What to do now and where to pivot

Oh, man. Welcome back to the show. Today's March 27th, and if you've been paying attention, I've been a little bit absent from most recent episodes. You know, we're right in the middle of a global pandemic of recession slash depression, and things are tough for pretty much everybody, with the exception of a handful of sectors. And, you know, no different here. I've had clients have, you know, big issues. I've had some issues. Everybody is forced to pivot and times are pretty hard. But this is not going to be an episode of doom and gloom. I'm actually going to give you a couple things to really think about. This is going to be a relatively short episode, but I wanted to let you know I hadn't forgotten about you. I've just been really busy, head down, trying to pivot and adjust various businesses during this time. And I want to let you know that if you are in the same position, if you are worried, if you are, whether you're running a big business and have some incredibly hard decisions to make, or you're a solo entrepreneur, and on the other end, you've got a kind of lean business, but people aren't buying anymore. All hope is not lost. It's just a lot of uncertainty right now. And in times like this, it's really important to focus on the things that we can control and that we can pivot with. Now, I've been on conference call after conference call with mentors and friends and colleagues and other people, and pretty much the consensus is, and I agree to do a handful of things that can really stop the bleeding, but also position yourself for success on the other side of it. The very first thing to do is, obviously, I don't think this goes, I don't think this is rocket science, but cut back on necessary unnecessary expenses. But don't necessarily look at marketing and advertising as an unnecessary expense. In fact, it's one of the most necessary expenses right now because everybody else is cutting back because what they were doing isn't working. And this is an amazing opportunity to get in front of your customers when your competition is backing away. But you have to do it in a different method. You have to pivot your marketing message in most cases, and you want to pivot it from selling and just trying to get them to take action and buy your stuff to really connecting and really building out the ability to build a human relationship, which is one of the things that's kind of been missing in a lot of marketing and advertising. Everybody's shouting, buy my stuff. Buy my stuff and it gets really competitive. But those who pivot their message for authentic human connection are going to have a lot more success when this stuff starts to subside. There's a lot of ways to do that. Simply, you know, putting out messages in your email and your social media and even doing paid ads. I mean, cost per CPMs, cost per impressions are way down and you should be able to get your message out to a lot more people. I know I've been ramping up my advertising and that of my clients, but we're, we're empathizing with them. Empathy is really important right here and letting people know that you're here, you're here to, to work with them. And if you have a business that might require some negotiation with your clients, it's a good way to negotiate them down, defer some of their payments as opposed to letting them simply cancel. And you know, running Facebook lives, Instagram lives, getting on YouTube lives, just getting out there and interacting is a perfect opportunity. You know, I came across some statistics the other day about that I wanted to share with you here about, you know, four case studies why you really shouldn't cut back on marketing during an economic downturn. And these are some big industries that we've all heard of. But I thought I would read a little bit of this to you because I think it can be very eye opening. So in the 1920s, post, the cereal maker was the category leader in the ready to eat cereal category. And during the Great Depression, Post cut back significantly in its advertising budget and rival Kellogg's doubled their ad spend. So as every as Post pulled back, Kellogg's doubled it up and they invested heavily in radio. And they introduced a new cereal called Rice Krispies, featuring Snap, Crackle and pop. As a result, Kellogg's profits grew by 30% and the company became the category leader, which is a position it has maintained for decades. When's the last time you bought Post cereal? Maybe you have. I mean, I haven't bought cereal in 15 years, but it's a great lesson. And 1973 to 1975, there was a 17 month recession. I was born in 74, so luckily I don't remember it, but my parents do. And it was triggered by the energy crisis. In late 1973, the US government issued its first miles per gallon report in which Toyota Corolla was second to Honda Civic in fuel efficiency. And since Toyota was experiencing strong sales when the economic downturn hit, the temptation was to drop their ad budget, which they resisted. And by adhering to their long term strategy. Toyota surpassed Volkswagen as the top imported carmaker in the US by 1976 and I think we all know who is one of the most popular brands out there. Toyota, even Honda, et cetera, a lot of the Japanese carmakers. Now in 1990-1991 there was a big recession and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell took major advantage of the McDonald's decision to drop their advertising budget. As a result, Pizza Hut increased sales by 61%, Taco Bell sales grew by 40% and McDonald's grew by 28%. Final case study is that Amazon sales grew by 28% in 2009 during the Great Recession. The tech company continued to innovate with new products during the slumping economy, most notably with Kindle and other products which helped to grow the market share in a first on Christmas Day 2009, Amazon customers bought more ebooks than printed books. And as a result in the minds of consumers, myself included, Amazon became an innovative company by introducing a lower cost alternative to cash trapped consumers. So those are four quick and dirty case studies that are just really eye opening of what can be done when you get really to work in times of uncertainty, depressions and recessions. And I think those are important to know. Now it's also important not to just double down on what you're doing and what you've been selling, but as I mentioned earlier is to double down on connecting and innovating and connecting with the customers so that they remember that you were here when everybody else bailed on them. And if you're not in a position where you have a big audience right now, then my advice is to focus on building an audience and to focus on creating content that creates goodwill publishing and distributing it. Worry about making offers later if you need to. And this is actually something that I've been working with several clients to do. In fact, if you are interested and still listening and want to take me up on a very interesting offer, if you email me at askbradakenratbusiness.com subject line build an audience, I would be more than happy to share with you one of the things that I'm working on with these clients and it's a way to help build the audience for them and to really supercharge what they're doing now just simply send an email to askbradaconratbusiness.com and I'll fill you in because I think this can be a real lifeline for a lot of folks who are in precarious positions. Bottom line, double down on what's working. Pivot your message, show up when your audience disappears and realize that this too shall pass. But we don't know how long and we don't know what is gonna be different when it does. Anybody who tells you they do is literally just guessing. Me included. But now is the time when entrepreneurs get busy and get creating after all, I think it was. I think I saw that Isaac Newton back in the I think it was the 1700s when there was a black plague or bubonic plague. He got quarantined for a while and that's where he developed the theories of calculus and gravity and some of his best discoveries. So maybe that's available for you too. Alright, so that brings me to the end of this short episode. I do have more really exciting interviews coming up for you, so please stay tuned. And if you have any interest in need my help to build you an audience that you can build amazing goodwill with and really come out of this with an incredible asset during this downtime. Send that email to askbrad@baconwrappedbusiness.com and I will see you guys on the next episode. Talk soon.