Focus on Marketing…In This Economy?
You’ve likely heard the phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention". During COVID, this meant businesses offering remote work for their employees or curbside pickup for customers, both intended to make life easier during a difficult time.
There's talk that we are heading into another recession and if you were like me during the “Great Recession” of 2008, drafting behind a semi to save on gas, you may be thinking “why should I focus on marketing in this economy?”
So, why is right now the best time to focus on your marketing? Because you have the opportunity to change the customer’s experience and deliver more value.
The doom and gloom about another economic recession can make you want to freeze and hunker down until it blows over. One thing we’ve learned in the last two years is that businesses can be incredibly adaptable and creative coming up with new ways to serve their customers in difficult times. While times may feel tough, there is an opportunity to reimagine the value you can deliver to your customers and make it easier for them to do business with you.
On episode four of the Growing A Fruitful Brand podcast, Raj and Ben shed some light on why it’s counterintuitive to pull back on marketing when the economy is tough, three ways to focus your messaging during a recession and the importance of filling your email funnel to recession-proof your business.
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Ep.4: How to Build a Brand in this Economy.
Automated Transcript
Ben:
Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand, where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful Design & Strategy here in Omaha, Nebraska, and I'm joined by my business partner and brand strategist Raj Lulla. Are you worried about the economy? I don't know about you, but you look at the headlines and it seems a little bit dire right now. So today we want to talk about how to build your brand in this economy.
Raj:
So when we were preparing for this, you asked me, ''Is that the title we want for this episode?'' And I said, ''Yes, absolutely.'' Because there's this Gary Goldman special from about 10 years ago where he just riffs on that phrase "in this economy". And in 2012 we were kind of past the 2008 recession, at least recovering pretty nicely from it by that point. So a lot of people were using that phrase in this economy just as a joke at that point. Your mom calls and asks you if you can come over to your parents' house and help mow their lawn because they're getting on in age.
Ben:
In this economy?
Raj:
In this economy? ''Mom, you know what gas costs, to put in that lawnmower?'' People used it as a joke at that point. And I wanted to poke a little bit of fun at economic worries, because I graduated into the 2008 recession. I graduated before that, but my first job-
Ben:
How was it?
Raj:
It was awful. My first several jobs were affected by that. I had a lot of 18 month, two year stints, right after college, because I'd get landed someplace and they'd go through a round of layoffs or those types of things. Yeah, it was terrible back then. I was living down in southern California. Unemployment was 18%. The housing market was insane. We had several opportunities to buy houses for a hundred thousand dollars in California, which we'd be millionaires now probably, but-
Ben:
We can't even do that here in Omaha, Nebraska.
Raj:
But we couldn't even scrape together that much money and people were buying houses in cash and all sorts of stuff. It was a mess. And so part of what I judge current economic worries against is the Great Recession, one of the biggest economic downturns in our lifetime. And we also just all went through COVID and there was technically a recession during COVID as well, but there were also relief plans, and we also couldn't go anywhere and buy very much stuff, so we ordered furniture online. So every economic upset has its own flavor and character to it. So I wanted to just poke fun a little bit at the idea that “in this economy” can mean a lot of different things.
Ben:
Right. I think it's easy to think that... We get a little shortsighted sometimes. It feels like we're in the end times and we've never experienced anything like this. And of course, that what we're experiencing right now might have some unique qualities to it, but the fact of the matter is we've been through a lot and we've gotten through it. Last night I was on the Wall Street Journals website and just clicking through the US economic headlines and it does seem pretty dire. There's a lot of stuff going on right now. Raj I'm just curious, from your perspective, what is happening?
Raj:
Honestly, by the time that you listen to this, it could be a different situation.
Ben:
You could be in an underground bunker eating beans or something like that.
Raj:
Right now in the headlines, people are making fun of the White House, and maybe rightly so, for trying to decide whether or not we're in a recession. Some of the economic markers like GDP have indicated that we are, but then we also have the pressures of inflation and people are still buying a lot of stuff. Maybe not as many consumer goods, but they're traveling a lot still. There's still a huge demand on the travel industry. And so it's an unusual economy. It definitely is different from the COVID recession where everybody was stuck indoors. But again, they started getting these stimulus checks and buying things for their homes and-
Ben:
We pretty much all decked out our houses to be the way that we wanted them, because we were just stuck there all the time. And then now that everyone's traveling again, maybe we were spending money in different ways.
Raj:
People are sort of sick of their houses and so they-
Ben:
Want to travel again, want to fly again.
