rachel123 - 9:01 pm on Oct 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

In my niche I get my Christmas boom in October/November - I sell widgets that are often made for Christmas gifts. So I have bumped my ad spending slightly and targeted my ads more specifically, like I always do in October. But I did make some changes.

I changed up my ad wording a to stress the economy of my widgets - 'give a widget for a beautiful handmade gift at a tiny price!' and I removed words like 'buy' and anything else that might inspire spending guilt or fear.

I sent out an extra email newsletter with subscriber specials, acknowledging the economic circumstances and touting widgets as a back-to-basics inexpensive way to get through Christmas and relieve stress...

To save some cash, I dropped my ad spending to nearly zero on keywords that I get good organic search placement on and will take some time to update my meta descriptions on landing pages to reflect the types of changes I made to my ads.

It seems to have helped, as my orders over the past 2 days have really picked up - almost back to normal. Small sample size, I know, but it still makes me feel a bit more hopeful. If there is any way to market your products as something to help people get through tough times and save money, you may be able to create an advantage in this climate. You could probably sell HRoth some preserve-making widgets right now. :)