Welcome to the Escape Blog

So, apparently a recession in the UK is now almost inevitable (ref).

Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. The relentless negative sway of reporting is talking us all into it, but I guess these things do come in cycles so perhaps 2008 may be a challenging year… if you so decide.

I like to stay positive. Already this month I have read about ASOS, GAME and Morrisons all doing very well thank you very much and it gives me a more positive outlook.

Yes, people don’t want what they used to want, but we are still trying to sell it to them despite saturated markets.

And what about differentiation - marketing and brand - which is one of the key areas of spend that starts getting cut in tough times when surely it is the time to be pushing rather than pulling?

Recognition

The first part of solving the problem for your business is recognising the patterns and who is doing well in your industry - what have that got that you don’t?

Are your services and products still relevant or have they moved on. Take The Escape…

Design and web creation is now more accessible - you can even save a Word file as a web page.

So, some small businesses are creating their own design, using relatives who are ‘creative’ or by using Powerpoint and clip-art. The trade-off between cost and quality of desktop colour is acceptable for them so they chose to do some of the things themselves, that five years ago they may have needed us for.

The same with web. We don’t (and can’t) compete with Frontpage or Dreamweaver but it is an option for small business to reduce costs. Last week, we lost a website project because someone’s friend had just set up a business doing websites from home.

But, is this approach a false economy? It’s marketing and it needs measurable results.

Effective marketing is about reaching and engaging a relevant audience and your company’s offering needs to be refined, explained and differentiated so that you engage your target market.

At The Escape we did this, so now we “create business websites that get actual results”. And, we can prove it with our design, web and online marketing case studies… it’s a lot more compelling in terms of a definable business offering.

By defining what you really excel at, you can compete on the higher ground, especially if you can spread the word effectively and this is where the web comes in for two reasons.

1. You have more competition and some of them have much lower overheads than you can ever imagine - can you, and should you, compete?
2. You have more reach with relevant people on the web - if they can find you and engage.

Capitalising on reach

The key to making the most of your reach is to answer the age old business edict of “supply a demand”. What’s more, you then go on to tell everyone about it using content that people can identify with.

If you are truly good at what you do and your offering answers a problem, then you have a viable business - but you have to validate your market position.

If you are not already, refine your case studies, create white papers; start showing off.

You gotta ‘tell it to sell it’ and if a recession is on it’s way, it’s time to start shouting!