Raj:
Yeah. And there were recent headlines talking about how Target and Walmart had just gluts of stuff. They had too much inventory because everything had been stuck on boats, out in the Pacific. And then also they'd been ordering more stuff to keep up with demand, but now demand has changed. It's actually a little bit difficult to describe exactly what this economy is. And so if you hear recession like I do, and think, ''Oh my gosh, it's 15 years ago again, and 18% unemployment, the housing market's going to crash and it's going to take us a good couple of years to crawl out of this.''.
Raj:
You may not be right, you might be, but we don't know for sure. And so part of what we want to get into today is just about building your brand in economically uncertain times. And we've all lived through that enough in recent years that it's like what lessons can we take away from that? What stuff from COVID does apply to now? What stuff from 2008 does apply to now? And what are some of the evergreen truths of trying to do business in economies that you just can't necessarily tell exactly what's going to happen from one week to the next?
Ben:
So Raj, a lot of our listeners are business owners and they may be wondering, what should my business be doing as we go into a recession?
Raj:
So the first thing I would say is be patient. I know that can be really, really hard. A lot of us have our cash on hand targets to try to make sure that we're healthy to weather times like this. And coming right out of COVID, maybe you spent down some of that cash on hand just to survive that thing, so you feel like, ''Oh my gosh, I'm going through another one.'' And all I can tell you is, first, just take a breath. It probably will be okay if you made it through that, you're probably going to be fine making it into this next phase.
Raj:
And customers are still there. They're maybe having different behaviors, but they do still exist and you do still have opportunities to serve them. Along those lines, some of the things you might think about are, ''How do my customers pay me?'' So here at Fruitful, it's a little bit unique, it's weird that it's unique, because I feel like it just makes sense. But people come to us, they have large projects that they want to do, and then they see the estimate and sometimes there can be a little, ''I know that this is worth it, but I don't have that in my pocket right now.''
Ben:
That's a lot to swallow at one time, or even two times.
Raj:
Yeah. Most of our customers pay one of two ways. They either pay half upfront, half at the end, or they'll choose another option that we do, which is a monthly payment plan. We split up the cost of their project over about the amount of time that we expect their project to take. And we don't charge any interest on that. It's not like opening up a store card or anything like that. It's a service to our customers. And it's also good for our cash flow too, because when they split it up over the life of the project, then we're getting paid along the life of the project, and not waiting for a big payment at the beginning, big payment at the end.
Ben:
Yeah. And that dovetails with the way that we like to operate anyways, how do we like to be treated basically. It works for our cash flow, but it also tends to work for theirs. It's not saying that they don't have the money or they couldn't scrounge it up, but they're much more likely to actually sign on that contract if they know that they can break this up into small payments over a period of time.
Raj:
Now if you're selling small consumer goods, then that probably doesn't apply to you. You don't want to mortgage a piece of bread but-
Ben:
Just cut that piece of bread into lots of little pieces and…
Raj:
For 12 easy payments you can get your one loaf of bread. That said though, some of you out there aren't even taking credit cards, aren't even taking online payments. And some of those things are super easy. We have this phrase around here, I think we got it from StoryBrand, of don't make it hard for people to give you money.
Ben:
Yeah, that's Raj's number one rule of business. We say it all the time.
Raj:
We just engaged with somebody recently and they sent us a bill over email, but you couldn't pay online.
Ben:
There's no link. We're looking for the link, until we read into the-
Raj:
It was in the notes section. It said that you can pay electronically, so then we had to contact them and it was fine, but it seemed like, for a moment, that I got this thing digitally that I had to print out, write a physical check for, put it in the mail to them and that was the only possible way to pay them. And that seemed crazy. We booked our first appointment online, we scheduled a meeting over email, all of those things happened digitally and then we were expected to pay physically.
Ben:
And what that creates is friction. And then, obviously as business owners we talk about all the time, but you want to create the least amount of friction as possible, make this as easy as possible. They are paying you. This is the number one thing you're trying to get them to do. So trying to eliminate anything unnecessary from that process. And again, it comes back to doing things the way that we like them to be done ourselves, is how do you like to pay for things? Don't you just love it when you have a really seamless buying experience online or even in person? There's just something about that where it's like... I think of Apple Pay on my phone sometimes and it's just like, ''Wow, that feels so great.'' Maybe it should have a little more friction, so I have to think about this a little more before I just buy this thing. But we love that, people love that, so let's make it easy.
