. You can either hire techies that are also fluent in a second language. Or establish a basic level support center through your local partner. Besides helping you build a great relationship with customers and to keep them coming back, it might also be compulsory (at least partially) in certain countries. For example, in Romania you must provide user manuals and quick guides in Romanian for all software products you sell.
• Outstanding quality – the professionalism, expertise and ability to reach their customers is essential for your support staff. Also, the time it takes them to respond is crucial, as customers get impatient extremely fast and never have days to waste on waiting for a reply or a solution. Therefore you should first make sure you have enough employees to guarantee a response time of maximum 24 hours and then make sure you develop more then their technical skills. You might look into providing some “soft skills” training sessions for them. This will teach them empathy, efficiency in conversations and not to take any incident personally.
• Adaptability – Some customers are really open to providing feedback after interacting with a support representative. They provide extremely useful input on both the product and the service. Such feedback needs to then be the base of all service enhancements you might plan for the future. Otherwise it is just a waste.

Software development, just as any other IT-related field, is a highly competitive market. Turning every little aspect of your portfolio into a competitive advantage is a smart move. Features, prices, support services, everything you do can be turned in your favor.