Marketing in a downturn: when they zig, you zag

If the economic news has you holding your head in your hands, you’re not alone. For some businesses, the gloom and doom headlines of the past two weeks are translating into cancelled projects, uncertain contracts, slower consumer spending, clients getting gun-shy about their expansion plans, you name it. It may even mean real cutbacks in your business as a result of what’s happening in your key markets.

What happens all too often, though, is that marketing efforts are the first area sent to the chopping block. This can be a colossal mistake.

If your goal is to stand out in a crowded marketplace, it is much easier to be heard when your competition is scaling back on marketing and promotion. If your goal is to grow your business, how can this happen if you’re not out there where potential clients and consumers can see you?

Yet in tough times, we do need to be smarter than ever about our expenditures. We need to be judicious about where those dollars go. Here are three smart (and simple) ways to focus your marketing efforts without breaking the bank:

1. Evaluate your current plan and message.
What’s there? Can you trim out fat without losing the essence of what works? Are you being consistent in your message? Do you need to retool how you’re speaking to your market so that they know you can meet their needs in changing times?

2. Think promotion versus advertising.
Advertising isn’t cheap. And in difficult times, it can be hard to justify the same budget for it that you can when business is booming. Review which placements are bringing in business and let the nonperformers go. Then take a close look at high-value promotional tools.

Can you leverage lower cost options such as email, public relations and media outreach and your web site? How can you employ high-value client/consumer education tools such as white papers and case studies? While these latter tools have a higher upfront development cost, they also have a much longer shelf life and a wide variety of uses. And because they offer real value, they’re often not viewed by their intended audiences as marketing.

3. Consider outsourcing.
If you don’t have the capacity to carry out promotional efforts because your staff is putting out fires, developing new business or you just can’t afford to bring someone on, consider per-project outsourcing options. Often, this route can be cheaper, faster and more effective than trying to add to the plate of an already overtaxed staff.

How can your business avoid the knee-jerk "cut" reaction and instead invest in the future?