How to win friends and ... you know the rest - or do you?

I found a little piece that intrigued me in the travel section of my regular newspaper last weekend. It was about venues looking after their customers less well, cutting back on upgrades and so on, due to the recession.

This seemed to me a remarkably silly way to go about running a business. If you want your business not just to survive the recession but to come out of it strong, you don't upset your customers or treat them less well than when things are good. You treat them even more like Royalty: you do everything you can to please them so they go on spending money with you. Especially hotels, who are having trouble finding top-paying customers to take up the suites and top-price rooms. Why not put "ordinary" customers in them and give them a really great experience? They'll tell their friends and relations, their business colleagues and even the chap they bump into on the street corner, all about how well the hotel's treated them. Good word of mouth is free (and priceless) - bad WoM is also free, and notoriously spreads 20 times further.

OK, these hotels aren't giving their visitors any worse a room than they were expecting - but they could be giving them a diamond-encrusted, solid gold experience with caviar round the edges. And wouldn't that make a great impression?!?!?

In the last recession I had a friend who worked in a posh hotel in Cambridge. He told me that half the expensive rooms were shut up because they had to take the lightbulbs out of the lamps to put in the rooms that were still in use (it was part of a big chain and this money-saving diktat had been handed down from head office). How short-sighted! Put the lightbulbs from the smaller rooms into the posh rooms, give every one a glimpse of what they can aspire to when their finances improve after the recession - guess where they'll come for their romantic weekends, and which room they'll ask for?

It's the same with marketing spend: now's the time to talk to your clients, if ever there was one. Let them know you're still going strong, tell them about changes to personnel or products or whatever might interest them. It needn't cost much - an email newsletter once a month would be fine (so make sure you grab their email addresses). But keep talking to them. If they disappear, so will you.

This isn't just special pleading because I might get the job of writing the words (though if you do need any written, please get in touch...)! It's plain horse sense, and it saddens me how many businesses seem to think that their clients have no option but to come to them. We all have competitiors, and few clients are totally loyal (are you?). They'll happily buy from whoever is in the front of their minds, or whoever gives them a reason to stay in touch.

Make sure it's you giving them a reason - and then treat them like Royalty. And they'll be (if only a little bit) more loyal and help you come out the other side of the recession a better, stronger business with a great reputation. Win-win - the best way to run a business.