I don't know about you, but with things being tighter at the moment, I have increased my marketing rather than cut it.  I've also paid a lot of attention to doing more of what works, and ruthlessly eliminated things that don't.

So what gives?  I think when people get scared by the press they start to suffer recession depression and just give up.  If you don't measure your results from marketing it's impossible to know how well it performs.

I'll bet the companies cutting back on telemarketers haven't figured out how to select, train and manage their telemarketers to get consistent, quality results for them.

I was amazed by this conversation – people actually cutting back their opportunities to make sales and new connections.  How much opportunity does that leave for their competitors?

Meanwhile a client told me he'd stopped his BNI* membership because it was so expensive.  A few months later he went through his customer base and realised that most of them came from BNI.

Please don't stop the marketing that's working for you – put in place simple measurements so you can see what works.  But don't stop marketing, whatever you do.

That would be like deciding that you won't water your vegetables during a drought – it's a decision that will starve your company to death.
 

*BNI stands for Business Networking International – a weekly meeting for the member businesses to share referrals and do business with each other.  A very effective marketing method for small businesses, in my experience.  Look them up – you'll find there's a chapter near you somewhere.