I think the whole world has gone on sale. Seriously. If you have disposable income right now it is the time to buy whatever you've always wanted! You can get amazing deals on everything from consumer electronics to luxury cars. Further, consumer goods aren't the only things on sale. Businesses have had to slash fees as well and many products and services are readily available for half of the standard rate.

With marketing dollars as rare and precious as the Hope Diamond, how do professional marketers and business owners go about deciding what and how much media to buy?

eMarketer.com tackled this question in yesterday's daily enewsletter. It's a great article about the increases and decreasing in advertising spending are likely to take place. Check out http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1007001 to read the research. The author, Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer.com, is adamant about not slashing marketing research budgets. Did I mention eMarketer.com is a marketing research company? Regardless, Ramsey makes a great point. With the market and consumers changing so rapidly, you can't afford not to do marketing research. How will you know where to spend dollars, what products to emphasize and how hot or cold the consumer's temperature is for your service? From the White House to Wall Street, unprecedented things are happening daily and they will have a dramatic impact on consumer spending and confidence. What the impact will look like six months from now is unknown. That's why marketing research can be best the money you've ever spent. Lately we've all become familiar with the phrase "spending good money after bad" and that's exactly what you are doing when you market "in the dark" without doing your homework first.

In the eMarketer.com survey, not suprising is that Display Advertising is going to see the largest decline (down 45%) in spending throughout 2009 followed by market research (down 23%) and web development (down 23%). (Yikes, did I read that right? Web Development? That's not good news for me...)

They are predicting the biggest gains in spending on Word-of-Mouth Social Media (up 77%), Search Marketing (up 76%) and Mobile Marketing (up 75%). Note to self, send out email campaign emphasizing Meredith Communications' services in these areas and "ixne on the ebway developmenteh"...that's a little pig latin for those of you who haven't been to middle school in a while that means nix the web development angle in the email marketing.

How do you know where to spend your marketing dollars? Here are several questions to consider:

1) Goal - Aside from the obvious "buy a home" answer, what do you want your marketing to do? What is the big picture goal? Define both short term and long term. Do you want to generate foot traffic to a physical location? Do you want to generate Web traffic? Do you want to promote a special event, close-out or move a particular piece of inventory? It's not good enough to say yes to all of these! You must prioritize and choose one or two maximum. You can't select the right marketing avenues without a very specific end game in mind.

2) Timeframe - Is there a specific timeframe associated with your goal? Is this a short-term campaign for a very specific offer that must produce results quickly or do you have time for a "slow burn" campaign to simmer and build momentum? Is it a time limited campaign to create urgency or a "whisper" campaign to build intrigue and word-of-mouth referrals? Is the product or service ready to market now or is this a precursor for the main event? Timing is everything in marketing. Develop an exact timeline for when the marketing campaign will start and stop and that will help guide you in selecting the right media. Some sources will automatically be eliminated because they don't fit your timing needs.

3) Resources - By this I mean both budget and people. What is your marketing budget? And, what staff resources do you have to dedicate to the execution of the campaign. So many homebuilders completely discount staff resources as an important factor. If you don't have dedicated in-house salespeople or if you do the selling and marketing yourself, you need to look for simple DIY (do-it-yourself) friendly marketing options. Good marketing campaigns marry the medium, message and the resources together to ensure the campaign is carried out flawlessly.

4) Sales team performance - Another thing to consider is the sophistication of your sales team and their track record of performance. If you have a predominantly rookie team it's a really bad idea to try a complicated financing promotion or a "make us an offer" campaign that requires heavy negotiation. What is the experience level of your sales team? What is their level of buy-in to the marketing concept? What are your sales people telling you needs to happen in terms of product, price or promotion to kick sales up a notch? Listen to your sales team! They are your eyes and ears. If you don't trust the feedback from your sales team, you have the wrong team. That's a symptom of a much larger problem.

5) Frequency & Repetition - Does your budget allow for the proper frequency and repetition to make the campaign successful? I've had many builders ask to do a postcard campaign and when I ask how many times they plan to mail the postcards the answer is once! One mailing is worthless! If you don't have the proper budget to run a radio, television or direct mail campaign with enough frequency and repetition, those aren't great options for you. Don't waste money doing marketing half-way (you thought it was going to say something else didn't you). If you are going for the big guns in marketing like outdoor or broadcast, make sure you have the proper budget supporting the effort. It's like buying a really nice car or house and not being able to afford the maintenance on it.

I've asked a lot questions and not offered a lot of answers. That's because the answers lie within you and what is really right for your business model. I can't tell you that in a one-way communication in a blog post. Ask yourself the questions above and be brutally honest with the answers. What can you really afford? What results do you need to gain? And most important of all, how will you know if it worked?