As Wavelength Marketing, LLC discusses, now is the time to be more aggressive with marketing. I share this piece with you, as I have not read as well a reasoned discussion of how to counter a soft economy in many years.

It talks about common sense. And that now is the time when advertising mediums are not cluttered with fat and happy, “doing gang busters,” companies. And what that gives other companies is the ability to stand out in a much smaller crowd.

Sadly, too many advertisers (yes, this includes some of my clients) choose to cut back their marketing when the opposite action is what should happen. It is too easy for the inexperienced to assume that cutting money from a stretched budget is the best way to manage expenses when times are tough. These folks just plain do not understand marketing 101. You cannot sell products and services if you cannot get your message out.

Why does this make so much sense when we read it, but the opposite action is what happens in a soft economy? Simple–it’s fear! Toss in a little CYA (don’t make me explain that) and you can understand the ease with which companies quickly take the scalpel to the marketing budget. Hey, you know all those MBA’s learned about numbers and processes not the art of real marketing.

Cut your budgets at your peril. The world is full of companies who when threatened by a slow economy did the counter-intuitive thing and spent the money. Can anyone say Apple?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under Advertising, Business. 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.