Monday, January 19, 2009

Now is the time to be aggressive, not timid

What do you do when you’re a small business in a recession?
Is the answer to cut back, hide and adopt a bunker mentality until the storm is over?
I don’t think so. When the storm is over and you come out of your bunker, you may find out that no one remembers who you are.
Of course, this is a good opportunity to cut out any unnecessary expenses and focus your spending so that your business is as efficient as it can possibly be.
But now is not the time to hide. If anything, in an environment of shrinking spending dollars, it’s even more important to get out there and fight for those dollars.
According to a McGraw-Hill Research study looking at 600 companies from 1980 to 1985, businesses that chose to maintain or raise their level of advertising expenditures during the 1981 and 1982 recession had significantly higher sales after the economy recovered. Companies that advertised aggressively during the recession had sales 256 percent higher than those that did not continue to advertise.
Yeah, yeah, we’re just saying that because advertising is our business. But here’s a shocker: We actually believe it. Of course, we wouldn’t have gotten into the business if we didn’t believe in it. Anyone who’s talked to us about the newspaper business and the value of advertising in your local hometown newspaper knows how passionately we believe in it. But we’re not just talking the talk. We’re walking the walk. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.
Starting today, the Kuna Melba News will have billboards along Meridian Road, next to City Hall and at Fairview and Cloverdale roads. In addition, we're launching a radio ad campaign on Mix 106, and this month, we're mailing copies of the Kuna Melba News to every household in the Kuna school district in an effort to boost our circulation. In conjunction with that, we're giving our advertisers deep discounts for the entire month, helping them reach out to every household in Kuna for a very low price. Then in March, we're launching the Kuna Melba News Roundup, a free newspaper that will go to every household in the Kuna and Melba zip codes.
We're being aggressive now because after the storm is over, we're looking forward to sunny skies.

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