One of the biggest challenges that most businesses face during a recession such as the one we’ve recently weathered is where to cut down on their expenses?
Invariably, the axe seems to fall on the marketing budgets. Most businesses become cautious about consumer demand, and put on hold their growth plans. They tend to focus on consolidating their existing market and shy away from taking any risks.
Such strategies can be less rewarding during the long run. Often, as businesses emerge from recessionary times, they struggle to reach out to consumers because their brand has been ‘erased’ from the public memory.
Subsequently, businesses can often end up spending much more on marketing as they desperately try to re-establish their brand.
Never abandon marketing during a crisis
In my opinion, marketing is one tool that businesses should not abandon during a crisis. We’ve certainly kept on marketing during these last two years and, I have to tell you, with plenty of success.
This issue is of particular importance to the security industry. One of the key challenges during a recession is to win over consumer confidence, and the best way to do this is to assure your consumers that your products or services are reliable and can be trusted.
Smart marketing alongside good service delivery can boost consumer confidence and help businesses grow.
The security industry is, in general, synonymous with qualities like reliability, trust, confidence and safety. It’s vital that we reflect these qualities in our messages to the public.
Security is not defined by market forces, rather it’s required both during bad and good times.
In fact, the demand can be slightly higher during tough times as rising unemployment during recession can lead to social unrest and enhanced levels of criminality.
The credibility of a security firm becomes even greater in the good times if we have a proven record of providing services during those difficult times.
Security companies can market themselves in ways which are both cost-effective and efficient, and one of the key elements in adopting a marketing strategy is to identify your target audience.
Stages in the marketing strategy
As already stated, the demand for security services is ongoing and may not be subject to market forces.
There are organisations and businesses that require security solutions, but often resort to the services of non-accredited security firms as they bring a cheaper offering. In our messages, we need to highlight the advantages of hiring professional security firms and ensure all the while that end users avoid the ‘cowboys’.
The second stage in the marketing strategy is to adopt the right tools to reach out to your audience.
One of the first steps that you should consider is to select the right media for promotion of your business. One of the traditional ways is advertising. It might include adverts on television, radio, in print and on websites.
Great for some and a waste of time for others, advertising undoubtedly helps by creating good brand awareness and reaches out to (potentially) huge numbers of people.
Public relations can be another very effective tool to reach out to your target audience (we use a PR company ourselves, and to great effect).
PR helps you to circulate your name through the industry press, as well as the national and regional media. It can help power your reputation by strategically positioning you in the right place.
In addition, PR assists by providing third party endorsement of your services. It’s often said that, in advertising, you shout about yourself. In PR, others speak for you.
Using social media to your advantage
Social media is another very effective and modern tool. It helps by creating digital awareness of your presence and service through the medium of blogs, microblogs like Twitter and other social media platforms including Facebook.
The advantage of social media is that it’s interactive, immediate, creates good online publicity and helps you reach a targeted audience without any costs being incurred along the way.
Finally, my personal favourite – face-to-face marketing – is another effective tool. It’s more personalised and enables you to showcase and explain your services to potential clients and win their confidence.
Some examples of face-to-face marketing would include attendance at trade shows, conferences and networking events.
At Magenta Security, we have effectively used the above mentioned marketing tools to win new businesses and ensure growth during a tough economic climate.
Recently, we were shortlisted in two categories at the 2010 Security Excellence Awards: Security Guarding Company of the Year and Environmental Initiative of the Year.
Targeted and effective promotion
We pride ourselves on getting to know each of our potential customers through highly targeted and effective marketing. This belief and process realised several high profile business wins for us in the last year.
Clearly, part of our success can be attributed to the adoption of persistent marketing strategies. Our experience shows that consistent marketing can bring long term benefits as the economy emerges from recession.
Others might want to learn from our example and explore the possibilities of earning profit by adopting smart marketing strategies.
You never know. You might just realise that recession doesn’t bite that badly after all.
Abbey Petkar is managing director of Magenta Security Services
