Advertising Age just ran an article stating that 53% of marketers are preparing to cut back their advertising if they haven’t already begun to do so.

The survey, conducted by the Association of National Advertisers, polled 100 marketers across several industries. While some will surely wonder whether on hundred respondents is enough to make this statistically valid — evidence that this is true is all around us.

You see, every time the economy faces a downturn marketers get wary. They hold back. Waiting. Until the landscape settles.

There are couple of massive problems with this.

The Best Time To Stand Out
1) During a period when many are cutting their ad spending back … is a time that is also ripe for you to make your mark.

Think about it. When your competitors are less visible, it’s easier for you to stand out. Fewer of their ads can equal more of yours.

Of course, more ads all by itself won’t make you a winner.

And that brings me to the second critical point.

Ad Spending Should Never Be Cut
2) Why are you cutting your ad spending? When I say ad spending, I’m also referring to your online and offline activities … PR, Marketing, all that. So again, why cut spending?

There can only really be one answer, right? The ads aren’t profitable.

So if your company is running ad after ad, month after month and seeing no results, no profit — clearly you’ll need to cut your advertising spend. Heck, there’s no need to wait for the media or government to tell you that the economy is in downturn to cut back.

Just think about it. If your advertising is profitable, regardless of the state of the economy, you’re going to keep running those ads until they stop bringing in a profit.

That doesn’t mean you’ll stop your advertising though. It just means you’ll promote your goods in a different way, or maybe put the spotlight on a different product.

To do all this you need to use a certain kind of advertising. It’s called direct response.

With direct response advertising you’ll know down to the dollars and cents when a promotion is profitable. You’ll know if you’re breaking even, or losing money.

Throughout a campaign you adjust your promotion so with each run (whether online or in print) you continuously fine tune what you’ve got until it’s pumping out gold every time you use it.

How big of an impact can this have?
In a campaign for a recent client we ran a test panel of 3 ads. The second ad got 1.5x more responses than the first. The third got almost double. Without tracking and testing the client may have ran the same ad 3 times. And killed response.

Clearly Foolish
It’s no wonder that so many marketers are having to cut their budgets. Unless your a billion dollar company it’s pretty hard to justify spending money on advertising without knowing what’s specifically working and what isn’t.

And I’m not excusing these companies either. Really there’s no excuse for companies and ad agencies that keep flooding the market with creative and ‘cool’ advertising that isn’t measurable.

That’s enough for today I suppose. You’re probably tired of my rant. But seriously. Don’t follow the pack and cut your ad spending because that’s ‘what you’re supposed to be doing’. The greatest gains are made from doing what others aren’t.

Don’t drown your ads, get smart with them. That’s what direct-response is for. And that’s why it’s made fortunes for so many.

Until next time.

To your success,

Michael Zipursky