Scott Design

Well, American voters stated loud and clear yesterday that they wanted change. Most likely, that desire for change was a call for changes in economic policies – in just about every election, the incumbent party loses if economic indicators are down – but I’m sure a lot of voters were looking for changes in foreign policy, military, and social policies as well.

Change is something that all of us should consider for our organizations. With uncertain economic conditions ahead, it’s a good time for companies to evaluate their own strategies and policies and see if a change is in order in order to succeed, or even survive, hard times. Here are some questions that may generate discussion about whether you need to change:

Do you need to evolve the way you engage with customers?

• Do you allow two-way communication with your customer?
• Can customers easily ask you questions and post their thoughts about your solutions?
• Do you allow customers to communicate with each other?
• Are your customers receiving targeted, useful information from you?
• Do you get regular feedback from sales and channel reps about customer concerns?

Changes you can make now:

• Add Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, videos, etc.) to your websites so different types of online visitors can interact with you
• Create an online forum where customers can interact with your company, and each other.
• Evaluate how potential customers hear about your webinars, demos, and white papers. Make the lead generation path from awareness to registration clear and simple.
• Segment your e-mail lists by collecting reader preferences to ensure that customers receive targeted, useful information from you.
• Set up company pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and other appropriate social networking sites.

Do you need to change the way you position your company?

• Have your products and solutions evolved?
• Has your target audience changed?
• Is your brand still fresh, modern, and on target?

Changes you can make now:

• Set up your website so you can update it easily and often.
• Organize your site to allow visitors to quickly and easily find the information that they need.
• Update your positioning to reflect product, solution, and target audience changes.
• Incorporate feedback from sales reps, your channel, and customers.

If everything is working right now, and you have as much business as you can handle, you might need to make only minor adjustments to your marketing to grow your company. But, during the current economic challenges, changes in your marketing may be essential to not only growth, but survival.

Tags: blog, branding, e-mail, forum, online marketing, rebranding, rss, social media, video, webinar, wiki

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Marketing . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.