My Marketing Strategy Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder

As the economy goes a certain way, so often marketing budgets follow suit. Isn’t it true how the economy goes up, marketing dollars go up…the economy tanks and the marketing budget gets slashed? Consistency of the marketing flywheel is sacrificed for short-term expense cutting.

Studies have shown that marketing in a recession pays off big time. However, today’s marketplace seems even tougher, which demands leveraging what you have been doing in marketing with new technologies.

Some comments we have heard was to stop doing direct mail and only e-mail.  However, I recently saw that direct mail is still doing better for women ages 25-44 and increasing in response for the Hispanic market. The medium allows for more attention than online.  Yet, online is still key for the younger and time-challenged consumers.

What to do?  That is the huge $64,000 question for a strategy to provide to our clients.

The key is to leverage the layers.  We are focused on layering traditional media (direct mail, targeted media, and point of sale) with inbox touches.  In essence, to stay in touch with current customer/members for retention and to grab any “low hanging fruit.”  We are using datamining to segment the most profitable customers/members.  Then, for those who have email address, use inbox marketing, for those without an email address, target them with direct mail. This can stretch any marketing budget while still “touching” the most important revenue producers for helping the bottom line.

To be successful in 2010, those organizations who stay visible with tailored marketing approaches will grab even more market share.