Slowing down your marketing.

Period. End of story.

It is a mystery to me why some companies (often the ones who find themselves eventually dying away) will react to a downturn by cutting marketing expenses. Cutting expenses is a super smart thing to do, but you should NOT cut back on your marketing.

Simply put, when the statistics go down, or when you enter a downturn, the thing you should do is INCREASE marketing. Throw some gas on it, man!

Whether that marketing has to cost you anything is dependent on your market. In an Internet business, you can market your brains out online without paying a dime. Strategic use of social media, for example, can work wonders. It builds relationships with your potential clients. Best of all, you can use these sites for free. If you do need to put some money into it, a performance based system like Adwords will probably work a lot better than some other forms of marketing online.

But, you don’t cut back! You increase it. That is the key.

Remember, in any downturn, no matter how bad it gets, the money will continue to flow. It isn’t as if everything shuts down. People will be spending money, they’ll just be doing so smartly. So, offer a lot of value for a reasonable price, and market the hell out of it.

And when everything comes riding back up again, you’ll be the one on top of the food chain.