When the economy is in rough shape, one of the primary considerations of business owners is to "cut back." Cut back on expenses, cut back on staff, cut back in any way they can.
I'm here to tell you one area you must not cut back on:
Promotion!
The key to doing well when the economy goes sour is to promote like crazy. I'm not telling you to spend every dime on promotion, but you must promote with an even greater intensity than before.
Go back and look at all of the promotional actions you took that were successful. Put back in every one that's feasible.
Cutting back on promotion is never a good solution. When the economy weakens, it is even more vital that you ignore the impulse to reduce your promotional output.
I've written a number of posts that give easily affordable and very effective promotional ideas. Here are three of them:
I also want to remind you of a post I wrote some time ago. It was entitled: Blame It On the Economy and Watch Your Profits Sink. That post has been featured on many sites around the net. I strongly recommend you giving that a read.
And last but not least, if you look over to the right side of this blog, you'll see a "Categories" section. There are two categories that will give you some great tools: marketing and managing. Look through those posts and I'm sure you'll find some things that just might work for you.
