Become a Toothache Marketer

When you have a toothache, it's all you think about. If it's not the pain, it's the fear.

When your target audience is being bombarded with messages about and/or experiencing the effects of a financial crisis, that is all they think about.

Under these conditions, how can you get your prospects to hear and focus on your message? How can you continue to grow prospects into converted buyers?

1. Sell solutions.
Focus on the customer, not the economy.

Everyone is looking for solutions - ways to increase value - and take away the pain. Right now, toothache marketers are in the money - people are looking for solutions to minimize the effects of the crisis. Just make sure your "crisis message" isn't going to make you invisible when there is no crisis.

As described in My Tooth Doesn't Hurt, Seth Godin's Blog, July 31, 2008, toothaches are a double-edged sword for "toothache" marketers...when someone has a toothache, they have no trouble getting conversions, but when there are no toothaches, dentists and other toothache marketers are invisible.

Become the obvious choice, whether or not there is a toothache.

2. Be innovative.
Everyone gets better in a down market.

As Seth Godin said in "My Tooth Doesn't Hurt", "create new products and services that build engagement and revenue among members of the population that aren't in pain...such as teeth whitening."

But be truly creative. "There are only two things riskier than being innovative: being gimmicky and doing nothing." Online Marketers Can Weather the Financial Crisis, FutureNow, October 10, 2008.

"Creative merchandising, creative buying, creative offers, creative marketing, creative cost-cutting, and creative customer-relationship-building will make a difference between who thrives and who dives...I'm talking about offering customers more perceived value at less cost to them and you. I'm talking about finding innovative ways to cut through the clutter of our media-crazy environment and the pain people are feeling from this crisis by increasing message relevance and spending less...that involves much more than screaming louder, telling a funnier joke, or changing the color of the "buy now" button."

3. Become efficient.
Don't think you are immune. Become bulletproof.

Bryan Eisenberg continues in the October 10, 2008 FutureNow blog, "Your customers are already acting more efficiently. You should too."

"The more you master the craft of doing more for less, the more secure you'll be in the coming months. Don't try to do three jobs with one person until that person begs for mercy. Instead, make marketing dollars go much, much further. That includes cutting fat from marketing budgets and creating a culture of marketing optimization that leaves no penny unturned. It takes work, but it will bulletproof you internally with the bosses and externally with the customers."

4. Become a leader.
Regardless of whether you are in charge.

From an Interview with Seth Godin regarding his new book "Tribes" at http://www.gapingvoid.com/, October 8, 2008, "Everyone isn't going to be a leader. But everyone isn't going to be successful, either."

"Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn't mean they're in charge, it doesn't mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people."