Advertising during the rocky times, what do you do? How do you survive? How to you grow? One of the oldest advertising axioms is that those who keep advertising during the rough times will truly prosper when the good times return. That is easier said than done. When a business spends money on advertising it generally wants immediate returns. During tough times this is even more true because the owner worries about still be in business when those good times return. As a result many businesses look at cutting the ad budget and hope to spend the remaining budget wisely. So during the rough times how can a business be smart in using the advertising budget wisely?
Here are 5 tips for spending your advertising budget wisely during the Great Economic Recession of 2008 and hopefully only part of 2009.
- Don’t hesitate calling an advertising agency. A good agency can help to focus those precious ad dollars to get the most bang for the buck. A smart dollar invested in good advice will have a greater return in the short and the long run.
- Look to Social Media as one of the ways to tell the story. Your customers can become you best advertising tools through Facebook and the other social media sites.
- This is a good time to take a hard look at your web site and how it is performing. Is your site showing up in search engines? How many visitors are coming to your site? Where are they coming from? What are they doing when they get to your site? In hard times your customers are doing more research before they buy.
- Focus advertising dollars into tight windows to create a bigger presence during that window as opposed to spreading the dollars out over a longer period of time.
- Personal relationships built on trust and integrity can create a positive advertising message. This is a message that many consumers are seeking in light of all of the scandals that have led to this recession.
I recently heard someone say that during the Great Depression, 70% of those business that continued to advertise survived… 80% of those who significantly cutback in their advertising did not. The challenge for every business in this economic cycle is to be smart, to have integrity and to work hard everyday to earn every dollar.
Tim Crouch is the founding partner of The Crouch Group, a full service marketing and advertising agency with offices in Denton, Texas and Springfield, Missouri. The Crouch Group works with clients all over the United States developing marketing and advertising plans that work for any size budget. The agency also includes an advertising specialties division, Ad-On Promotional Products, better known ad “Idea Central”.
