What are the three biggest marketing mistakes small- and mid-sized business make in a downturn?
Cutting your sales force or service levels, dropping prices without a clear plan for making up the lost revenue, and not understanding how much you make on each product — so you know what to push and what to pull - are leading contenders. Cash flow is the crucial gauge for monitoring all of this, and when it starts to flat-line it’s usually because of bad marketing decisions.
Learn how to avoid the three biggest marketing pitfalls in a downturn from Knowledge@Wharton, the Wharton School’s online business journal, in this conversation with Wharton marketing professor Eric Bradlow.
The biggest pitfall, he says, is a knee-jerk drop in price: “A lot of firms, shockingly, don’t know how much money they make on each product line. Let’s just remember that a bigger number multiplied by a negative number is a bigger negative number,” Professor Bradlow says. “So a lot of people drop price on product lines that are already not making money on a per unit basis.”
Business Accounts
Other Accounts
Credit Tools
Personal Cards
Business Credit Cards
Corporate Programs
Personal Travel
Business Travel
Other Travel Services
Membership Rewards
Card Rewards and Benefits
Cash Back
Business Solutions
Funding & Payment Products
Business Accounts
Other Accounts
Credit Tools
Personal Cards
Business Credit Cards
Corporate Programs
Personal Travel
Business Travel
Other Travel Services
Membership Rewards
Card Rewards and Benefits
Cash Back
Business Solutions
Funding & Payment Products
Business Cards
Trends & Insights
December 21, 2008