Slumber Party Low-budget marketing tips you can use while the economy is sleeping

In an economic downturn, yesterday's marketing strategiesjust won't cut it. Either they're too expensive, or youraudience has tuned out. But that doesn't mean you should startcutting your marketing budget. Instead, you should use this time todevelop specific strategies that produce bottom-line results. Thatmeans you have to get back to basics and adopt new, hard-workingtactics that bring you closer to your customers.

Here are five steps you can take today to help your company rideout the rocky times. They may not give you a recession-proofbusiness, but they'll keep your marketing efforts moving in theright direction through this downturn and beyond.

1. Make ads pay.Starting today, eliminate your old "image" campaign andreplace it with one that's designed to produce bottom-lineresults. Every ad must communicate benefits and make a strong callto action that produces a measurable response. To track the resultsof your marketing efforts, place response codes in all your ads andlead-generation tools. You should also train your staff to alwaysask prospects where they learned about your company and usecontact-management software to record all the information you getfrom them.