The dumbest mistake businesses make when things slow down (and how to fix it)
Written by Ajay Dhunna from Aimpro Digital
When business gets tough, most owners go straight into cost-cutting mode.
It’s natural. Sales are down, cash flow feels tighter, and the first instinct is to trim the fat.
But here’s where so many companies shoot themselves in the foot: they cut their marketing spend.
On the surface, it seems logical. If fewer customers are buying, why keep spending on ads, campaigns, or promotions?
But in reality, switching off your marketing is the fastest way to make a bad situation even worse.
Why cutting marketing is the worst move you can make
Think of marketing as the oxygen of your business. It’s what keeps leads flowing in, keeps your brand visible, and keeps your sales team fed. Turn it off, and the lifeline disappears.
The problem is that many businesses don’t see the immediate impact until it’s too late.
Leads dry up, the pipeline empties, and suddenly they’re scrambling to restart campaigns from scratch, often at a higher cost just to regain lost ground.
Warren Buffett famously said: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
The same applies to marketing. When competitors pull back, that’s your chance to grab market share, not retreat.
What you should do instead
If you’re feeling the squeeze, don’t slash your marketing. Analyse it.
Ask yourself:
- Which channels are actually generating leads or sales?
- What’s the cost per lead or cost per sale in each channel?
- Where am I wasting budget on vanity metrics instead of revenue?
- Which campaigns consistently deliver ROI, and which don’t?
This isn’t about spending more. It’s about spending smarter.
For example:
If your Google Ads are generating leads at £45 each, but Facebook Ads are costing you £120 each, the answer isn’t to cut both, it’s to double down on Google Ads.
If organic SEO pages are steadily bringing in traffic but you haven’t updated them in months, investing a little more there could deliver long-term gains for less than short-term ads.
If email marketing is giving you repeat customers for pennies, but you’re barely sending campaigns, you’ve got an untapped goldmine.
A real-world example
At Aimpro Digital, we recently worked with a company that panicked when sales dipped.
They cut their marketing budget by 80 pe cent overnight, convinced it was the quickest way to “save money.”
But it backfired.
Leads slowed, sales dried up, and they were left with a skeletal budget that wasn’t moving the needle.
When they came to us, we didn’t just stretch the scraps they had left. We went deeper:
- We analysed every channel they were using.
- We identified the ones delivering the highest quality leads.
- We re-engineered their marketing so the budget flowed to the most profitable areas.
The result? Not only did their lead flow recover, but they gained enough confidence to increase their marketing budget by 30 per cent above their original spend.
They didn’t just survive the downturn, they came out stronger.
The hidden cost of stopping marketing
Cutting marketing spend feels like a short-term saving, but it creates long-term damage. Here’s why:
- Lost momentum: Campaigns take time to build. Turn them off, and you lose the compounding effect of visibility and trust.
- Higher restart costs: Once you’ve gone dark, it often costs double to regain the ground you lost.
- Weaker market position: If your competitors keep showing up while you disappear, guess who your customers remember?
- Pipeline collapse: No marketing means no new leads. And no new leads today means no sales tomorrow.
Smarter questions to ask right now
Instead of: “Where can I cut marketing spend?”
Ask: “How can I make every pound work harder?”
Here are a few simple but powerful ways to refocus:
- Channel ROI audit – track every channel against leads and sales, not likes or clicks.
- Customer journey mapping – figure out which touchpoints matter most in turning prospects into buyers.
- Budget reallocation – shift spend away from weak channels and put it where returns are highest.
- Testing & iteration – run smaller experiments to see what works before scaling up.
- Retention focus – don’t forget your existing customers. It’s far cheaper to re-sell than acquire new.
The takeaway
The dumbest mistake a business can make when things slow down is to switch off marketing.
The smartest move is to dig into the numbers, identify the winners, and double down.
Marketing isn’t an expense to cut, it’s the engine that keeps the business alive.
Your next steps
If you want clarity on where your marketing is wasting money and where it’s driving real ROI, book a free marketing review with us today.