Ways to beat a design and marketing slump

recession, credit crunch, slump, downturn, slowdown

Personally, I have noticed other recessions far sooner than this one. It seems like months and months of dreary economic forecasts had passed before I got an inkling that it was going on. Anyway, here’s some ways to defeat the dreaded downturn.

Diversify

Do something you’re not doing at the moment. Web designers should diversify into web development. Print people should explore the internet. Design firms should move into marketing.

One of the crazy things about the last few years is not how the internet has taken over but how all media has evolved. Take the humble PDF for example; it’s a way of supplying print ready artwork as well as a revolutionary form of digital communication. So printers, don’t worry if you think the internet is daunting you already have tremendous experience in creating one of the great formats of the future!

Advertise

As reported in a previous article about managing recession, two of the world’s biggest advertisers, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, announced recently that they would not cut their marketing budgets.

A recession is a time to increase your advertising budget not reduce it. Advertising space and marketing services may reduce in price as other companies cancel orders so you can steal market share at a good price.

Outsourcing and saving money

Why would you want to give work away? Because you’re too busy to do it. So you accept the work, give it to someone else to do and charge the client more than what you pay them.

Work from home. Email PDFs of invoices, quotes, work samples, etc. Don’t buy printers and use snail mail. Use Gimp instead of Photoshop. Xara Xtreme instead of Illustrator. There’s tons of free fonts, vectors, backgrounds and photos out there. Cut costs not quality.

Consolidate

Keep your existing clients as they are your best source of new business. Drop a line or make a call to a client if you haven’t heard from in a while. A Christmas card to everyone you’ve known in a professional capacity is one of the best exercises in consolidation there is.

This article was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Business, Design, Marketing.
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11 Responses to “Ways to beat a design and marketing slump”

Steve, on July 28th, 2008 at 10:14 am, said:

In modern world and media, all of these techniques should be applied or we should consider all these strategies as essential marketing campaigns. Ignore all of them can results in a product failure.
Rob Cubbon, on July 28th, 2008 at 12:27 pm, said:

Exactly, Steve, I think the lessons you learn during the lean times should be carried through to the times of plenty.
Bucko, on August 14th, 2008 at 6:22 pm, said:

For the first time ever during this downturn I have paid for SEO link building. Some of the companies out of India do this for crazy cheap. With the amount of work I am doing to keep things steady, I can’t spend time on the mundane things. So if someone else can do it cheaply and do just as a good a job, its a win-win in a lose-lose economy.

BTW.. I’ve been doing the Christmas card thing for years, its a great move.
Rob Cubbon, on August 15th, 2008 at 2:41 pm, said:

Hello Bucko, this is a very interesting comment. Can you tell us about the results you got with your paid SEO link building. I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while. Thanks.
lanre from web design nigeria, on August 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm, said:

I think i will also like to ousource some of my link building too. However, i will like to add that recession is common to all economies around the world
Blog Design Studio, on September 15th, 2008 at 3:22 am, said:

He he.. christmas card that’s indeed idea. Apart from that most of the ideas mentioned are really cool too. Problem with outsourcing sometimes is the quality factor.
Great Wall of China, on September 17th, 2008 at 1:11 am, said:

Outsourcing is a great idea. The indian market is great! Its like walmart for seo labor!
Rob Cubbon, on September 17th, 2008 at 8:21 am, said:

Interesting and good point, lanre, recession is being felt all around the world. Could you share your experience with outsourcing link-building? What were the benefits you got from the links?

Thank you, Blog Design Studio, too true about the quality factor with outsourcing. It takes time to build up a list of people/companies you can trust.
Air Jordans, on October 26th, 2008 at 12:25 am, said:

There are a number of freelancer sites out there where you can outsource and hire cheap expert to do all the things you need done. What’s more, in some sites, you can be assured that the freelancer is doing their job by constantly checking on their time log with screen snapshot every 10 mins though some sites don’t provide this service.
Naldz Graphics, on October 29th, 2008 at 8:55 am, said:

very useful.really thanks a lot and keep it up=)

Ronald
Martin, on November 18th, 2008 at 1:49 pm, said:

Hi, the points mentioned above are excellent. I think businesses today can use a combination of above points to help them perform better.

Freelance Graphic Designer London