Raj:
Yeah. How many carts have I abandoned because I had to type up my entire credit card number and I'm sitting on the couch, my wallet's in the other room and it's just like, ''Ah, I don't think I really need that thing.'' But Apple Pay or PayPal may have saved that purchase for that merchant. So again, it's that golden rule of marketing, treat others the way that you want to be treated and it comes back to you in good ways. Another thing to think about is, especially if you're a service-based business, then how can you split up your service instead of being 10, 20, 30, $40,000 package into smaller sections? If your first thing is normally a consultation anyway, then can you just split that off? And for $500, a $1000, then they can have the consultation. You'll even come up with the plan for them.
Raj:
And sure there's a little bit of risk in it, they could choose not to go forward with you, but I think that once they meet you and have the experience with you, they've already chosen your brand, and they just want confirmation before they make an investment with you. So can you give them that consultation at a lower rate? In fact, some of the companies I like the most, they'll give you the consultation and then they'll apply it to your eventual purchase. And that can de-risk that purchase for you. And in a scary economy, in an uncertain economy, that's what people want. And especially if then it gives them the option of, ''Hey, we're going to do the consultation this month, but if I lose my job next month, then I'm not on the hook for a $40,000 thing, $50,000 thing. I'm on the hook for a thousand bucks and I can swing that right now.''
Raj:
But then when they don't lose their job the next month, because they probably aren't going to, especially because labor is still really strong right now. Unemployment's super low, in Nebraska it's like 2% right now. They're probably not going to lose their job, and so when they feel a little bit more comfortable the next month and they're excited about the plan that you put in front of them, then they might be ready to do business and sign that little bit bigger thing. And especially maybe if you split the rest into two halves, or you split the rest into monthly payments, they can stomach this idea that, ''Okay, I can make this large of an investment because the risk is tolerable, the risk is manageable.''
Ben:
Yeah, I think that term of de-risking something for someone else is so important, because that's what happens when you're in a tight or a difficult economy, is people want to minimize the risk. It just seems riskier. Things seem scarier. So if there's a little bit of a barrier for like, ''Man, you seem great, I want to work with you, but I'm just a little bit afraid of the commitment.'' Between you and this other business, if you can de-risk that in any way just to help sign that contract, to help seal that deal, you're doing them a great service, and of course it comes back to you as well.
Raj:
Yeah. Do you remember the days right after 9/11 where immediately what all of the large-ticket items did was slash their interest rates down to 0%. Car manufacturers in particular, slashed to 0% and then payment terms went up to 72 months, maybe even longer than that, 84, 96 months. They were giving people longer to pay for their cars, smaller payments, so that they could minimize the risk.
Ben:
Were you driving in 2001 Raj?
Raj:
Yes, I was.
Ben:
All right. He's shown his age a little bit here, or maybe I'm showing mine.
Raj:
I wasn't driving new cars at that time. I was driving a Beater Buick, but-
Ben:
I was sleeping in a bunk bed when that happened, so anyway.
Raj:
Some of our employees weren't even born then, but-
Ben:
Yeah. Wow, that's aging all of us together.
Raj:
Yes. But that's what they did. One of the most catastrophic cultural times. It wasn't necessarily one of the most catastrophic economic times, but everybody was really worried at that point. And so what did they do? They made it easier. 0% interest, they extended the terms. Up to that point, most car payment plans are like 48 to 60 months, it was four years or five years. Giving people that extra year, 72 months or longer than that, and they extended the warranties too. The warranties, they got up to 10 years, something like that.
Ben:
It's brilliant though. You're basically just giving them one less reason to not go with you.
Raj:
Yeah. And especially, because if you're paying for your car for longer, or 72 months, then you don't want your warranty to be 50 months, or 48 or 60 months.
Ben:
Yeah, that's great that they extended that as well from that
Raj:
Yeah. It makes it possible to buy. So what ways can you do that with your company? Are there ways that you can split off pieces of your product or your service and say, ''Okay, buy this first, for a smaller amount.'' And then people will chase their investments, they want to get what they're paying for. People aren't going to buy a landscaping plan or a blueprint to a house and then say, ''Yeah, we've got the money but I don't care anymore. No, we just spent a thousand dollars on this. We want to build this house.'' I don't know how much a blueprint for a house costs, but, ''We want to build this house, we want to do this landscaping and we're not going to go to some other landscaper, because we just paid this one.'' And they'll roll it to our project, so it just makes sense for them to continue to do business with you.
