If you’ve grown weary of this recession, join the club.  Here’s a suggestion.  Take advantage of it.

There are deals to be had, and market shares to be won.  All it takes is a little courage and a vision.  Here are five ways you can take advantage of this economy:

1.  Expand–there are plenty of good people on the streets who are tired of their livelihood being dependent on the whim of the economy and somebody else.  You can find partnerships to expand your distribution, open new locations and sell to new markets.  And you can do it for a fraction of what it would have cost you a year ago.

2. Negotiate–If you’ve got a budget left, now’s the time to put your agency to work negotiating better deals with the media.  Don’t be afraid to walk away from your favorite station and you can multiply your share of voice.

3.  Zag–Now’s your opportunity to be different.  Avoid sameness.  Do creative that’s loud in the market place.  Make your little bit of money work like a lot of money.

4.  Shake new trees–If the trees you’ve been shaking don’t seem to bear any fruit, shake new ones.  Think about new markets, new prospects, smaller prospects, bigger prospects.

5.  Increase your marketing budget—What?????? In this economy????  Are you nuts????? If you could, wouldn’t it be a great idea.  So if it’s a great idea, why not do it?

There’s a marketing lesson to be learned from the Tour de France.  The race is won on the hills.  It’s not the downhill easy selling that wins, it’s the selling against the wind, up hill, against the odds.

Everywhere we turn, we hear how bad this recession is…or is going to be.  How marketers are hiding in their shells and budgets are being devastated.  It won’t be until after the recession is over that we hear about those companies that chose to make gains during the bad times.  They’ll be the heroes.

I don’t know what our competitors are doing, but here are our strategies:

1.  Focus on our clients success–There’s no question we have clients who have cut their budgets, but we have come to the collective conclusion that we have to work harder to make every dollar they spend count.  Our goal is to help them come out of this challenging time as a winner in their category.

2.  Investing in ourselves–We all know there’s a great convergence of communications capability.  We are investing in cross training to significantly improve our capabilities across all communications venues.  We believe that the future lies in the capability to bring convention, non-convention and what some call “new” media together into an integrated marketing effort focused on results.

3.  Focus on creativity–The tougher the challenge, the better the creative needs to be.  Our goal is to produce work that is a multiplier in terms of effectiveness.  Work that creates buzz and ingrains our clients’ brands in the hearts and minds of our target audiences.

4.  Demand more–We are going to demand more of ourselves and our vendor partners.  We’ll pay for performance and extra effort.  We’ll negotiate so our clients win but nobody loses.  Fortunately, we have vendor partners in the media who work with us as partners for a common goal.

5.  Focus on results–This is a time where everything we do for our clients, must meet the test of results.  If something works, we’ll find ways to do more of it.  If something does not work, we’ll dump it fast and invest in what does.

6.  Be smart, but be bold–No time for the brash or timid.  We’ll do our homework and swing for the fences.