It’s official. We’re in a recession and your profits are beginning to show it. Though your marketing budget may be smaller this year, you should use new and better marketing strategies that draw in customers and grow your business.

Newt Barrett, founder of the marketing consulting firm Succeeding Today. Succeeding Today (www.succeedingtoday.com), is a lead thinker in this new way of communicating with customers.

The idea is simple. If your service is of value to people, and you’re an authority on that service, then use your knowledge to inform and add value to your customers. Rather than shouting, bragging and trying to drill information into your customers’ heads, build a relationship with them that creates trust and establishes you as a leader.

Barrett offers six tips for this refreshing, cost-effective means of reaching your customers:

1. Become customer-centric. Find out just who needs your services most; then learn what their problems are and what would solve them. This knowledge will become the base of all your customer communications.

2. Focus on the customer by creating a Web site filled with valuable content your customers use. You, as the authority of the service you provide, become a trusted source of information. Barrett considers your Web site to be the most important sales tool you have, so position yourself as the expert, not the salesman.

3. Start a blog. Blogging allows you to engage in two-way dialogues, shows that you are authentic and is another venue in which you can establish your knowledge.

4. Refocus the tone of your newsletter (or begin publishing one) to be informative and helpful, offering advice and solutions.

5. Always direct your customers to your Web site because that’s where the meat of your message lies. The amount of information available to your customers is infinite on the Web, so use it effectively.

6. Rely on a content marketing professional to convert your message into the
relevant, value-loaded information you want to pass on to your customers. Well-written copy that flows nicely and keeps your customers reading, free of grammatical, stylistic or punctuation snares, instills even more confidence in you, the authority and source of the message.

Marlene Taylor, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn., is a business writer and a regular editorial
contributor to Hook PR Group.