Ben:
And if you're a landscaper, if you could give Raj and I a landscaping plan at a good price. I feel like that's one of those things I'd really love a better plan for it, personally.
Raj:
I do not have green thumbs. I have whatever gray thumbs. Is that what you get from Macintosh? I don't know. There are other ways to do things as well, especially if you are again, a service-based business, a consulting business, something like that. There's ways to have done with you instead of done for you. And even other businesses, like landscaping, some of your construction-oriented businesses, if you tear the deck off of your own house, we'll build the new one for cheaper.
Ben:
Yeah, exactly.
Raj:
Or if you make sure to dig up your garden beds... I know that there's waterproofing companies, they ask you to tear the drywall off before they even get there. So it's things like that, you can do it a little bit of done with you. Maybe, if you're doing catering or something like that, instead of selling the catering service and all the food, maybe you sell some recipes or meal plans. You allow them to make your food. And that doesn't cannibalize your business, by the way. Because yes, they want to taste those flavors, but they're not going to do it as well as you and they still have to do it themselves. When they're ready to spend money again, they'll feel thankful that you helped them get through a rough economic time, but then they'll also want you to cook it for them, because they're tired of cooking for themselves.
Ben:
And the smart thing about that too, by basically diversifying what you do, that option of just giving the recipe, you're taking a lot of your labor out of that. Now you don't have to necessarily cater for that one. You know what I mean? And so you're able to go do other things.
Raj:
Yeah, you're actually creating new lines of revenue-
Ben:
New lines of revenue.
Raj:
In the process.
Ben:
Exactly. That's super smart. We were talking about this recently for some packages we were wanting to put together for our clients. Dan had that idea of, I think it was Dan's idea, unless it was yours, I wanna give credit where credit is due, of having a done for you and a done with you package. And some clients is like, ''No, I want you guys to do it all.'' And then other people will be like, ''You know what? We've got staff that can do some of this. We're already paying people that can help pull off parts of a brand launch party.'' Or whatever it is, and it just makes a lot of sense. You're giving them those options. I think giving people more options, more ways, that might work better with where they are financially.
Raj:
Yeah. StoryBrand, or StoryBrand Certified Agency, is one of those things that we could either do for a customer, do it for them completely, they're going to get my expertise on that, or we can do it with them. Some of our customers come to us with a brandscript halfway done and they go, ''Oh my gosh, I just need help on this.'' Then it becomes more of a coaching arrangement. I've also group coached people through StoryBrand, 10 or 12 people at a time even. And that's something that, if the economy shifts not in our favor, then we'll probably start opening up of some of these group classes, or even just for people who want to do business with us but aren't of the size right now that they can afford that one-on-one treatment. We might just open up those classes just as a service to a lower paying customer who could really benefit from StoryBrand but just doesn't have the money for that one-on-one attention right now.
Ben:
Yeah. But I think that kind of a mindset can work for a lot of our listeners as well of, here's this thing that I usually do for one person for this amount. Is there a way I could turn this into more of a group deal where we can get... It depends on what industry you're in. I'm trying to think of where that would work. But that might be a way to go. Hey, you're bringing that cost down for the individual. Maybe they won't have the exact same experience as if they were just the two of you in the trenches, or whatever, doing the work. But it might be a way to attract more business and to make it more affordable for people.
Raj:
Yeah. Any business where education is part of it. Fitness is probably the most obvious one, because they already do this. You can have personal training, which is probably going to cost you a hundred dollars an hour by yourself with somebody in the gym yelling at you. Or you can pay $10 for the class with 10 other people and then you get yelled at with a group of people, so it's a little less shame. Whatever's more comfortable for you, whatever's more in your budget. Again, you could see this with any kind of private lessons, so music lessons, cooking lessons, any of those things. But don't discount how much education there might be in your product. If you find yourself, at the beginning of every engagement, helping people know the difference between a firewall and a virus protection or anything like that, servers, all those things. You could turn some of those pieces into group onboarding, group discovery, those types of things, if they work for your particular business.
Raj:
But if you have those things that happen, regularly, the same every time, think about maybe is there a way to do this in group, or even just to do a smaller version of it. Do a class that teaches them how to do some of it yourself. Instead of custom servers or those types of things, maybe you teach people how to just move their business to the cloud in Azure or Google Cloud or AWS or whatever. Is there a course that you can do? Is there something they can do? Maybe if you just record it one time, maybe you don't even have to be there. Again, there's all these different ways you can break up your products or services to fit a different economic need.
