Business in age of Turbulence Business in the age of turbulence

Managing and marketing businesses in the “age of Turbulence”

Turbulence is the new normality; unpredictable and intermittent spurts of prosperity mixed with times of downturn –even extended downturns. We are going to experience this in every country, every industry and in most companies. There will be points of unexpected change creating both threats and opportunities. No company will be immune from disruptions and surprises.

The current economic environment is a mix of recession and other factors that will continue to haunt us even after the recession is over. We call this “the Age of Turbulence”.

Even if we didn’t have a recession we could be experiencing an increased level of turbulence. The recession just intensified those levels. Two forces are driving those changes: globalization and technological advancement. With globalization, companies are being encouraged to buy wherever in the World they get the lowest cost and sell wherever they get the highest profits. Disturbances in one part of the world affect the activities in the other parts of the World.

With technological advances, there is a greater chance of bad news spreading faster. People can tap into social networks and talk about products and services. Bloggers comment bloggers comment about businesses, products, and brands as well as personal matters.

There are also new distribution channels, new lows all kinds of competitors. It’s a world of new opportunities and a world of new pitfalls-and it’s all moving very fast.

Eight factors to consider in creating chaotic s marketing strategies

The signs of turbulence are all over, and they are not going away anytime soon. Marketers need to develop a new mindset of always being on standby to activate response marketing programs when turbulence and chaos are strong. Marketers need to keep in mind the following eight factors:

1. Secure your market share from core customer segments.
2. sh aggressively for greater market share from competitors marching up to your core customer segments
3. Research customers more now because their needs and wants are in turmoil.
4. Seek to increase –or at least maintain – your marketing budget.
5. Focus on all that’s safe and emphasize core values.
6. Quickly drop programs that aren’t working for you.
7. Don’t discount your best brands.
8. Save the strong; lose the week.