to mention the recession) have forced small businesses to rethink their marketing strategies.   Competition Is For Real Are You Ready?   With the recession, small businesses are finding it harder and harder to compete. Many small business owners are asking themselves, "How do I recession-proof" my business?" The answer is: Make marketing your first priority!   Is customer service important? Absolutely. Are keeping your finances important? Absolutely. Is developing your employee important? Absolutely. All those processes are very important, but during a recession NONE are more important than your marketing efforts.   Marketing is what drives your business. During a recession, it will mean the difference between going out of business or weathering the storm and being a super success. Your best business years could be during this recession!   Its during the difficult times that you learn how to stretch your marketing dollar, to make the most of your marketing investment. Its during times like these that you learn new and innovative marketing techniques that help your business thrive.   In "The Small Business Marketing Bible," you will learn new and different techniques to market your business that will make it immune to economic fluctuations and will increase your top and bottom line no matter what the economy is doing.   You Must Hunt Down and Capture Your Prospects   I truly believe there will be fewer and fewer consumers that are out there just waiting to buy. You will need to learn how to search out those prospects that may want to buy and convince them that they need to buy - today. To do this you will need to discover new and different ways to do prospecting and marketing.   Flashing ads with the words "sale, sale, sale" all over them wont work. All these types of ads do is skim the cream-of-the-crop prospects. (i.e. Those prospects who are ready to buy today.) However, during the recession you will have to employ stealth marketing techniques that will quietly hunt down and capture those prospects who are secretly waiting to buy, but are too concerned about other things to make a move.   The only way to survive and thrive during competitive times is to re-focus your attention on marketing. Its time to tune up your marketing - to make sure youre getting new customers in, inactive customers coming back, and your active customers purchasing more.   Its Time to Re-Double Your Marketing Efforts and Make Them Your First Priority