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130 Managing Customers Through Economic Cycles

People who focus on marketing strategy, various predic-
tive techniques, and the customer’s lifetime value can rise
above myopia to a certain extent. This can entail the use
of long-term profit objectives (sometimes at the risk of
sacrificing short-term objectives). It can also result in mar-
keters being caught unawares with quick economic cycle
changes.

Smart organizations realize this. They also realize that
even in good times, consumers’ attention is a scarce com-
modity. In bad times, that attention remains scarce but the
focus and the expectations increase expediently.

Complicating things further, the not so smart marketers
just turn up the volume on their same old messaging. As a
result, marketplace noise increases, the relative abundance
of attention becomes scarcer, and consumers become increas-
ingly numb.

The smart marketers shift focus from quantity to quality
– adapting to how they know consumers are feeling and
viewing the world.*

Understand what your business really does

One professional web services company with a managed
services model was finding it difficult to compete when
orders declined by 40% in a major recession. Chargeable
rates were down 10 to 15%. Clients were squeezing margins
across the board. They were in the business of providing
manpower to help with content creation. The clients would
no longer be allowed to spend money on “manpower” so
the funding dried up for the web services company. This
web services company had to change how they offered their
services in conjunction with where the money could flow
to clients. Instead of charging for manpower, they charged

* Source: Wikipedia.