During tough economic times, it’s easy to get discouraged by poor sales. Below is the list of specific things you can do starting today that will give your business the boost it needs to survive:

Don’t Stop Marketing

It is too easy to cut back on marketing expenses when times are tough. If you are like many small businesses, your marketing budget is 3-5% of sales. As sales goes down, your first instinct is to cut costs, and marketing gets the axe.

Instead of cutting your marketing, you should focus it using these proven techniques. Use the checklist below to see if you are doing all you can to market more effectively:

1. E-mail newsletter (at least monthly)?
2. Reduced shotgun marketing – ads focused on existing customers?
3. Collected testimonials and used on website / in e-mail newsletters?
4. Collected 2-3 referrals from every customer?
5. Mingle with potential customers and hand out business cards at least 2x per week?
6. All non-essential tasks outsourced?
7. At least one viral marketing campaign currently in process?
8. Trading photography for goods and services?
9. Can explain your value proposition in one sentence, and list it in every ad?
10. Next sale planned to include additional services instead of lowered prices?

If you aren’t doing most or all of these 10 marketing ideas, you aren’t serious about growing your business.

In the end, the final question is “does all this work?” The answer is YES.

Experience shows that businesses who continue to market during downturns not only stay in business, but are much better positioned to grow when the economy finally turns around.

Tags: marketing in tough times

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 2:53 pm and is filed under marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.