It is not uncommon to find that sales in a particular market can get stuck, and for me, the difference between companies can be measured at this point. Do they do nothing and wait for the market, do they change their marketing, or do they do some research?

I believe the only reasonable ways forward are approaches two and three, simply because doing nothing means opening the door for the competition, who may well be advertising quite aggressively at this time. When that is the case, the market can fall further. Indeed aggressive marketing from elsewhere could be the cause of the failure thus far.

Changing the advertising can be difficult if you are used to doing similar types of advertising most of the time. Looking at a new creative approach, or indeed an idea which also uses new media, can be quite worrying and it is tempting to look at a radical approach and think “That won’t work.” And of course you can be right – the whole point of an experiment is that it is an experiment, which can fail.

But at least in direct marketing one can try out new approaches in low volume – there is no need to send out 10,000 items – a few hundred will usually tell you if the process is working or not.

The alternative is the research based approach. Again, the research does not have to cost much and might involve…

1: A review of the competition’s current advertising, just to see how your approach and your advertised benefits compare with theirs.

2: An online survey of potential customers to see what they are doing vis a vis your product at present. Are they buying? Holding back because of the recent recession, or what?

3: Some unstructured telephone calling to ask potential clients if they have a need for the product, who they use etc. The point about calls like this is that you don’t think of them as a sales call but rather as a way of finding out what is in people’s minds. If they say, “oh yes we used to do that, but haven’t done for several years – I don’t think we’d go back to that” then you have evidence that is as helpful as a detailed on line questionnaire.

We need to keep both these approaches in mind because both the experiments with marketing, and the research can give us valuable information and in the end are the only ways to get out of a dip in the market.

If you would like to talk about this please do give Hamilton House a call on 01536 399 000. All of these services are available from us on a one-off basis, or as part of the Velocity programme (there’s details on http://www.velocity.ac/business.html

Tony Attwood