As the economy continues to get worse, it’s more important than ever to stand out from your competitors if you want to survive the current challenges that most business owners are facing as well as the many more that are sure to follow. The knee-jerk reaction during tough times is to reduce costs in any way possible, which usually includes reducing or eliminating marketing budgets. Unfortunately this only increases the problem by reducing or eliminating any chances of producing new revenue. Think about it like a camp fire - if you stop adding wood to the fire, it is going to produce less heat. If you want to be warmer but plan to wait until your fire starts producing more heat before adding more wood, you’re going to have a long, cold wait ahead of you.

First and foremost, you will need to continue your marketing efforts and if at all possible, increase them. When the economy slows down and your competitors cut back on their marketing, it’s your opportunity to increase your market share by earning the clients they are losing. Your profit margin may be temporarily reduced during this period but your client base will increase. When the economy picks back up, your profit margin will return to normal levels if not higher than before, with even higher revenue provided by your new, larger client base.

You should also take a look at what is missing in your competitors’ marketing and fill the void. For example, if you run a custom pool company and you know that all of your competitors just build the pool and move on, while your company actually takes the time to replace any sod, plants and fencing that was removed or damaged during the construction, make sure that your marketing emphasizes that.

Another effective approach to add to your marketing strategy is to eliminate what isn’t needed so that more emphasis can be placed on what is. Cirque du Soleil did this when competing with traditional circuses by omitting certain aspects of their shows so that they could focus on the elements that provided the highest entertainment value while creating higher profit margins. You can and should do the same thing in your marketing strategy by determining what factors are not optimal, then eliminating them in favor of those that are.

A slow economy can be rough on small businesses, but it can also give them a serious advantage if they are prepared. Are you?

A lot of things can go wrong when you design your own logo, and sometimes even when you hire a graphic design company. Here are just a few examples of logos that just didn’t get enough scrutiny before going live.

A common misconception business owners have is that all of their clients already know about them. While it may be true that many of your clients have been doing business with you for years, it’s also very likely true that they were doing business with someone else before you came along. This means that they can chose one of your competitors over you at any time. Another important factor to consider is that clients enter and leave the market all the time, so while you may have been satisfied with meeting the needs of your existing clients, new ones are entering the market everyday and if you’re not working to add them to your client list, you can be sure someone else is. Over time, this situation can snowball and give your competitors a serious advantage over you.

So how do you avoid this? Toss out the idea that everyone already knows about your company. Even if they do today, it doesn’t matter tomorrow. Aside from the obvious, such as providing a quality product or service at a reasonable price, you need to maintain exposure to your existing client base while effectively targeting new clients. This ensures you a solid foothold in your market that can weather the ups and downs of business.

It looks obnoxious and reduces legibility, diminishing the effectiveness of your marketing so stop doing it! If your message isn’t compelling, trying to be louder won’t make it more compelling.

While we’re on the subject, the same goes for bold and italicized text. The point of either is to emphasize a point. You can’t make every other sentence bold and expect it to have any effect other than annoying your readers.

We communicate through a variety of mediums today, each time, painting a picture of who we are. Sometimes it’s accurate, sometimes it’s not. If you’re going to take the time to communicate with someone, regardless of whether they are an employer, employee, client, prospect or any other type of contact, be sure to take the time to communicate effectively and professionally. I can’t tell you how many times each day I see an email with no regard for spelling, grammar or punctuation, and each time, my reaction is the same. If someone isn’t willing to put in the effort to compose a proper email, what on earth would make me think that they would put any more effort into anything else? Nothing, so I move on.

What does your communication say about you?

Everyone talks a good game when it comes to their products or services, but how many companies actually prove it?

I was flipping through the pages of a book in Borders today and found a business card tucked neatly into the middle of a book. It’s good to know that people are applying the marketing tips they find on our blog.

I was recently speaking to someone who insisted that “advertising was pointless” and offered Coca-Cola as an example. Her opinion was that it was ignorant for them so waste so much money when everyone already knows what they offer.

At first glance, maybe it seems logical. But when you look at why the situation is what it is, it all becomes a lot clearer. Everyone knows about Coca-Cola products because of the billions upon billions of dollars that they have wisely invested in their advertising over the last one-hundred and twenty-one years. To get even more granular, their investment was never to simply let people know that they existed. It was to create an emotional bond. Think about your own memories of their (or competing) products. They may involve trips to the beach or picnics with your family as a child, or perhaps your first trip to a baseball game. It’s these memories that made their advertising successful. If they had just came out and said “here’s who we are and here’s what we do,” the message would have quickly faded into obscurity and a different soft-drink company would be a household name instead.

Think about this when you’re advertising your own company. Your goal should never be to simply let people know that you exist, that’s what a press release is for. Instead, it should be to develop a strong emotional bond with your prospects. The big picture is what your company does and the benefits your products or services provide. The little picture is the emotional bond that your consumers have with your company, but this is the most important aspect of your advertising. Of course, it should also contain all the basics of any successful advertising campaign: a clear explanation of the benefits, a powerful call to action and of course, contact information.

On the surface, the famous quote by Benjamin Franklin seems perfectly logical. In the real world though, it’s not. When it comes to investing, any money that you don’t spend can safely sit in your bank account collecting interest. However, when it comes to business, you have overhead and competitors eroding your revenue every single day, and simply not spending the money that you have will only delay the inevitable day when you’ll have to close your doors for good. That is, unless you invest it in the continued success of your company through effective and consistent marketing.

The businesses that make it are the ones that understand this. They are the ones that see marketing as an investment that generate more revenue, rather than an expense.

You don’t need to start by investing thousands of dollars in marketing each month, but you do need to start. Incrementally, your marketing will build upon itself until one day, you become a dominating force in your industry. Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson and many other companies routinely invest millions, if not billions of dollars in their marketing each year, but they started at the same level you’re at today.

If you already own a domain name, you probably know how difficult it can be to find just the right one. Between the millions of businesses online and the domain speculators who purchase thousands of domains with the intent of reselling them at a profit, it can be almost impossible.

If you’re already in business, you’re going to have to acquire a domain name that is the best fit for your company name. This will require either searching for the closest possible match, or buying a domain from whoever has the one you’re looking for. On the other hand, if you are just getting ready to start your company, you have an advantage because you can find an easy-to-remember and catchy domain name and then base your company name on that. It may seem backwards to choose your domain name before naming your company, but it can really make a tremendous difference in the effectiveness of your marketing.

When your domain name is different than your company name, your marketing investment will have less impact because you have to remind your prospects that the domain and your company are one in the same. As Seth Godin mentioned, “The internet has taught people what to do when they see a domain. It’s not just an address, it’s the first bit of marketing.” For example, when a visitor arrives at www.datementor.com, they are going to know exactly what the site is for. Had Brad used www.bradfinsilver.com instead, chances are that many of the visitors would leave before putting in the effort to figure it out.

Obviously, you’ll want to choose a .com domain rather than a .net domain, and you should avoid the other extensions, such as .biz, .info, or .us like the plague. Also, be sure to register it for at least five years. This ensures that you don’t forget to renew it, plus, it can help improve your search engine ranking to a small degree.