Business is slow. Fewer prospects are shopping. Even fewer are buying. How should your direct marketing strategy adapt to tough times? Here's a quick compilation of our best advice for making the most of your campaigns during the current slowdown:

1. Sell the Offer, Not the Product

Face it: budgets are smaller. Buyers are few and far between. That means if your message is overwhelmingly about your product or service (and why people should buy), your campaign will suffer accordingly. Instead, take a more educational tone, focus on pain points, and offer people free information on how to solve a problem (coincidentally, the same problem your product will solve). The people who are "ready to buy" will respond anyway, and in the meantime, you'll engage a much larger pool of potential prospects.

2. Improve Your Offer

Response rates suffer in slow times. But you can buck the trend by making your offer more attractive. (These days, a brochure and white paper don't cut it.) Add an analyst's report on your product category ... a worksheet that enables prospects to calculate how much money they'll save with your service ... a flash demo on CD-ROM. Anything that might appeal to someone with even the slightest problem, issue or challenge that your product can solve. More than almost any other change, an investment in the quality of your offer will dramatically improve your campaign's ROI.

3. Make the Most of What You Have

Industry studies have shown that more than two-thirds of prospects ultimately purchase more than six months and as much as two years following their initial inquiry. Despite what your sales reps tell you, in this economy, it makes no sense to be throwing money after new, hot leads every month. If you've successfully generated a large pool of leads over the last year, make sure that you have programs in place (ex: an e-mail newsletter) to "stay in front of" those prospects over time.

4. Expand Your Audience

You just closed a big deal with a large bank. Is that any reason to focus your next marketing campaign on the financial services industry? Hardly. Limiting your audience based on industry means you'll probably end up (a) compromising on other select criteria (ex: job title, company size) to generate a critical mass of names in that one vertical, and (b) losing out on viable prospects in other types of companies. These days, it's much smarter to focus your energy on the right people, regardless of where they ply their trade.

5. Test, Test, Test

Your budget's been cut. Your campaigns are smaller than they were a year ago. To make fewer dollars work harder, you need to explore every possible avenue of success. So challenge assumptions. If you've always targeted Web developers, test those titles against IT or marketing functions. Always offered a free trial? Test it against an information kit. With online media like banner ads and broadcast e-mail, testing is virtually free, so there's no reason not to try. The results may surprise you.