Ben:
And actually get out to more people. So the first thing to remember when you're in a tricky economy is to just be patient. Your customers will come back. This is just for a matter of time. The second thing to consider is to build your funnel.
Raj:
One major, major mistake that we see in businesses is that the economy gets rocky and all of a sudden they shrink up on everything. They shrink their expenses which there's a certain amount that you should do, maybe don't go out to eat as much, maybe take more zoom calls instead of driving around town, paying for gas. Those types of things, which a lot of you are already doing anyway. But the one major mistake that I see is people cut back on their marketing. And I wish that I could just hold everyone and say, ''Don't do that.'' Not because we're in marketing, but because-
Ben:
A little bit. No, I'm just kidding.
Raj:
Not because we're in marketing. It's because it is the equivalent of... In the stock market, when you buy high and sell low, you panic, and it's the same with marketing, because when every other company is cutting back on their marketing, then the price of marketing is lower. The price of ads usually goes down, because the economy has contracted a little bit. And not only that, the price of attention. It's not even just the price of the ad itself, but if there's not as many people advertising, then you have greater mind share, greater top of mind. And our real estate clients out there, know how important that is, being top of mind for somebody when they're ready to spend money. So pulling back on your marketing dramatically during recession is a knee jerk reaction, it's actually unhelpful. Harvard Business Review talks about how people who market into recessions end up doing better after the recession, than their competitors who pull back. It's demonstrable. It's in the data that that's the wrong thing to do.
Ben:
My old boss, Donovan, he started his design and marketing firm right into the recession as well, and it was a little bit scary. It just seemed like everything was drawing up right in front of him and he got that same piece of advice from someone else at a design conference saying, ''Hey, when things are drying up and other people aren't marketing, this is the perfect opportunity to stand out and to actually be heard.'' Because what's the biggest problem is there's so much noise in the space, so many people are marketing, you don't know what to listen to. And so that's the best time to actually invest and get ahead.
Raj:
Yeah. I'm going to ask you a question we didn't prepare for, so you're on spot.
Ben:
I love when he does this.
Raj:
When it was finally safe to go out again after COVID, what was the first thing that you remember doing?
Ben:
Going to the movie theater, maybe?
Raj:
Okay, yeah. Going to the movie theater, going to restaurants.
Ben:
Oh yeah.
Raj:
For me, I remember the first time I got on a plane.
Ben:
I still haven't gone on the plane. I need to get out more. Raj has gone a million times.
Raj:
You have gone on vacations.
Ben:
Yeah, I have gone on vacations for sure. And yeah, family get togethers as well.
Raj:
Yeah. And part of the reason I ask is because there are these things that we dream about during tough economic times. People's dreams don't just shut off because the economy went bad. In fact, if anything, I think it spurs people's dreams.
Ben:
Oh yeah, I was going to say they go into HD at that point.
Raj:
There's this escapism... You just showed your age, HD, it's 4K now man, maybe 8K, AR I don't know.
Ben:
High definition. They go into high definition. HDR. Yeah.
Raj:
But there's this escapism, you do the same thing where when things are hard at work, when things are stressful with your family, whatever, you might be shopping for that Tesla or you might be dreaming of that vacation in Aspen or whatever it is. You start creating some of those dreams when you're maybe not as busy, or maybe you just want to escape from everything else. I know that when things are hard, I don't want to go home and open my laptop up again and work more. When things are good-
Ben:
Oh you don't? That's good.
Raj:
When things are good I want to, because it's like, ''Oh my gosh, I might close that deal.'' Or, ''I'm really excited about this thing that we're building.'' There's just this energy around it. But when things get hard in the economy, it's like, ''Ah, I want to watch Netflix.'' Or, ''I want to scroll Instagram or whatever.'' And that's your perfect time to get somebody's attention and say, ''Hmm, doesn't this truck look a little nice right now?'' We know you're not ready yet, but when you are, we're going to be here. And that's the same for whatever your industry is. We had that experience with StoryBrand. When we wanted to buy it, we didn't have enough money to start, when we wanted to become a StoryBrand Certified Agency.
Ben:
Full disclosure.
Raj:
We didn't have enough money at that point. We were reading the books, we were listening to the podcasts, all that kind of stuff. And they were exposing StoryBrand to us that whole time, showing us how valuable it was. And eventually when we were ready, we made the purchase. So the big mistake in not marketing during a recession, or just even a tough economy, is that if you go radio silent, you're not giving your customers anything to aspire to, anything to dream about purchasing when they're able to. And somebody else will.
