Cutting Prices

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Why You’re Totally Lazy If You’re Cutting Your Prices During This Recession

February 5th, 2009 |

Author: Joseph Ratliff

I am tired of hearing this shit on the news.

“Wah, we have to cut prices to compete any more…”

Or some variation of that business-killing statement.

That’s the friggin’ laziest way through this recession. I mean really, don’t you feel like doing any work at all to try and prosper in business?

Ok…rant over.

The top companies that will prosper in this recession will be those who start to do what I will call “market flexing.”

What is market flexing?

It’s flexing with the changes in your market right now. The economy has only changed the way people are spending…not how much they spend (spending might be down, but could that be due to poor marketing? Hmmmm…..).

The news media might have you believe otherwise…by picking out the select examples of people who are “hard on their luck” and flashing them right in your face.

(sidenote: why do you watch the news, except for weather and sports? Think about that today)

Onward…

You simply need to flex with how your market is spending money…and adjust your value proposition accordingly.

Quite honestly, for some businesses online this isn’t even that complex…you may just get away with finding another market of buyers, and adjust your offering to what they are buying (which is the secret to marketing anyhow right? Find a market that wants to buy something).

So, if you need to flex your marketing…or flex your offer…why is price the first thing you give up?

That’s actually the last thing you should give up…if at all…because reducing price is never the permanent solution to the problem…and responsible for more business deaths than anything else.

Ok…so what are you to do then? How do you “flex” to your market?

By finding out how and what your market is buying right this moment. One way to do this (there are hundreds of ways) is to go to Google Trends and type your market into the search bar there.

See what you can find.

You can also go to Ebay Pulse and find out what’s hot on Ebay related to your market or industry.

You can go to Shopping.com’s top searches to find out if your industry is on the list, click it…and you’ll see what people are searching for in your niche.

I can sense a question this might bring up already…

“But Joe, I don’t want to change what I am selling…or how I am selling it!”

If you’re thinking any variation of the above…then you need to go to Dictionary.com and look up the definition of insanity.

In other words…are you going to flex to your market? Or are you going to close up shop? It’s that simple of a choice. Beef up your offers, get crazy with customer retention, and just friggin’ take over your market…because no one else is doing it. Many are just cowering in fear about the next drop in the DOW JONES.

Look, the Internet gives you so much power, it’s not even funny…you can start a video-blog and rebrand yourself or your business. Do a weekly video-show on your topic (industry) that your market will be interested in watching…and don’t sell a thing during that show…make it valuable content…but have a link to your selling site somewhere in the vacinity.

Viral video marketing is powerful. Gary Vaynerchuk does it…I will be doing it…you need to start doing it too.

You gotta do what you gotta do. Go out there and kill it.

Laugh in the face of this recession, don’t cower in whiny fear.

You can do it.

Until the next time we look in the mirror together,

Joseph Ratliff - Internet Business Growth Specialist