While the media at large is reporting an economic downturn, you can change where your business is going. Typically, during recessions, marketers tend to become defensive or shut down completely. If, instead, you become aggressive and implement new tactics, you can gain share from your competitors and, when the recession is over, you will come out the winner.

You may be finding that the traditional advertising methods that worked in the past do not work as well as they used to—or, worse, they don’t work at all. Sometimes, the gut reaction to this is to cut advertising spend; however, this is the time when you should rethink your marketing, your brand approach, your value proposition and your advertising tactics.

The following are some tactics that have helped The EGC Group’s clients and other companies succeed when most others are adopting a defensive stance by discounting, cutting budgets and reducing services. When the economy rebounds, you can emerge the market leader. This is the first installment in our five-part series that will show you how.

Part 1: Current Customers can Fuel Growth
August 1, 2008

There is no question that those who have some relationship to your brand, product or service are more likely to buy, visit or recommend you. It’s something that we at EGC have been saying for quite awhile; in fact, we even reported on it in our Fresh Report.  

In July, Ad Age (subscription required) also reported on the trend, highlighting Hilton Hotels, which just enrolled the 25 millionth member into its 21-year-old Hilton HHonors Loyalty program. "Like a lot of people in the [hospitality] industry, we're starting to see some slowing," said Adam Burke, senior vice president of customer loyalty. "Our HHonors members tend to be the group that buoys us through a downturn. They are the core audience and tend to stay loyal and sustain the business especially through those downturns."

Hilton is one of the many companies that are embracing their current customers and enhancing their loyalty programs; but, if your product or service does not rely on frequency of visit/purchase like Hilton’s does, how can you maximize your customer database? Very simply: referrals. Referrals are easy to implement and can mean an increase in response of 20%.

EGC has recently implemented a successful email and direct mail referral program that awarded a gas card to each customer/client who referred another to our client’s brand. The cost of this program was a fraction of that of a mass media campaign, and the result was a higher ROI and increased brand loyalty.

So, when other marketers are discounting, maximize your customer database…bring buyers back to buy more and use them to refer more customers your way.