There’s a temptation in soft markets to do one thing:
Sell harder.
Pound the phones.
Push the emails.
Hustle your way through the slowdown.
Don’t get me wrong—effort matters. Persistence still pays. But if the only gear you’ve got is “more,” you’re going to stall out. Because in a downturn, the game changes. Buyers get quiet. Budgets get tight. And suddenly, brute force isn’t enough. You’ve got to sell smarter.
And this is where marketing earns its keep.
Because when the market softens, most companies panic. They cut back. They go dark. They pull the plug on marketing with the assumption that it’s a “nice to have” in tough times. But the firms that keep showing up—clearly, consistently, and credibly—are the ones that win.
Why? Because…
Marketing does the one thing sales can’t always do at scale: it builds trust before the conversation even starts.
Marketing is how you stay visible when everyone else disappears. It’s how you reinforce your value when price becomes the default objection. It’s how you differentiate when the market starts to look and sound the same.
That doesn’t mean marketing louder. It means marketing smarter.
It means tightening your message so it cuts through noise.
It means telling better stories—about your clients, your people, your results.
It means owning your niche, not chasing everyone.
It means helping, not hyping.
In a soft market, you don’t just need leads. You need believers—buyers who’ve already bought into your story before you show up. And that story? That’s the job of marketing.
Bring marketing into the conversation. Let it lay the groundwork, warm the leads, and shape the perception long before the proposal.
Because smart marketing doesn’t just support sales. In a downturn, it drives it.