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REBOOTING MARKETING STARTEGIES FOR GLOBAL RECESSIONINTRODUCTION

The global recession has meant cost-cutting measures are affecting the entirety of all businesses. Worldwide, organisations have had to tighten their belts, from the smallest of start-ups to the world's largest global corporations and, unfortunately, this can start off a bitof a vicious circle within some departments.The importance of marketing is that it gets your brand out there and generally assures more customers. Without marketing, less people hear aboutyour businessand therefore there areless potential customers. However, marketing costs money and, in an economic crisis like theone currently affecting society today, this means that departmental funds have to be cut.In order to stay afloat, millions of enterprises worldwide are being forced to decreasecompany spending in every department. This can come across through redundancies, payfreezes and reduced departmental budgets. These, in particular, can have an overwhelmingeffect on how successful a department is, particularly in areas like marketing.As stated above, marketing reaches out throughout media so that your brand makes itself known to consumers. If you experience a budget cut in marketing, you have far less scope for advertising and the results can be extremely poor. If you can't afford to market as much, your brand will not reach as many people and therefore the company loses on prospective business. The circle is vicious. With less money spent, less money is returned and,unfortunately for those in marketing positions, this is not the problem of our bosses: it's ours.So how can you find ways to still effectively market your business despite budget cuts andredundancies?There are several ways. Firstly, it's crucial to be aware of how each avenue of your marketingscheme affects results by way of customer awareness of your brand, as well as how many people actually make a purchase. This way, you can discover which avenues are the mostsuccessful and ensure that, whatever cuts must be made, you retain these key areas. There arealso services you can make the most of to help market your business during tough times, like

free business toolsthat are not only excellent for advertising ventures, new combinationstrategies. The recession is a difficult time for any business, but it needn't be a time of complete failure: marketing is still possible, and it still works - you just need to make sureyou use it effectively with the strategies that suit the current situation. Thus, it’s a new eraand it's time to adopt some of the new ways of marketing and the time to take an objectivelook at their brand portfolio. When there is euphoria, value takes a backseat and consumersindulge. When the time goes tough, consumers tighten their purse strings and value comes tothe driving seat. This is the time to see which brand in your portfolio offers more value to theconsumer. If your sales are going down like hell, it’s the time to re-engineer the brand's value proposition.MARKETING STRATEGY:A marketing strategy is a written plan which combines product development, promotion,distribution, and pricing approach, identifies the firm's marketing goals, and explains howthey will be achieved within a stated timeframe. Marketing strategy determines the choice of target market segment, positioning, marketing mix, and allocation of resources. It is mosteffective when it is an integral component of firm strategy, defining how the organizationwill successfully engage customers, prospects, and competitors in the market arena. Amarketing strategy can serve as the foundation of amarketing plan. A marketing plancontains a set of specific actions required to successfully implement a marketing strategy. For example: "Use a low cost product to attract consumers. Once our organization, via our lowcost product, has established a relationship with consumers, our organization will selladditional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the consumer's interaction withthe low-cost product or service."A strategy thus consists of a well thought out series of tacticsto make a marketing plan more effective. Effective marketing strategy is partly the result of exposing your target audience to your name and your selling points (unique selling proposition) as often as possible (frequency), in as many ways as possible, and as cost-effectively as possible.

MARKETING STRATEGIES IN A GLOBAL RECESSION

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SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

It's important for businesses to understand the benefits that marketing online provides thatother more traditional marketing options don't provide. This can help in making a decisionwhen it comes to planning where to put your marketing budget especially if you need them tostretch a bit further in this economy. There can be a mixture in marketing-both marketingonline and off. However, the benefits in marketing online it can help you in creating evenmore successful marketing strategies offline.Internet marketing is a cost effective and efficient marketing method that is viable in a downeconomy. We cannot experience success overnight, but over time you will begin to see andreap the marketing benefits and rewards thatsocial media marketingbrings to your marketingmix.

Social media marketing

also known as social influence marketing is the act of using socialinfluencers, social media platforms, and online communities for marketing, publicationrelations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools includeTwitter , blogs,LinkedIn,Facebook ,Flickr andYouTube. The immense number of people who participate in social media websites has led to increased investment in the growing field of social mediamarketing. The parameters surrounding social media marketing are arguably elusive today.The trend is still so new many bloggers, public relations, marketing, and social media expertsvary in their definition of what social media marketing entails. The blogs and social networksmake up an emerging social web. The social web includes social media sites and is a locationwithin which social media marketing might take place. Social media marketing is able totarget the customers of various segments.An example of targeting would be Facebook, while they've not really proven that theadvertisements work on Facebook when it comes to conversion they have proven that youcan in fact target your marketing message to ideal prospects. If the user is single, they arefaced with a dating ad. If they are engaged they are targeted with weight-loss advertisements.If they are married they are targeted with family vacations or perhaps even familycounselling.In Twitter there is a option of Twitterfeed which is a free service. It automatically feeds your blog posts directly into your Twitter account, so that your followers can read the blog poststhat are of interest to them. These help in directing the customers, attracting them and are ableto create a good marketing base.