In a Slow Economy: Remember to Boost Marketing

When customers are buying less from you and sales are down, you might want to ditch your marketing person, throw out your PR consultant and reduce sales expenses.

However, experts say that this is the wrong strategy. In a slow economy the one thing to boost is sales and marketing - without sales and marketing your income will decrease as most customers will buy less and less from you and more and more from your competition.

You might also want to communicate even stronger to customers. In particular if you're in a business where customers are going to buy, but the question is just how much and from whom - make sure as much of their spending is with you and NOT with your competition.

Technology does have a role to play.

If you've been giving proposals to clients on plain white paper and black text. STOP. If you have not been sending a paper newsletter to your top customers. START. These and other simple things can be done as a way to produce "do it yourself marketing".

Continuing in their push to help businesses create their own marketing materials, HP recently released a new line of printers to help businesses produce great looking marketing materials, right from within their own businesses. No Kinkos are local print shop needed. Printing does not always have to be in color. Internal documents can definitely be in black and white, but if you want to WOW your customers, its important that you add a little color to your hand out.

Having professional looking marketing material is only one part of marketing - especially in a slow economy. Today is one of the slowest days for the economy and my prayers are with those most affected by the failing economy.

Here's the first of eight factors that Business Week recommends businesses consider when planning marketing during a recession:

1. Research the customer. Instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers take more time searching for durable goods and negotiate harder at the point of sale. They are more willing to postpone purchases, trade down, or buy less. Must-have features of yesterday are today's can-live-withouts. Trusted brands are especially valued and they can still launch new products successfully but interest in new brands and new categories fades. Conspicuous consumption becomes less prevalent.