Should I cut my advertising during these uncertain times?

Times are tough, everyone is watching their advertising budget. The reaction always is to cut advertising, trust me, I know, I worked in the corporate world and our budget was the first to be reduced during slow times. Unfortunately, cutting advertising all together is the quickest way to go from slow sales to no sales. Rather than eliminate your advertising focus more on targeting your message directly to your customers. Choose the right media for your business and then you can insure you're making a smart decision with your advertising dollars. Advertise where your prospects look first. If you don't know where they're looking, ask them. This is valuable information. From this you can learn which media touch them the most often, is it the newspaper? The radio? Email? The internet? Knowing this information will allow you to strategically place advertising that will reach your customers. And, when you go to place your ads make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck. Sometimes it pays to scale back the quantity of smaller ads and go for frequency and size. A larger ad run a minimum of 3 times may get more recognition and response to a much smaller ad that may be missed.