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Boy, when the economy is good, everybody is a marketing genius. Seems it is impossible to fail.

We even begin to believe in our own business acumen. So we expand, take unusual risks, borrow money for expansion, relax our credit terms and so on. Whatever it takes to grow, we do because, after all it’s grow or die. . . right?

Then there is what I call the Hamlet effect. To quote Hamlet “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions:” – William Shakespere, Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Claudius, King of Denmark at IV, V)

Well now careless optimism has come home to roost. What was once a stroke of marketing genius may be starting to look more like reckless gambling. And rest assured, the carpet baggers have shined their shoes, put on a new face and now stand outside the door offering their help.

Since the turn in the economy, has your phone been ringing off the wall or your email filled up with “free advice” to help you succeed? At every turn is there someone telling you that if only you did better SEO, made a video, had a website make over, bought this marketing plan, or whatever, you will will over your competition?

Stop. Take a breath, slow down and think for a minute. If you had the money, and time, to take advantage of everyone of these offers, would the added success even cover the cost of the services? Somethings obviously will improve your business more than others and some are probably just a waste of money.

No amount of marketing, SEO or website improvements are going to save a company that is not running on sound business principles. We had a joke at one company that seemed to engage in endless price wars. The joke was; “who cares if we sell at a loss, we will make it up on volume.”

Here are some solid strategies that you must implement if you are going to survive:

1. Get your Cash Flow In Order. Bill Douglas, CEO of EssentiaLink, has a saying “Cash Flow is Oxygen” and boy truer words were never spoken. Bill’s careful and incessant attention to cash flow has helped EssentiaLink survive and grow.
    
2. You have to understand and adhere to basic financial principles. For example, a $1000 expense is far more than a $1000 burden on your company. If your margins are 10%, you have to boost sales by $10,000 just to recover the $1000 spent and who wants to just break even. Not to mention an extra $10,000 in additional sales also puts an extra burden on cash flow. And when that happens, the cost of money comes into play. Things can get very expensive.
    
3. Not all customers are worth keeping. Some customers just don’t quite fit into the niche of what you are offering. Maybe you can never quite keep them happy, or maybe they never embrace all that you can do for them. These customers can bring down your business and image and they often consume far more of your resources than they are worth. Do some research, find a company that can serve them better and bring the two together. Your reputation will rise as a result.
    
4. Stop stepping over dollars to save dimes. In light of point 2 this might seem counter intuitive, but it’s not. If you are the main mover and shaker in your company and you are wasting time fiddling with IT, or spending 15 minutes to save a few bucks on a box of paper, the little you save can never make up for your lost time. The same is true if you are paying for a purchasing staff. If they are wasting time pricing pencils when they should be tracking down better prices on raw materials, you are losing money.
    
5. Technology is a tool to use, not the object of the game. If your technology is getting the job done and not incurring excessive maintenance cost, let it ride. remember, every dollar you spend on technology will cost you $1 / margin rate.
    
6. Focus on your core competencies. If you are an Engineering or Legal firm for example, your efforts should be to increase billable hours. So if billable people are working on IT problems, marketing, buying office supplies, consider outsourcing the non-core tasks and put people back to work on core projects. Having them do busy work while waiting for business to come in is draining your cash flow and hurting your business. Notably, sometimes this leads to a tough decision.
    
7. Get close to your customers. Before you spend a fortune on SEO or website overhauls, make sure you are speaking to your customer’s current needs. The reason they signed up a year ago, may not be the reason they are staying with you or would sign up with you today. Marketing is like fishing, if you use the wrong bait, you will get the wrong fish or nothing at all.
    
8. A million hits means nothing if you are not converting. Wouldn’t 500 highly motiveted buyers be better than 1,000,000 drive bys? Focus on revenue per hit, not hits per day.
    
9. Running a business is like writing good documentation. You want exactly enough to cover the topic, and not a word more.
    
10. Document, document, document. If you do not document your processes and business, you can suffer from the effects of vanishing technology. What do you do when your star worker leaves for another opportunity? You have a great sales proces that works, but does it stop working when you go on vacation? Document everything, so you can remain successful even when good people leave or you go on vacation. Try selling a business for what it is worth if it is not documented.

At the end of the day, good busienss practices go a long way towards securing your survival. And yes, you must market and sell. But if your house is not in order, throwing a lot of money an time at marketing will do little to help you survive in the long run.