Keep marketing in a down economy!

Anyone and everyone who buys, sells, or barters today knows all too well that the economy has taken a near knockout punch. On this, there can be no argument. That said, let’s quit buying into the doomsday hysteria and get on board with “Marketing” with a capital “M”. The reason is simple. The businesses that continue to market themselves during slow economic times are the ones that will be left standing when the proverbial dust of economic chaos settles.

Many advertising experts have published studies showing that when certain companies, which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons, over the last 6 recessions had cut their marketing budget, their sales and net income fell significantly and continued to lag for several years following.

Those businesses that continued to market aggressively picked up all the customers, as well as potential customers, from their competition whom cut their marketing budgets.

You need to be focused and look for opportunities that are going to further your business and remember that when one door closes, another opens and it may well be a bigger and better door. That's the stance you have to take. You don’t necessarily need an open door to opportunity if you can kick it down with a great marketing leg attached to your long term goal for growth.

There isn’t an industry out there in the market place today that is immune to an economic downturn. Even a friend of mine who owns a funeral home has said that in a business like his, where taxes are the only other thing that is “sure”, his clients are spending less. Unlike his competition though, he knows that old adage “It takes money to make money”. He knows, as all successful people know, that the place in your budget you DON’T cut when times get tough is the money that puts you in front of your customers. Eventually the economy will recover, it’s cyclical. You don’t have to be.

Keep marketing and pick up the business that is dropped by the ones that don't! 

Tina Smith

Director of Sales & Marketing