In challenging economic times it is imperative for marketers to act on the truism that when the available market share decreases, your marketing plan needs to increase. Increasing your plan does not mean spending more, it means that your plan must get much more cost-efficient, making the same budget work harder. Is your plan due for a tune-up?

One of the most common mistakes companies make when they encounter a downtrend in the market is to simply throw more money at their existing marketing mix. For example, you may see returns from a direct mail advertising campaign drop significantly and instead of looking for alternatives, you simply mail more to retain your overall numbers. Wouldn't it make more sense to find a new method to better reach out to new prospects that can improve your return?

Growing business in a booming market is relatively easy, but businesses caught in a down market have two choices: either wait out the market until it regains momentum, or examine their marketing plan for weaknesses and replace weak media with a more efficient marketing model.

Fortunately, there are more choices today than ever before. Look for media that you may have outgrown. These can include niche magazines, local newspapers and other small-audience media. These media are simply not powerful enough to pull a client forward in a down-trending economy, and keeping these media in the plan will continue to bring the same poor results.

If you were to take your budget and trim the advertising from these media segments and realign your budget to cost-effective publicity and media outreach to larger-reaching outlets, you will see a much better return on your marketing dollar.

The hardest part of any kind of marketing review is objectivity. Many executives are too close to the issues - they have agencies, media outlets, and campaigns that have worked well for some time and they are reluctant to abandon them. However, sometimes an objective view is just what is needed to remove the "blinders" and provide effective alternatives.

In this case, you may want to discuss your current marketing mix with another outside firm and get their input. There is no point in performing a delicate surgery without first obtaining a strong diagnosis.