Raj:
Because sometimes it's not a matter of are they going to go to Burger King or McDonald's, it's are they going to cook at home and go to the zoo instead. They might just be spending their discretionary income in a completely different way, because you didn't bother advertising to them. You didn't bother marketing to them in the middle of a tough economy. So again, can't reiterate enough, don't make the Wall Street mistake of buying high and selling low during a recession. Don't do that to your marketing. It's the same thing. You have to continue. Cut back a little bit if it makes sense. You might not need to put a lot of energy into launching your TikTok channel this year or something, but do you keep up your main ways of connecting with your customers?
Ben:
Okay, so Raj, I want ask you something that maybe we haven't-
Raj:
Okay now I'm on the spot.
Ben:
You're on the spot now. When you say funnel, what exactly are you talking about?
Raj:
Well, you've got your funnel cakes, you've also got your funnel clouds here in Nebraska.
Ben:
Yeah, that's very popular in Nebraska.
Raj:
Both actually.
Ben:
Actually that's true.
Raj:
Somebody should make a tornado-shaped funnel cake.
Ben:
I'm sure this exists.
Raj:
Probably.
Ben:
This is a Google search away.
Raj:
Now when we're talking about funnel, we're really talking about your email funnel, and why that? It's because it's a platform that you own. You have the email addresses, so even if MailChimp goes away, even if HubSpot goes away, you have those email addresses and you could even email those customers one by one if you really had to, if all of the email services went away. Unlike Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or LinkedIn, wherever you're advertising, in those places you're really dependent on the platform. You're dependent on the algorithm. You are dependent on what's popular this week, who's mad about what political thing, all sorts of things. It's more danger on a platform that somebody else owns. You need an email list that you can market to consistently, because people move towards purchase at different times.
Raj:
We call it a funnel because it's kind of shaped like this. People start out at the top and they are maybe thinking about buying from you, maybe. And then they get more interested in your features, maybe how you compare to your competitors, all that kind of stuff, then they're really considering it. Is there a deal going on right now? Is there a coupon? Is there maybe a bonus for that offer? And then they move towards that purchase. And people move at different times. And you probably know your sales cycle, if it takes two weeks, if it takes six months, whatever it is.
Raj:
What you don't want to do is not have that funnel full for when the economy recovers, because if you haven't been filling that funnel and you know it's a six month cycle, if you start your marketing again after you feel like you're in the clear, you feel like the recession is over, then it's still going to take you another six months to get back to good revenue, if you have a six month cycle. So market during the middle of the recession, people will be starting to warm up. Even if their sales funnel or their journey is maybe six, seven, eight months, maybe they take a little longer to move through it, but at least you'll be vesting that effort later. And it comes up sooner than if you had just waited to start until after the whole thing was over.
Ben:
Yeah. And we've already referenced StoryBrand and how good they are at some of this stuff, but I think about back when before we were StoryBrand certified. We'd get these emails and sometimes we'd be kind of annoyed by them. But eventually, you start reading them and they start working on you and it really just warms you up for when it's the right time for you to actually make that purchase. And when that right time came, we were ready to make that purchase and they totally got us. But I want to speak to, Raj, some people may have an adverse reaction to this, ''Email? Really? This seems a little bit old fashioned.'' Do people really make buying decisions based on email they received? Should I be spending more money in social media? How do you respond to that?
Raj:
Yeah, so a lot of people will tell you that with the changes that have come to the iPhone operating system, iOS, it's starting with actually a couple of generations ago, iOS 14, social ads have become a lot less effective in a lot of cases. They might be good for getting somebody into your email list, but trying to get somebody all the way through the buyer journey is just a lot tougher, a lot more expensive, now than it was even two, three years ago, so that's one part to the answer.
Raj:
The other part to the answer is that on social, I don't know exactly what the exact statistic is right now, but it used to be that roughly one out of every 10,000 views would convert. In email, you're a lot closer to one out of every 100. And that might still seem a little discouraging to you. You're like, ''Oh man, I got to build an email list of several thousand people.'' And it's better to build an email list of several thousand people, that you own that list, than to try to build a social audience of several million people that would take to be the equivalent, and you don't own it. If Facebook changes the algorithm tomorrow, you're in a tougher spot.
Ben:
And we're not saying to not do social media.
Raj:
No, a hundred percent.
