Are You Making These Marketing Mistakes During a Tough Economy?

Every day it seems the news is reporting another financial crisis. Many people are cutting back on their spending because they're scared.

Although it is a good idea to always live within your means because it's good money management, economic fear should never rule your business.

If you really want to help the economy and do your part, now, more than ever, is the time to get busy.

However, here's what most companies are doing, and it's a mistake.

1. Cutting back on your marketing.

The first thing to go in a tough economy is marketing. The problem here is that when you start cutting back on your marketing, it's very likely to affect your profits.

With the Internet, you don't need a big marketing budget to market. Write articles. Optimize your site for the search engines. Write and post free classifieds. Get on the forums and social networking sites and start connecting with your potential customers.

You want to make more money? Then market more.

2. Not investing enough money in your marketing.

Maybe your marketing does require a marketing budget. Most larger companies will have a marketing budget.

If you do have money allocated for your marketing, you want to make every penny count. Test and track every campaign you put together. Make sure each campaign is getting results. Test your copy. Avoid ad agency type copy that just looks pretty. You want copy that gets results.

In other words, make sure every aspect of your marketing campaign produces the results it is supposed to. Get everything you can out of every marketing dollar. If any aspect of your campaigns isn't producing, get rid of it.

3. Not expanding your product line.

If you want to grow your business, then you need to grow your product or service line. Every product eventually tops out. No matter how good your product, that product will eventually slow down in sales or stop producing sales for you. Then it's time to start updating your products.

Create new ones. Look at your successes and see what works. Use those successes to help you develop new products and then get out there and start marketing those products. Don't neglect your current customers here. Someone who has bought from you in the past is more likely to buy from you again.

4. Not expanding your business.

Business expansion takes place in different ways. Hiring new employees, outsourcing, creating new products. Whatever you are in a position to do, make sure you go ahead and do it. If money is a problem, then examine your current income and expenses.

Cut the fat. When you trim the real fat in your business, then you have money already available to use to grow. Examine your expenses very carefully and get rid of anything that's not producing income for you.

No matter what type of business you have, there's always room for improvement. Now is the perfect time to take a good look at your business and find ways to make more money. No matter how tough the economy, there's always room for your business to grow.

Like these tips? Then check out my internet marketing blog. Get tons of free internet marketing tips and strategies. Learn the strategies I use to market on Google for free: Marketing on Google.

Jinger Jarrett is the author of "Internet Marketing to GO! Cashing in on Google," available on Amazon.