Jul

18

Deer-in-the-headlights marketing: riding the downturn

July 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment | EMail This Post

I’m a little late today. Long story.

These days, there seem to be a lot of people around sporting that DITH look — you know, the panic-stricken look that says I’m about to get hit by an 18-wheeler!

Even if you’re not feeling that way about your routine marketing chores, you may be feeling that way about the general direction of the economy or, alternatively, the general direction of your cash flow. Let’s face it, whatever the numbers say, the economy is not a pretty picture right now.

And yet, I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot of folks saying that you can’t cut back on your marketing because you’re trying to save your pennies. And, you ask yourself, how can I not cut back on my marketing when times are this tight?

There’s a way to think about that, of course. When times are tight, you focus your time, energy and what money you have to spare on things that will bring in revenue. You cut the thing that cost and don’t either (a) pay for themselves or (b) bring a significant return in the investment.

And, to tell you the truth, that’s how you should be thinking about your business all the time, no matter what the economy is doing. Which means, if you are thinking about it in the best possible way, that you should be doing pretty much the same things when the economy is soaring as you do when it is cheerfully splashing its way down the toilet.

That may be a little hard to swallow for the DITH crowd, of course. We are twitchy about marketing in the best of times. But our reasons for being twitchy have less to do with money than they have to do with the degree to which we have discovered ways to do marketing without wanting to retch.

One of the least nauseating marketing methods around, which often costs nothing, is simply to get people to talk about you. And there are any number of ways to do that.

Most obvious is to do something remarkable. Might be obvious but easier said than done. Most of us kind of cringe while we are trying to think of remarkable things to do, stuck in those lessons we learned as children about the virtues of modesty and humility.

Another way to get people talking about you is to simply be very, very good. In many ways, that’s remarkable all by itself, and people will discuss it.

You can as easily be very helpful or very social (visible).

No need to promise anybody the moon or untold riches or anything else you probably can’t deliver. No need to pretend to be something you’re not. No need to befuddle people with so much copy that they run screaming from your site.

And the best part about them is that they are marketing methods that are free.

Another nice thing about them is that they require nothing from you other than that you be yourself. This is probably true of all businesses that are not run by committee but it is definitely true of the average microbusiness. Your very best marketing tool is yourself, who you are and what you’re about.

In fact, that is precisely why everything you do is marketing. And that, in its turn, makes marketing kind of easy, doesn’t it?

Breathe, people.

(Pause for musical interlude … )

For more on marketing think during a downturn: Mary Schmidt agrees with George Bush (Egad!)

Technorati Tags: , ,

Jul

16

Do that to me one more time

July 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment | EMail This Post

(Wow, talk about giving away my age … !)

So, do we need further economic stimulus from our friends in Washington?

The Democratic congressional leadership seems to think so, according to yesterday’s Congressional Quarterly Midday Update. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and other members of the House leadership spent a chunk of time yesterday meeting with private sector economists and came away from that meeting convinced that further action is needed.

As of right now, the proposed stimulus would touch on some things they’ve been kicking around on Capital Hill for awhile now:

Hoyer said the package would include elements already widely discussed — more infrastructure funding, heating assistance for low-income Americans, more money for food stamps and for state Medicaid programs. Pelosi said the proposal also could include another round of rebates for taxpayers, but she made no commitments.

“We’ll have to work in a bipartisan way because this legislation must be signed into law,” she said.

President Bush, however, remains unconvinced that the government needs to do anything further — presumably because he did not attend the aforementioned meeting. He suggested instead that Congress is acting prematurely, before they’ve had a chance to see if the package enacted in February has an effect.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the rebate checks have had only a marginal effect — and, with retail sales failing to climb to even 1% month over month growth for half a year now, it’s possible that they only thing they did was to stave off actual declines in retail sales. I don’t know about you, but I don’t personally know anybody who got their rebate check and decided to sit on it. Maybe that’s because I don’t get out enough.

The business goodies in the bill may indeed take a bit longer to kick in and that’s probably what Mr. Bush is talking about. My only problem with all this is the fact that, if they want to do anything more, they don’t want to wait too long.

Getting any kind of stimulus passed and signed into law (especially if not everyone is agreed on the need for it, or the need to pay for it) will be a time-consuming endeavor. If they wait long enough, by the time it kicks it, it’ll be too late.

Given the kinds of things they talking about in the context of this stimulus package, and given congressional amnesia when it comes to small businesses and big issues, I don’t know that I’d expect much in the way of small business goodies or anything at all for microbusinesses. Then again, depending on how they structure all of this stuff, there may be some business opportunities in things like infrastructure spending for the attentive would-be contractor.

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Senate would not be able to consider this sort of thing before September.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Jul

15

Update: further developments on SBA FY09 budget

July 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment | EMail This Post

Back in late June, I reported in The MicroEnterprise Journal that the federal appropriations process is moving along at a surprisingly rapid clip. The chairmen of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees — Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin and Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, respectively — had announced their intentions to complete all twelve spending bills before the August recess.

When was the last time that happened?

(Not that anybody really cares at this point. Most of the time, people don’t pay a lot of attention to the federal appropriations process anyway. And, right now, folks are so caught up in the prospect of the end of the Bush years and the race for his successor that what is happening on Capitol Hill does little more than flicker on the edges of awareness.)

Of course, just because the House and the Senate are writing appropriations bills and might even vote on them before the current fiscal year ends, that does necessarily mean that the President will sign them. He has already threatened to veto any spending bill that crosses his desk proposing to spend more than he asked for.

I suspect Congressional Democrats are not only expecting that, they are hoping for it. The political dancing should be fairly entertaining to watch. I anticipate a battle of the press releases sometime before Halloween. Feel free to make up as many bad puns about that as the spirit moves you.

I bring this up because the Senate passed its version of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, which houses the SBA budget for fiscal 2009 last week. Like the House version, it provides more money for the federal government’s lone small business agency than President Bush asked for.

Not as much as was approved by the House but it doesn’t look like there are too many significant differences between them. If the House and Senate conferees wind up doing any significant haggling here, it won’t be because of the funding provisions for the SBA.

Interestingly, the House Appropriations Committee approved $100 million to subsidize the 7(a) program, rescinding the zero subsidy basis put into place by the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans a few years ago. No doubt the thinking is to lower fees for lenders and borrowers. Lots of folks have been concerned about those lenders; the SBA has lost 400 of them, mostly small and rural banks, since the fee hikes.

It doesn’t look like the Senate did the same thing. That’ll be interesting all by itself.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Jul

14

Podcast: Tax Gap Panel Says Show Me The Money

July 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment | EMail This Post

You know, one of the most amazing things about the federal government is how often lawmakers seem to react in knee-jerk ways when faced with a problem.

The tax gap is a good example; funny how it wasn’t until the GAO and the CBO got involved that it occurred to anybody to chase the money instead of focusing on punishing noncompliant taxpayers.

Results count — even for the feds.

Politicians continue to talk about jobs, but not about self-employment (otherwise known as self-created jobs). I guess they haven’t incorporated that particular perspective into their thinking yet … more on that in this week’s Policy Matters column.

Check it out:

For more information:

GAO Report: Highlights of a Joint Forum on Tax Compliance (PDF)
National Association for the Self-Employed
Hearing Archive: The Role of Green Technologies in Spurring Economic Growth (YouTube)
SBA Office of Advocacy r3 Home

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,