Recently I read an interesting article in the monthly issue of In Business, a magazine I picked up at Chambers of Commerce. It was about the entrepreneur James Caan and his view on the financial situation that makes a new business venture these days seem like financial suicide.
But it doesn’t have to be, and that’s what he pointed out.
And I think he’s right.

All financially bad times are a cycle – after a while you will reach the lowest point and things begin to go back up again. The question is to survive until everything turn for the better.

A lot of businesses are saving money by firing their staff, the main force behind the manufacturing. Another popular way of saving money is to cut down the marketing budget. And usually when big companies begin to cut down like that, the main and only reason is that the financial situation will prevent them from making the estimated annual profit. It’s not always because they are running low on money. Instead of making 30 million, which their estimation was, they might “just” make a profit of 10 million.

The ones that ends up in serious trouble when there are bad financial times are small businesses. The ones who will lose more than numbers that were estimated. Those are the ones who will need all the help they can get.

When the economy swing globally as much as it’s done lately, we all need to change our  price tags a bit. In times of crises, for the sake of staying alive rather than making a huge profit, it’s better to lower your prices and get business. Staying alive will be essential for everyone until it all swing back again.

And for those of you who are looking at cutting down on your marketing budget – leave it and use it to continue to inform your customers. Web sites that are left with no updates will not get any visitors. The information you supply to your customers on-line is still important since those who used internet before to search for products will continue to do so. People might seem to spend less, but they are still buying things.
This means that reaching your customers will be essential for your company to stay afloat.
Adjust your pricing, both on-line and off-line, make sure your customers knows this and your sales will keep coming in.

Because of this, and since we are brave (or stupid) enough to start a business in times that are all but good, we already adjusted our prices after the current situation. The next 6-8 months are going to be tough on all of us and I think that if you dare a little, in the long run you might win a lot.
And I think that James Caan would agree about that too.