Many business owners I have spoken to recently are worried about how they will survive the next 12 months. Understandably so, for anyone watching the news coverage of our current economic climate would think the whole world was about to end.

Yes, there are undoubtedly problems – and the banks do have a lot to answer for – but I’ve only hear one “specialist” say anything which makes any true sense of the situation…

“This situation WILL NOT LAST…”

Now it might take a year or two to correct itself, but it WILL correct itself. According to Reuters the FTSE was up 8% at close of trading yesterday.

So why won’t anyone say how it really is?

Because, as I sure most journalists would tell you… Bad News Sells!

The media (and Politicians for that matter) are very good at spreading doom and gloom and putting the fear of God into everybody, but this in itself causes a problem…

If enough people start to believe things are bad – before they really are – then spending on non-essential items WILL slow down or stop, and then things really will get worse!

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Generally speaking, people behave like sheep – it only takes one to start in a particular direction and the majority will follow.

Yet people love a crisis.

Maybe it’s because of an inner sense of “at least my life isn’t as bad as that”, and it gives us a feel-good factor (maybe this is also why Soap Operas are so popular!), but the point is – Bad News Sells.

So by using fear and bad news you can use persuasive techniques to sell newspapers. But you can also use it to sell insurance, or self-defence classes, or a will-writing service?

Yes, you can.

Wherever there is a fear of something happening, or a problem occurring, you can use it to your advantage to sell to them.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

If I owned a company which sold Fire Alarms, it would make sense for me to target people who had had a house fire [or friends/relatives of someone who had] say in the past 3 months, and the chance of me making a sale will rocket. Obviously the fresher it is in their mind, the more likely they are to respond.

If I owned a company which sold contents insurance, it would make sense for me to target people who had recently suffered from a burglary with some kind of insurance product (which offered greater protection than that of competitive products!), and stand a much higher chance of people buying from me.

The reason this works is that they have already suffered a loss and there is a very real fear that if it happens once it may well happen again.

But is this ethical?

That depends on your motives, sensitivity and how you use it.

The purpose of ANY business is to offer a solution to a problem, to someone who has that problem, and to make the customer feel they are also getting value for money.

I’m not talking about driving around a neighbourhood, looking for burnt out houses (this would be a costly method of list building!), but you can EDUCATE your prospects with real-life, factual stories of home fires which have occurred and the devastation it causes.

You can educate your prospects about how a burglary affected real people and the impact it had on their lives as a consequence.

All it takes is a bit of research to get some facts and to put them into a report which is educational, and which is of genuine benefit, and then deliver it to the right list, and you are bound to get a better response.

To help you survive the next 12 months, you need to keep marketing. So while your competitors are pulling in their belts, or wasting precious marketing budget on ineffectual institutional advertising, think about what you can do to educate your clients and/or prospects about the reasons why your product or service is a solution to a problem they have – or might have.

Even when times are tough, people don’t just stop spending – they are just a little more careful what and where they spend their money.

You just need to be a little sharper.

Now, onwards…

… to your success!

Jez

P.S. For those of you who have signed up for information on Accelerate, I apologise but I have had to put things back slightly, while I help certain clients get over a few “economy panic problems”. I expect to get back on track shortly, and I will be releasing some detail about how the programme will work. If you haven’t already shown your interest, you can register here: www.meta-morph.co.uk/accelerate