During difficult economic times when business is down, the overwhelming temptation is to trim everything often by a set percentage across the board. This is a natural, yet misguided impulse. When a business owner or manager tells me, “We have no choice but to trim our marketing budget,” I ask what he or she considers “marketing.” Too frequently the reply is, “Advertising.” While advertising is a very important part of marketing, it is only a small portion of the marketing any business should be doing.

Simply on the surface I would suggest that if you need more business, you should be doing more advertising rather than less.  However, the proper answer is a little more involved than that.

Too often businesses have little idea what the actual amount or money or business a particular marketing effort, such as an advertising campaign, is generating. As small business people we should design into every marketing effort the ability to track precisely what the yield is for that effort. If we cannot do that, we should consider the money spent on it completely wasted. Such tracking is fairly easy and inexpensive but is essential to marketing analysis. How much revenue is generated? Did it make or lose money? Did it generate new customers? Did it contribute to the bond with the business’s customers? How do all the campaigns we have run compare with one another in these categories.

While businesses often succeed during good economic times without doing this, the ones that do apply these principles are much more likely to succeed — even grow — during poor economic times.

Closely allied with tracking one’s marketing is that of testing. However, only if a business has an effective tracking program can it implement an effective testing program. I suggest that a business test everything! I have seen the change of a single word in a headline produce a ten-fold improvement in sales! This seems phenomenal but illustrates what a good tracking and testing program can produce.

For example an ad run weekly in a local newspaper can tell you a great deal within four to six weeks. Test headlines, type size, text color, the offer, wording, ad size, border style, and ad position to start, but resist the temptation to test more than a single element at a time. Keep good records of your results. Of course, this demands that the other people in your business understand what you are doing so they can keep good records as well. Before long you will develop a much better sense of the more effective techniques. You can then refine them and make them even more effective by continuing the tracking and testing process.

So, should you be doing more advertising during poor economic times? I can’t tell you without the tracking and testing data, yet I can say you should be doing more marketing of which print advertising is merely a part. Tracking and testing data will allow you to modify your marketing mix based on scientific testing results. Though print advertising is essential to most businesses, do not limit your marketing thinking to print advertising.

To your business success!

Let me help you grow your business today!

Paul Elliott

paul @ MarketingSuccessBlueprint.com

Turning Small Businesses Into Large Ones!

Marketing With Unbelievable Guarantees!™
http://www.MarketingSuccessBlueprint.com/blog

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