Who is in control of your brand?

We’ve all heard it before “Spending more money in a recession will grow your business, give you more market share and take you ahead of the competition”

I like the idea of this, but want to know what your experience/theory is?

So why would someone reduce their marketing spend? Well, if they’re losing money fast and have little left, then they’ve got good reason. And cutting on marketing doesn’t have an immediate impact as the time between running an advert/campaign and people buying your product could be from 2 weeks to 6 months, depending on the purchasing cycle, so maybe delaying the potential losses will hold you through until the market picks up again.

But think about it like this, if you have $100 to spend and you have various needs in your business some are much more important that others for example:

Finance/accounting

You can’t not pay your accountants, they hold the financials together, without them a business will impload.

Legal

Don’t have as many lawyers? Maybe you’ll lose more court cases, make some expensive mistakes or get into contracts that suck the lifeblood out of your company.

IT

Don’t pay your phone bill or internet connection? That’ll hurt, immediately. Or if your computer(s) or network go down, that’s immediate loss of productivity.

Production / ouput

How do you make money if you can’t give your customers what they want?

Property

Not paying rent wont go down well, although investing in new property isn’t critical.

Marketing

Stop advertising on TV, or appearing on Google, this could have an immediate or long term effect on sales.

These two stories help explain why you should maintain your marketing efforts.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p57SxxqEsQ&NR=1]

[slideshare id=719048&doc=economist-ads-on-edge-recession-1225787269595748-9]

The main difference, as I see it, is if an organisation is focused on the short term or long term outcomes. Invest in marketing and you’ll have long term gains, cut back on marketing and you’ll have short term gains.