Ben:
And we do social media advertising as well. But this is a really fundamental and an important one, and one that I think can be easier for people to miss in this age of new social media platforms every other day. And we were joking about TikTok a minute ago, but I think that's the thing, we start wondering, ''Should I be on this? Should I do this, should I do this?'' Maybe. How's your email list doing though?
Raj:
And I'll tell you too. I'll tell you the medicine that we're taking ourselves, we're focusing on organic search and building our email list. Those are the two biggest things. In fact, part of the reason we're doing this podcast right now is so that more people can search and find Fruitful. You are in the middle of us taking our own medicine right now. We're making it easier to find us through search.
Ben:
Are we supposed to tell them that?
Raj:
We're making it easier for you to find us through search. And we are making it easier for people to get signed up to our email list and to learn about what we can do for them. And the reason why email marketing doesn't have to be annoying is that if you go with the StoryBrand framework, if you go with, ''Here's the problem that I can solve for you.'' Then you're being helpful to people. You're not being annoying.
Ben:
You're giving away free value.
Raj:
Yeah, you're being helpful to them, and people want that. If you're ever on the street and you're asking for directions and somebody's like, ''Oh, it's over there.'' And then somebody else came up to you and they're like, ''That person does not know what they're talking about, it's actually over there. You're going to end up in a very bad part of town.'' You'll be really thankful for that.
Ben:
Oh yeah.
Raj:
People want to be helped. They want you to help them move to a solution to their problem.
Ben:
And that brings us to our final piece of advice, which is to be brave, launch anyway. This recession, whatever economic turmoil you might be in at the time that you watch or listen to this, there's an end in sight. It's for a certain period of time. And there's all kinds of statistics that show that it's better to launch in the middle of tough economic times, than at the beginning or the end.
Raj:
Yeah. Exactly as Ben said, products that are launched, products or brands, even companies, that are launched about halfway through a recession tend to perform better than products or brands that were launched before or after a recession. And part of it is there's this survival of the fittest thing to it, where if something survives difficult economic times, the recession is killing off some of the mainstays in your industry perhaps, or weakening them, and so there's a chance for you to do some new activity, launch a new thing, new product, new company. So there's a little bit of that, the survival of fittest.
Raj:
But there's also, again, that idea that you're buying attention when it's the cheapest, whether it's because it's actually cheaper, or whether it's because there's not very many companies marketing to people. You have an advantage if you're launching something in the middle of a recession. And we know that recessions tend to last about 18 to 22 months, give or take. And of course that's not actually... The funny thing about recessions is that sometimes they only last actually a number of days. I think the one in 2020 around COVID was, I think Dan told me, 43 days or something like that.
Ben:
Terrible 43 days.
Raj:
But the recovery from those really technical markers of a recession tends to be 18 to 22 months. So let's call it that, 18 to 22 months average time for a recession. So you should be thinking right now, ''What am I launching in nine months, 10 months, 11 months from now?'' Because you know how long it takes you to get your team together and say, ''Okay, what are we going to be launching in 6, 8, 9 months here?'' And get them together, get them working on it, call somebody like us, get some branding on it, get some messaging around it, get a marketing plan together.
Raj:
You should be working right now. If there's a recession happening, whatever definition you go off of, you should be working right now, to what you're going to be launching in 2023. Whatever idea that you've had on the back burner, whatever thing that you know should be doing for your customer to solve another one of their problems, you should be working on it right now and you should be planning to launch in the next year, because that's when your product's chances of survival are actually at their highest.
Ben:
And I'll say too, hearing you talk Raj, bravery is contagious. There's something about seeing a brave, bold business marketing into a recession that makes you want to do work with them, makes you want to engage with them. And the survival of the fittest thing is totally true. I've seen businesses not survive, and it's really sad seeing them close up. And maybe it's because they really went under, some of them just maybe didn't have what it takes to withstand. And as hard as that is to see, especially if those are people that you know, that is to your advantage if these are your competition. And you're out there, you're being bold, you're being brave, you're doing things, making waves. And again, people like to do business with people like that, because they want that courage themselves. They want to tap into it themselves, there's something about it. It's like, ''Yeah, I'm out here. I'm trying to do this. You are too.'' You could have such powerful, I think, business relationships forged in that kind of grit.
Raj:
And the other thing too is that if you launch a brand into a tough economic time, you're not going to do it with a lot of fluff built into the product. It's going to be a pretty pure, pretty distilled version of that product. You might build stuff onto it later, little add-ons, those types of things. But that version that you're going to launch is going to be pretty pure. It reminds me, talking about bravery that brands have done. I know we use Apple a lot, but when Apple got rid of all ports, except for USB-C on the MacBook Pro, a lot of people struggled with it, myself included.
