It’s inevitable. You’re are having a down period during the year. It might last a month, a quarter or the entire year might be down and you need to save wherever you can. Sales are already down and you ask yourself, “Why am I sinking all this money in my marketing efforts when they don’t seem to be working? I should save these funds until everything levels out.” And you begin to cut your marketing budget.

Take it from me: Don’t touch your marketing budget!

A big part of why your current sales figures are where they currently are is because of your marketing. Your marketing may be working even if your current sales numbers aren’t what you’d like them to be.

If you cut your marketing budget then sales will continue to struggle. A previous company I was with decided to cut all marketing costs during the recession that started in 2008. The marketing budget was pretty hefty and it was the 1^st place we turned to in order to find some savings. We knew the strongest months for the business were approaching approaching and assumed our long standing reputation alone would keep those months in line with historical numbers.

Well, you know what happens when you assume. The assumed strong months tanked and we found ourselves in an even worse position. We had stopped our marketing all together. Reflecting back, we should have instead reviewed our marketing strategy and allocated the full budget differently. But by stopping it altogether we cut off our voice and messaging to our customers.

After a few months of trying to control the bleed, we focused our savings in other areas and committed back to the original marketing budget. The bleed slowed and eventually sales started to rise closer to original projections. It was a huge and painful lesson learned. Going forward many of us cast a spell of protection on the marketing budget. No matter what the circumstances were regarding sales, that particular budget would not be touched.

Our situation was not unique to itself. Studies of advertising spending during recessions by McGraw-Hill Research during the 1981-2 recession years showed that businesses-to-business firms who maintained or even increased their spending during the downturn “averaged significantly higher sales growth both during the recession and for the following three years than those which eliminated or decreased marketing.” Conversely, Cahners and Strategic Planning Institute found that companies who increased their advertising spending during upturn years saw little or no more growth than what was expected. Their reasoning for this is those businesses who fought harder and spent more during the downtime received a larger share of the market footprint since everyone else would be pulling back.

Holding back or stopping your marketing is equivalent to taking your foot of the gas pedal on your car. You will coast for a short period and save some gas but eventually you will begin slow down and eventually come to a stop. Why not fill the tank a little more often and beat the competition to the end goal?