Advertising in a Bad Economy

Advertising in a Bad Economy We are not in one of the best economies that we have ever seen. As a matter of fact the economy is in a very poor state. Just look at the unemployment rate, the fast rising national debt, the healthcare crisis, the condition of the DOW. Anyone with any sense would tell you this country is in a crisis and it doesn't look like it is going to get any better anytime soon.

Organizations and businesses are trying to determine how to deal with the rising costs of doing business along side of a scared economy. The first area of action is to cut costs. Anything that is not necessary needs to be curtailed. Many times this includes advertising.

Before cutting the rope on the advertising budget, please consider the results. Advertising is a motivator to your customer base. In a bad economy advertisement can be the push to convince someone to buy a product or service. Cutting that motivator can effect your bottom dollar and maybe the life of your business. Removing advertising can be similar to removing the sign from in front of your shop. Advertising needs to be the last cut before cutting out the lights.

This is not to say that advertising doesn't need to overhauled. You may be spending too much money in areas of little or no return. All advertising needs to be evaluated for effectiveness. For example, lets say you are running an advertising campaign that includes drive time radio, cross channel TV, billboard, and newspaper. This is a fair amount of market saturation, however, does not include any social media, or Internet activity. Looking at your product we have a concert event directed toward a 13-24 age demographic. Immediately we have areas we can change reducing the cost.

Cross channel TV advertising can be drastically reduced. Looking at your target demographic you need to reduce the TV advertisement to only the concert style channels directed at the same age group. Also, be very selective of the time choice because most of your target demographic is in school during the day. If you have to have radio, do the same as you did with TV shooting for early evening to midnight advertising. Billboard can be cut because most teens do not pay any attention to signs (they are looking at their cell phones while driving). Newspaper is also out. Do consider, however, picking up social media advertising. See my article on Social Media.

Rethinking your advertising strategy can cut your advertising budget in half and you may be able to see more return for your dollar. Also, always find a way of tracking the results of your advertising. We will discuss that in a future post.