Thinking of cutting back on your marketing during these tough economic times? It’s a natural reaction. After all, money is tight. But look back at history, as the New Yorker’s always-interesting James Surowiecki did this week, and you discover an amazing secret: when everyone else is disappearing off consumers’ radar, you can take over an entire industry segment.

“When the (1930’s) Depression hit… Post did the predictable thing: it reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies.”

And the result?

“By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost thirty per cent and it had become what it remains today: the industry’s dominant player.”

Read the rest at: Hanging Tough: The New Yorker.

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“I can help you.”

Simple, isn’t it? Your prospective customers don’t need more information. Chances are, they’re drowning in information. And they sure don’t want a sales pitch.

What they really want is advice. Guidance. Expert help from someone they know and trust. Someone who has demonstrated that s/he understands their problem or need, and has a solution. Maybe it’s not even the perfect solution. But it’s a solution, and that’s more than they’ve got right now.

Remember, most prospects want to buy. It’s fun to buy. Besides, they want to solve their problem or satisfy their desire, then get back to whatever they were doing before.

When you look at it that way, marketing and copywriting become pretty simple. It’s not about what you’ve got. It’s about what they get.

What customers really want to know is, “Can you help me?” So four simple words can and should form the foundation of your marketing message:

“I can help you.”

Then just tell them how you’ll do it. Voila! You’ve turned a browser into a buyer.

Changing customer attitudes is a difficult and expensive proposition under the best of circumstances, and this ain’t them,” says ad agency president Sharon Krinsky in a delightfully snarky blog called The Ad Contrarian. For the time being, she says ignore your ad agency’s brand babble and focus on giving your customer a practical reason to try you now.

In difficult economic times like these, she says, your marketing should focus on trying to change customer behavior, not their attitudes.

“Contrary to what most people think, behavior is easier to change than attitudes. It is easier to convince you to eat a Big Mac than convince you that a Big Mac is a good thing to eat. It is easier to convince you to go to Las Vegas than to convince you that going to Las Vegas is a smart thing to do.”

How can you woo them your way? With a good deal, a special offer, a service enhancement, innovation or new benefit. As always, focus on differentiating your product, service or company in a meaningful way.

Photo by ralphbijker

From a recent flyer:

The most powerful form of advertising is being exceptional, says a technologist quoted in Sunday’s NY Times. He’s talking about Google, of course, by far the most innovative and exceptional company of the past decade.

Columnist David Carr’s love letter to the search giant rhapsodizes about the quality and ease of use of company’s many free web apps, especially the latest, Google Video Chat. And about how hard they are to resist.

(Aside: Reading Carr’s piece is almost like watching someone slip into drug addiction. Like most of us, Carr started with the “gateway drug,” Google Search. Then came some harmless experimentation with Gmail — and the boy was hooked. After that it was an easy descent into Google Calendar, Maps, even the hard stuff like Google Reader…)

One familiar aspect of Carr’s piece was his worry that he might someday regret giving up so much personal information to Google. I certainly share his concern. But this is a marketing blog, and Carr’s most cogent observation was about Google’s marketing — or rather, the lack of it.

Take video chat. Many other companies would take that kind of quantum leap and shout it from the rooftops, but Google just did a smallish blog post about the new feature and left it at that. “We have a philosophy that our products should speak for themselves,” said Jeff Huber, senior vice president for engineering at Google. “We tend not to make a lot of noise.”

That’s for sure. When was the last time you saw an ad for Google? Probably never. Compare that to the extensive advertising for Microsoft and Apple. Why the difference? Carr says “Google’s Web platform, in all of its high-functioning glory, is also its marketing.”

Bottom line: If you’re exceptional, you don’t need much marketing. The word always gets out. Of course, most companies are not exceptional, unfortunately. Not even Apple and Microsoft. Which keeps people like me in business.