Raj:
But now, this weekend, we're several years past that, about five years past that, this weekend I was setting up new phones for my parents and it came with a USB-C, the little one that's flippable, that fits into the port, you can't do it wrong. It was USB-C to USB-A, which is the old flat USBs. It's almost always upside down, and you're jamming it in there, sometimes you break off pieces of it. And I got mad. I was just like, ''Why in 2022 are we giving anybody a USB-C to USB-A cord that's going to be slower, there's a right end and a wrong end to the cord. There's a upside down and a right side up to the cord.'' It's just a terrible experience. But everybody thought Apple was crazy five years ago for going all in on this technology. Now they walked it back a little bit. We have our SD card port back, all that kind of stuff. But they made a brave choice and the world came along with them.
Raj:
And you have that opportunity right now. You might not be changing the plugin standard for computers, and that's okay, but you do have a chance to change a customer's experience in your field. You have a chance to deliver a product online when you've never delivered a product online before. You've got a chance to do coaching or education when you've never done that before, there's so many opportunities that are still right there in front of you. That being brave part of it is contagious. It helps the rest of the world come along. It helps your customers come along and know that everything's going to be okay.
Ben:
All right. So be patient, build your funnel, be brave. Raj, what's the call to action for our audience?
Raj:
Get scrappy. This is the time right now. After the kids go to bed, grab yourself your favorite beverage, whatever that is, a glass of wine, beer, maybe coffee, whatever. But sit down on a couch with a notebook or, yeah probably a notebook, put the computer away, sit down with something and just start thinking about your business. Start working on your business. Think about ways that you could split your products up to more bite-sized chunks. Think about services that you could offer alongside your current ones. Think about ways that you can keep your current customers happy. I remember talking to the owner of Lark Salon here in Omaha when the world shut down. 2020, we had a great conversation. Sara Turack, Hi, and we talked about what can a salon do when you're not allowed to touch people, you're not allowed to be that close to people.
Ben:
We thought we had it hard.
Raj:
Right. And it really ground the business to a halt. And one of my ideas for Sara was, ''Well people still need to wash their hair. And you guys sell products and salon products are one of the salon's revenue drivers. Do curbside pickup with shampoos, recommend shampoos to people, create videos of how people can maintain their dye job in their hair, while they're unable to go to the salon. What do you do when your roots start growing out?'' And all those things. And Sara is such a great entrepreneur and she came up with some really scrappy ideas, and so glad that Lark made it through that time. And they're great. They're a great business. And that's the opportunity that's in front of you right now, sit down with that drink, whatever it is, and your notebook, and just start coming up with those ideas.
Raj:
How can we break up this business in a different way? How can our customers pay differently? What marketing ideas could we put out in front of people? What lead generators? What things might get them to give us their email address? The things that you've been maybe thinking about or wanting to do for a long time, this is the time to work on it. Don't just give in. The economy isn't happening to you. You're participating in the economy. This has been true from post 9/11 days, through the housing crisis, through the great recession, through political turmoil, through COVID, through... We've all been through a lot in the last 20 years. And you can do it. The economy isn't happening to you. You're participating in it. You have agency. You have the ability to make a difference in this economy, and your customers are still looking to have their problem solved. So get scrappy, get those ideas down on paper and then bring other people along to help you with them. That's why we exist, to help people get those ideas out in the world.
Ben:
I love that Raj. I think that it can be a tendency for when we're going through hard economic times to just feel like, just stay in the business. Just keep on going. Keep on doing the same thing. Keep on doing the same thing. And no, take a step back. Force yourself to take a step back, work on the business. Think of new things you can launch, new things you can do, and you'll be surprised what you might find.
Raj:
Believe it or not, we are so excited for what this next season could hold for you. There's tremendous opportunities when everybody else is hunkering down and not taking a risk. There's so much chance for you to do a new thing, or to expand your business. It doesn't end just because there was a bad headline. And so we're really excited to see what you're going to do, how you're going to get creative, how you're going to get scrappy in this next season.
Ben:
Thanks so much for listening and for watching. If you're on YouTube, make sure to like, subscribe, share this with a friend who might need a little bit of encouragement as we go into hard economic times, and don't forget to grow something good.
Raj:
Welcome to 50 Shades of Plaid with Raj Lulla.
Ben:
Where is he going with that?
