The consensus of Westchester County business leaders is that — no surprise here — 2009 is a year best left behind.

So says the Business Council of Westchester (BCW), arguably the largest and most influential business organization when they released results (Click Here) of the fourth quarter 2009 economic survey, which tracks local business trends and overall confidence rating.

BCW member DataKey Consulting, LLC conducted the research and analysis, providing the results of nearly 150 local CEOs and business leaders on the state of the local economy, citing 68% of responding companies project flat to mostly declining sales for 2009 vs. 2008.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

The slide has stopped with 71% of respondents expecting their revenue to either remain the same or increase over the next six months compared to last quarter. Of those who anticipate growth, 53% have enhanced customer service, 53% reduced expenses, and 22% introduced new and improved products to battle the recession.

“Marketing and advertising are important,” said one business owner who projects growth. “I invest more wisely now than ever before, but delivering high quality output and focusing on customer satisfaction will lead to positive word of mouth, and can be the very best advertising possible.”

Since when is a 52 a good grade?

Overall business confidence has doubled since December ‘08. Out of a possible 100, the Westchester Business Confidence Index for the fourth quarter of 2009 scored a 52 (with 50 being equal number of businesses optimistic as pessimistic). Last year at this time, the confidence score was a dismal 27. In comparison, that 52 is looking better and better.

Recession? What Recession?

Here at InSight Marketing, believe it or not, we’ve seen a significant increase in business. Mostly new businesses ready to direct their marketing dollars wisely. Times are tough, so we offer excellent value; great, if not excellent, word-of-mouth marketing; and teach clients to harness the good in their local economy, which can only bode well for clients, and subsequently our local economy.

Now in shaky economic times, these businesses understand the need to aggressively market to keep their business stable, and more importantly, to be well-positioned for the significant growth when the economy turns around. And it will! Promise.

Every business needs a website. Plain and simple. It’s a brave new world out there, and if you don’t have a website, you’re not living, playing, and you certainly are not working in it.

I don’t care if you’re walking dogs or designing aerospace navigation, your website is window-shopping for any prospective client, employee, or employer. You can hand out business cards and cold call all day long, but few will consider you without a website.

A website makes you legit. Even if you’re just starting out and working out of the trunk of your car, a website is arguably marketing’s best tool in communicating your message. Some basic information your website should provide is who you are; what you do; why you do it; and why you’re best at it! It should provide a number of ways a prospect can contact you.

If you can’t afford to have custom website built for your business, there are inexpensive alternatives to utilize. For example when you register a domain name, at register.com or other domain registration websites, you can choose a pre-coded and formatted website template for a small monthly fee. You must provide text and images, and choices may be limited, but you will now have a site to direct customers and inquiries too. Don’t expect your website to end up on the first page of Google! Most templates don’t include search engine optimization that rank your website to appear first and foremost.

When ready to take your website to the next level of sophistication by including e-commerce, search engine optimization, or redesigning and reworking content, InSight Marketing is well-positioned to make that happen for you.

If you’ve read my other blog posts, you know I am a strong advocate of first developing a marketing plan before you invest money into advertising or other marketing tools.

A marketing plan should have specific goals you want to achieve for your business. But to achieve them, your plan may possibly recommend TV advertising, building an e-commerce website, or going to national trade shows — all costly endeavors.

Your marketing plan may initially be a “blue sky” approach — meaning there are no limiting factors to your ideas or goals. This is an excellent way to start your planning, as you don’t want to limit your initial creative brainstorming. But eventually every “blue sky” meets a cloud. And the cloudiest forecast for ambitious marketing is money — do you have enough marketing dollars to ensure a good shot in achieving your business objectives? If your budget is limited, and you can’t afford to implement your marketing plan in full, then you may need to readjust how ambitious your business goals can be.

Starting an aggressive marketing effort and not having enough money to finish is poor planning. As a pilot, I’ll use this analogy: it’s like flying across the Atlantic with a half tank of fuel. Sure, you’ll make progress, but your plane better have floats because you’ll be landing in the Atlantic, and not in Paris.

Occasionally, I’ll get a call from someone who wants to do some advertising in Westchester to promote their business. I’ll ask them what kind of budget they have, and they often ask, ‘what can I do $10,000?’

Unfortunately, not much. Westchester County, New York is not only an expensive place to live, but also to advertise. You can easily spend 10 times that amount on advertising and it may still not be enough, depending on what you’re advertising, and to what audience.

Okay, so as not to be a total pessimist, what can you do for $10,000? Well that amount could nicely fund a public relations program, which would help build awareness by getting your name out in the marketplace. Don’t ask PR to generate direct sales like advertising, but it could however, generate indirect sales and get your business off to a good start.

With PR and a $10,000 budget, you may not fly across the Atlantic, but you could go to beautiful Bermuda, and that’s not half bad, now is it?

Looks like the “Friendly Skies of United” are a little less friendly for musicians. Country singer Dave Carroll created a video regarding his less than “friendly” experience flying United Airlines

Carroll had his guitar broken by the airline’s baggage handlers and when he received no compensation with the airline, he took out his frustrations by writing a country song and created a music video about his experience.

The video has since gone viral and was featured on major American and Canadian news outlets. With all this unwanted attention, United Airlines recognized its error and has since contacted Carroll to make reparations. In addition, it has asked to use his video as part of its training.

Here’s the music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

For some reason, a lot of people think brochures are dead because they figure they’ve got a website and why on Earth would they EVER need a brochure?

There are all the cons:

• it takes a lot of time to plan, write and produce
• it requires skillful graphic designer who understands print production
• it requires printing, which can get expensive
• it seems to out-of-date the day after it’s printed

But, what many people forget is that brochures have not lost their value in the marketing and sales process because they provide (sometimes the only) the tangible and visual representation of a brand.

If you were going to purchase a car, maybe a Mercedes-Benz. It’s ridiculous to think that a nice, slick, 4-color, glossy brochure won’t make a solid impression on the buyer, and is in fact a strong marketing tool in helping to reinforce the quality brand that Mercedes stands for.

Mercedes tells you they have the best engineered cars in on the road and it’s only natural that they would want to provide brochures and marketing materials that position their brand in EXACTLY that way – showing the potential buyer why they have the best cars.

The branding logic is, if their brochures are this well-done and impressive, what must their cars be like?

What do your print materials say about your company? Do they say Mercedes or Yugo?

A question that I’m often asked is: Is it fair to link marketing to sales?

My answer is always, “Yes!”

Why?  Because otherwise what is the purpose of marketing?  Marketing’s primary role is to generate sales. However, in most cases it is not direct. The traditional role of marketing is said to be like leading a horse to water and then sales is there to make the horse drink. But, in my opinion, it’s totally valid to hold marketing accountable to the success of sales. I’ll give you an example:

Let’s say that you want to sell your product to females between the ages of 18-25, that’s your target market.  After launching your marketing program, you’re happy to see that you’ve generated a lot of leads, but unfortunately most of the leads are males in the 35-55 – that can be a problem.

You could focus on the positive and say, “Hey…the marketing is generating lots of leads!” but if you’re not making sales, or the right kind of sales, your marketing is obviously not very effective.

There could be one of two problems:

1. Either sales is not making the right sale;
2. or marketing is not targeting the right audience.

For scenario #2, if your marketing is not bringing the right customers to the watering hole, it is much harder for your salesperson to close the sale.

However, in scenario #1, if marketing is doing a good job in attracting the right audience, but sales still can’t convert the leads, then something is wrong with the sales process – or perhaps with the product itself.