It’s the num­ber one topic on everyone’s mind at some point: what will hap­pen to my busi­ness dur­ing hard times?

It doesn’t seem to mat­ter what busi­ness you’re in, or whether the news says it’s get­ting a lit­tle bet­ter or a lit­tle worse.

Every busi­ness owner’s mind drifts to the reces­sion at some point.

We won­der: are we headed for another Great Depres­sion? Or will we just be tight­en­ing our belts to ride out the lat­est storm?

Wish I had the answer to that but I have no clue. I’m a web­site pro­mo­tion spe­cial­ist. How
would I know?

What I do know is that I’m not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the reces­sion — I’m too busy and I haven’t got a *thing* to wear!

I say that with tongue in cheek, but due to an expen­sive health prob­lem I’ve had since 1992, I really don’t know what it is to have an adult life where you can con­sis­tently indulge in extras — mine always went to meds or phys­i­cal ther­apy, or back-pay on doc­tors’ bills. So for me, it’s Always a recession.

But I believe you can turn just about any cir­cum­stance into a pos­i­tive, and sure enough, it puts me in a unique posi­tion to tell you how to get your busi­ness to pros­per in a time when it feels like the econ­omy is in a tail spin for some indef­i­nite amount of time.

The answer to reces­sion for me?

Mar­ket harder, and mar­ket better.

Doing bet­ter, faster and more cre­ative mar­ket­ing has always helped me move my busi­ness for­ward, even when I was hav­ing a hard time — even now when it seems like Every­one is hav­ing a hard time.

I was no genius when I started think­ing this way, so don’t think that just because web­site pro­mo­tion and mar­ket­ing is my busi­ness, this strat­egy can’t work for you.

So what does mar­ket­ing harder mean? Or mar­ket­ing bet­ter, for that matter?

I’m not say­ing that if you were spend­ing $2000 a month on adver­tis­ing that you should now spend $3000. Nor am I say­ing cut back. There are basi­cally two steps.

First, spend your adver­tis­ing money *smarter* –make it go as far as it pos­si­bly can. Really look more closely at what is work­ing the best to bring your busi­ness leads, sales and in the case of the web, traf­fic, and focus your money and atten­tion there.

Reduce or elim­i­nate every­thing else. If it makes you feel bet­ter, put it on hold and resume it when you have more in your pocket.

In other words, if ezine ads have always set your sales on fire, but pay per click has always been iffy, move more of your ad bud­get into ezine ads until the eco­nomic storm passes. Once your com­pany is in bet­ter finan­cial health, you’ll be able to afford to hire an expert to tweak your pay per click if you need it.

Some sites seem to be made for pay per click, but get hit and miss results with press releases. In that case it would be bet­ter to reduce, but not end, press release cam­paigns, and shift that money to PPC until you have more profit to risk.

The sec­ond step would be to append that adver­tis­ing with more cost-effective mar­ket­ing, espe­cially in what­ever area you’re not doing now. If it will only cost you a few hun­dred dol­lars in the short term to imple­ment a tested tech­nique that will get you results for years to come, invest­ing the time is a wise move.

Let’s say you’re doing arti­cle mar­ket­ing by post­ing to hun­dreds of directory-style sites.

Awe­some.

Now get those same arti­cles dis­trib­uted directly to ezine pub­lish­ers that have bet­ter
reach, and are more exclu­sive about who they accept. Need to test them out first? Run a clas­si­fied or top spon­sor ad.

And don’t stop there. Once your name gains recog­ni­tion among your peers, take your exper­tise mar­ket­ing to the next level and do some interviews.

Find ten peo­ple with tar­geted audi­ences and do 10 inter­views. You can even cut those ten peo­ple in on the prof­its by offer­ing their audi­ence a spe­cial offer and pay­ing them a per­cent­age per sale as a refer­ral fee.

There’s all kinds of cre­ative mar­ket­ing you can do that you can start with quickly, from blog­ging, arti­cle mar­ket­ing or social media to organic search strate­gies. And of course ther are also all kinds of twists you can put on what­ever you’re already doing.

How do you find them? For at least 30 min­utes today, sit down and write mar­ket­ing ideas. I learned a tip from a bril­liant man named Allen says that after your mind has been work­ing on some­thing for 30 min­utes, it just keeps com­ing up with more ideas on autopilot.

I’ve found that the longer I go, the bet­ter my ideas get. So even if you have to stop after 30 min­utes, take that pad and paper with you.

And no mat­ter how silly any idea seems, write it down. It may inspire some­thing else later.

When you’re done, pick the best one and go do it, or assign it to your mar­ket­ing team if you have one. Research who does some­thing sim­i­lar, and fol­low their successes.

It’s the ulti­mate recipe for get­ting a busi­ness through hard times — mar­ket harder, mar­ket more cre­atively, and do it in addi­tion to, not instead of, adver­tis­ing. Some mar­ket­ing takes a lit­tle time to work.

The peo­ple are still out there. Your busi­ness still helps peo­ple. A reces­sion or hard times just means you have to work a lit­tle smarter for the same amount of money.

You can do it. Don’t aban­don hope just yet.

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