I faced one of the toughest challenges for our company during the Great Recession, which was greater than today’s market uncertainties.
Our company was in the home improvement industry, and the housing-led recession happened quickly, changing the layout of the home-owner industry at large. We needed to revisit our go-to-market strategies, talk to consumers, and make changes that were more in line with what we needed to survive in those times while staying true to our core business.
What we focused on was not intuitive. We focused on the foundational core of our business. And that ultimately made us stronger. Even though our demand was growing smaller, we gained a bigger percentage of the marketplace.
How did this happen? We focused on three simple points:
- We made changes to the kinds of products we offered
- We updated our marketing strategies to the personalized needs of our customers
- We responded to consumer demand. We didn’t ignore their needs.
The consumers noticed, and received value from our attention to them. And as more consumers came back, we were now well-established in specific markets that we were breaking into before the Great Recession. The consumers loved what we were doing, and we grew in the market place as a result.
By focusing on our core business and staying true to our values, while listening to the market, we were able to carve out a larger share of the market, even when the overall pie had shrunk. It is important to recognize what makes your company stand out, and how to take those values and apply them to the changing needs of your consumer base.
