If you're one of the millions of Americans who either owns a business or is in a business where most of your income relies on selling products or services, you are no doubt in panic mode right now unless you are one of the inverse businesses that happens to enjoy a larger growth and profitability run during hard financial times. I'd say that leaves most of us out of that boat, since few sectors are truly "recession proof", as the popular sales term of today implies.



With the ever increasing gloom and doom in the media as of late, and as I write this, yet another hit to the US and global stock markets looms as investors get spooked even further by the prospect of a global, deep recession, it's important for us all to take control of the fear and turn it into something positive.

In fact, some marketing experts say that financial hard times are one of the best periods to take your business to the next level. While one's initial response to a deep recession may be to cut spending on advertising, in fact it may be better to increase spending and get more creative. It is also crucial to keep developing and innovating, since it will be harder to make that sale than it was during times of economic prosperity.

The world does not stop because there is a recession, it keeps on moving, and you want to be in the best possible position to make boatloads of revenue when the clouds finally do dissipate. The most successful business people know this, and they are the ones to emerge even stronger after the smoke clears and things are back to "normal" again.

True, it may take us a lot longer than we'd like to get back to that place of prosperity as a nation, but when we do there will be some sweet rewards for those who not only hung on, but also kept innovating, developing, and advertising through it all.

One of the best ways to drum up more business, whether you are in a service business or good business, is to aggressively advertise specials or discounts. If you don't have the funds to go for the more expensive advertising avenues, then get creative and think of ways to advertise and get the word out for free or for an exchange of services.

Such an example might be to donate a gift basket with your products as a prize for a local charity raffle in exchange for free advertising, or maybe even sponsoring a local event where you can also get a good plug in for your business, and perhaps even sign up some new clients in the process. Or how about putting your business cards on free bulletin boards, or online bulletins?

There are also some good places to place free or dirt cheap classifieds online and in the local papers. Many areas have trendy local papers that are distributed fairly widely and give tons of exposure, why not put an ad in one of those and see what happens? You can't make sales if you stop advertising, and as marketing experts have explained, you can't forget that advertising is not instant gratification.

You will usually enjoy the results of advertising several weeks after you actually started a certain campaign, so it is a mistake to stop advertising in a week or two if you didn't see any results. Be patient, and any good, well designed and effective advertising campaign or method will surely pay off. You've got to stay on top of it and make sure it's effective though by testing it against other methods. This is key to advertising success.