You could have the best product or service in existence, but during times of economic crisis… noise… worry… and fear, your prospect is distracted.

They may not be listening or even caring. They are defensive and reluctant to act.

That’s when your marketing must become disruptive.

This means a change in strategy and tactics.

It means recognizing that recessions… inflation… fears… and pain will change your audience’s behavior.

This is true for B2B marketing as well as B2C.

Let’s look at a B2B example.

We changed the marketing for a business-to-business company looking to increase sales during a big recession where sales were drying up.

Aware Products, a personalized line of hair and skincare products for beauty salon owners, were faced with a virtually impenetrable market during a recession as its target audience cut back on expenses.

Aware’s competitors where the well-known big guns like Aveda, Nexxus, Paul Mitchell, and others.

Since Aware Products wasn’t a household name in the crowded and cut-throat salon market, it was imperative that out creative efforts not only educated salon owners about the image-building and highly profitable benefits of using a signature line of personalized and branded beauty products… but also motivate the prospect to focus on the opportunity before them.

The principles we followed could apply to pre-rolls, nature ads, Facebook, google and more.

In this case, let’s look at what we did for the direct mail component of the campaign.

For this campaign, we had three objectives:

1. Get the prospects to open the direct mail envelope… not toss it
2. Have them read and engage with the content…
3. And spur them to respond – even as they cut costs and were fearful about the future

That was not an easy task considering the audience was busy individuals disinclined to change the status quo at the best of times… and outright dismissive of any message during a recession.

So, my CDMG staff and I created a stunning direct mail piece that used personalization immediately on the carrier envelope.

We used a large, oversized envelop to show an actual shampoo bottle with the prospect’s salon name personalized and imprinted on it.

It has that “wow,” disruptive effect.

The headline read:

Why This Bottle Holds Your Key To …

• Eliminating lost profits from product diversion
• Boosting your retail sales, even in a recession
• Enhancing your salon’s image
• Creating loyalty, even if a stylist leaves.

With the picture of the personalized bottle with their salons name on it, the direct response sales letter immediately made the prospect aware of the benefits of creating their own personalized line of hair and skincare products.

Then it quickly explained specifically how the prospect could immediately begin taking advantage of these benefits.

A lift note featured the testimonial of a salon owner who prospered through a recession and created an extra $60,000 in retail profits in a short amount of time.

A value-added insert answered 7 questions salon owners might have in creating their new personalized signature line of products.

And we also offered an Introductory sample kit of Aware products’ formulations and a free 32-page guide to personalized private labelling.

All in all, the mailing package was disruptive enough to cut through the clutter and commanded the attention of the prospect.

This approach dramatically increased business for Aware Products and became a powerful way for them to dominate the market… even though they were small fry entering a pot filled with giants… even during a recession… and even while the “big guns” were stagnating or failing outright.

For help creating your own disruptive campaign to market to hard-to-reach prospects,

give us a call at 615-933-4647 or email Craig at [email protected]