In February 2008 I noticed a problem.  We were hearing about banking problems, real estate sales couldn't close as mortgage companies went out of business.  I own an advertising agency in South Florida and I noticed the problem in a unique way.  On my website people are able to fill out a form and request a free price quote on advertising services that we offer.  We make websites, brochures, TV commercials and anything a business owner may need to bring new customers to their businesses.  What happened was that I noticed i wasn't getting any more leads from our website, in February 2008 all the leads stopped.  I got very concerned that something happened to our website to cause it to stop working.  I filled out the form on the website for a free advertising price quote and it worked.  That was when I realized that the problem wasn't with my website it was that the public had panicked.  People were seeing that the soaring real estate values were now crashing.  People were having their banks close their home equity lines of credit.  The people who may have wanted to start a business were no longer interested in taking a chance. 

I noticed that interest in advertising and starting a new business continued to be much lower than any time prior to February 2008 for most of the year 2008.  However, right after the election in November I finally had a noticeable increase in the number of people asking about the cost of having a website made.  Typically if someone wants a website then they are just starting a new business again.  I can only guess about what caused this change in the attitudes of people but my guess is that they felt that things would get better. Maybe the business they had thought about but put off was now something they were ready to get started.

During the week of March 9, 2009 it is the first time that I'm seeing a huge increase in the number of people requesting free price quotes on website design, movie theater advertising and TV commercial production.

In the past several weeks we've seen the stock market losing value but this week we have also seen some gains.  Has the stock market hit rock bottom and now bouncing back?  Who knows!  I can only report that people are showing strong interest in advertising again.  Based upon this it is my opinion that people recognise the problems in the world economy but they are feeling confident that things will improve and they are starting new businesses.  They are also working on improving the businesses that they already have by taking advantage of advertising when their competitors have stopped advertising.  Many of my clients are finding that their competitors have gone out of business so advertising now makes them stand out like never before.  This smart forward thinking will make it tougher for someone else to take clients from these businesses that are advertising strong now and looking like the leaders in their field.

If you own a business please post a comment below about how your business is taking advantage of the lack of competition.  Have you increased your advertising, decreased your advertising or kept it the same as in 2007?

Here is an update.  In March 2009 I have had the greatest amount of traffic to my advertising agency website EVER in the history of the company.  People are having us make TV commercials, websites, brochures and movie theater ads for their businesses.  It looks like business is starting off great in 2009.

April and May 2009 are also very strong months with website traffic greater in both of those months than it ever was in 2008.  Here is something new that is happening; some of our vendors are dropping prices.  For example there is a major highway near our office and a billboard on Interstate Highway 95 also known as I-95 and a billboard sign here is highly visible to over 100,000 people per day.  This high traffic location normally gets a hefty price of $10,000.00 per month.  Last month my vendor offered me a few spots for $3,000.00 per month.  It was like a 70% off sale on billboard sign advertising.  There are other advertising bargains out there so let me know if I can help you with the marketing of your business.