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Increase marketing spend to survive

Aug 14 2008

Small business owners intend to combat the economic slowdown by increasing marketing spend and taking pay cuts, according to a survey by the Open University Small Enterprise Research Team (SERT).

More than half of the 700 business owners surveyed said they would be willing to take a pay cut. Some 49 per cent saw increasing marketing expenditure as a way to beat the downturn, while 42 per cent advocated targeting new markets.

A spokesperson for the SERT says: ‘Normally the first thing businesses think of cutting back on is marketing and PR. To increase spending in these areas may seem counterintuitive, but this is exactly what [businesses] should be doing to survive.’

Professor Colin Gray, chairman of SERT, comments: ‘In the midst of this turbulent churn, there are thousands of small firms that have stood the test of time, surviving various cycles of downturns and upturns.

‘This is not just a matter of luck. Resilient small business owners have adapted to managing the vagaries of business life and they help carry the whole economy through the bad times.’

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