The economy can be like a speed trap for your business. As soon as the economy starts to tank, your phone stops ringing and your business suffers. Initially, you may try to convince yourself that it’s a temporary dry spell. After a few weeks, you start looking at the calendar to see if today if a holiday. Eventually, you realize that this slump might be here for the long hall and you begin to think of ways to reduce expenses.
Ironically, one expense that many business owners consider reducing to cut costs is their marketing budget. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, your marketing budget is a big piece of the pie and for many agents, that means it has a big bull’s eye positioned over it; but a bad economy is the worst time to stop or drastically reduce your marketing costs. Why would you stop these sales-generating methods right when you need them most?
Reevaluating your marketing budget to allocate your funds to a more targeted and results-oriented method of marketing is a smart way to work your budget during a bad economy. One of the ways you can do this is by creating a website and starting a newsletter. By focusing your marketing efforts on highly targeted leads, you know you have quality prospects who are proactively looking for your help. They seek you out and contact you—which means no more frustrating cold calling.
When you combine the power of a well-written, educational and targeted website with regular newsletter mailings, you focus your budgeted spending on value-added marketing. This allows you to provide a service to potential clients through the very materials you use to generate sales—an extreme cost-saving measure.
Marketing does not become less important as your sales dwindle. Instead, it becomes increasingly vital. By marketing smart you not only save yourself money, you also increase your sales and create a winning formula for any economy.
