Dealing with the Economic Slowdown (and Other Problems That Can't Be Fixed)

I read an interesting blog post today at MarketingProfs entitled "How to Manage Problems You Can't Fix." It immediately brought to mind the state of our market here in Sacramento, where the real-estate-driven economic slowdown has dramatically reduced the financial resources available for weddings. We can't change the realities of the market: fewer weddings are being planned with the "full boat" of services, and the brides that are booking are behaving much more conservatively. So, the question is, what is the best way to respond?

Paul Williams, author of the MarketingProfs piece, offers two possibilities for managing the situation: either find a way to live with the situation as it (now) is, or find a way to invert it, so that what appears to be a negative is actually a positive.

How might that play out for wedding businesses?

The "live with it" or "acceptance" approach might involve the following:

• acknowledging that you will have fewer weddings in the next year or two -- and that your marketing investments may need to increase just to minimize the decline
• using the time freed up from working weddings to build new capabilities that you can use to improve your competitiveness in attracting wedding business -- whether on the product/service side, or in your marketing
• developing a non-wedding side of your business to diversify your revenue opportunities

The "invert it" approach might involve the following:

• changing your own pricing model, packages or menu of services so that you're more appealing to today's budget-conscious bride.
• choosing quality over quantity, i.e., target only the brides who are shopping on the high end, and aiming to do fewer weddings but with higher revenue per booking

There are no doubt other ways to take either approach -- the key idea, I think, is that either perspective is an opportunity for creativity. How will you respond?

Check out the original post here.