[Brand](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/brand)  [Digital](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/digital)  [Marketing](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/marketing)

#  Business conditions just went negative. Here is what not to cut. 

Posted  20 Sept 2026 by Maria Anderson

## Business conditions just went negative. Here is what not to cut.

NAB's August Business Survey, published on 8 September, put business conditions at minus 1. That is the first negative reading in six years, and confidence has fallen as well. Costs are rising faster than most businesses can lift their own prices, and the pressure is sharpest in construction, mining and manufacturing. (Source: [NAB Business Survey, August 2026](https://www.nab.com.au/news/economy-markets/business-conditions-drop-into-negative-territory-business-survey-august26))

If you run a business in one of those sectors, you did not need a survey to tell you that.

## It is not all doom and gloom

Here is the part that gets less airtime.

I started this business in 2008, at the beginning of the global financial crisis. Launching a marketing business into a recession was not the plan, but it taught me something early that has held true ever since.

The market always turns. And the businesses that come out in front are rarely the ones that battened down hardest. They are the ones that kept showing up. That is not optimism talking. It is what the research says, and the research is remarkably consistent.

## **What the research actually says**

McKinsey looked at how companies behaved through that same 2008 recession and what happened to them afterwards. The companies that kept pursuing growth delivered cumulative shareholder returns 150 percentage points above their sector peers over the following decade. Around 70 per cent of them became, and stayed, top quintile performers in their sector. (Source: [McKinsey, Beyond belt-tightening](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/beyond-belt-tightening-how-marketing-can-drive-resiliency-during-uncertain-times))

Analytic Partners studied more than 750 brands across 45 countries over two decades. Brands that cut their advertising risked losing 15 per cent of their business to competitors who kept investing. Sixty per cent of the brands that increased their media investment during the last recession improved their return on it. (Source: [Analytic Partners](https://analyticpartners.com/knowledge-hub/newsroom/report-cutting-spend-in-recession-risks-loss/))

There is a simple mechanism underneath both findings. Les Binet and Peter Field's work on share of voice found that a brand grows its market share when its share of voice is higher than its share of market. (Source: [IPA, Hard times call for hard decisions on share of voice](https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/ipa-blog/hard-times-call-for-hard-decisions-on-share-of-voice))

When your competitors go quiet, being seen gets cheaper. That is the whole trick. It is also why the businesses that hold their nerve tend to leapfrog the ones that did not, once the market picks up again.

## Why your marketing feels like it has stopped working

If your marketing feels like it has stopped working, there are two things going on, and only one of them is the economy.

The economic part is arithmetic. When buyers are nervous, they take longer to decide, and more of them do not decide at all. Your conversion rate falls. So to win the same number of jobs, you now need more leads. That means more visibility, and it means being seen more often, because confidence is built by turning up repeatedly rather than once. Your marketing has not failed. It has to work harder to produce the same result. Those two things feel identical from the inside, and they call for opposite responses.

Which brings me to the trap.

When a business cuts its marketing, sales do not fall the next week. There is a lag. For a retailer it might be almost immediate. For a business selling to other businesses it can be a few months. That lag is why cutting feels safe. Nothing bad happens for a while, so the decision looks like it was the right one.

The problem is that the lag works exactly the same way in reverse. When you start again, the enquiries do not come back the next week either. You rebuild momentum from a standing start, and that takes months too. So [stop start marketing is the expensive option](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/the-real-cost-of-pausing-social-media-marketing-with-a-social-media-agency), not the cheap one. You pay for it twice, once in the work you lose on the way down, and again in the time it takes to climb back.

The second thing going on has nothing to do with the economy at all. It is the AI shift, and it is quietly doing more damage to small business visibility than most owners realise.

When conversion falls, the same result costs more leads. 

## **A marketing plan will usually save you money**

This is the part business owners are most surprised by.

[Investing in a marketing plan during a tight market](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/why-outsourcing-your-marketing-to-a-marketing-expert-is-crucial-in-a-tight-economy) often costs you less than not having one. A plan focuses your money, and your people, on the activities that actually work for your business. Just as importantly, it identifies what to stop.

McKinsey's own recommendation to companies facing uncertainty is to reduce inefficient spend and put it back into the activities that drive growth. That is exactly what a good plan does. (Source: [McKinsey, Beyond belt-tightening](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/beyond-belt-tightening-how-marketing-can-drive-resiliency-during-uncertain-times))

In my experience, when we start working with a business, the owner knows some of what is working. They rarely know all of it, and most are not measuring properly. That means money is going out the door on activity nobody can defend. You do not have to spend more. You do have to spend it in the right places.

## Be in market every week

The single most useful habit in a tough market is consistency. Being in market every week builds visibility, and visibility builds confidence. A modest amount of marketing done every week will beat a burst followed by three quiet months, every time.

The trick is working out the mix you can genuinely sustain, given your budget and the time your team actually has. A plan you can commit to is worth more than a plan that looks impressive and stops in March.

## **What has actually changed online**

Now to the second reason your marketing feels different. The online marketing world has changed substantially in the past two years, and what worked in 2024 does not work the same way now.

[Some of what you have lost was generic content](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/ai-content-and-googles-spam-update-what-it-actually-targets). It used to be effective to publish articles like “ten tips for choosing a builder”. Here is the test. If you could swap a competitor's name into that article and it would still make sense, it is no longer doing anything for you. [AI now answers those questions directly](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/zero-click-marketing-marketing-services-in-brisbane), so nobody clicks through to read yours.

There is also a technical problem that catches a lot of businesses who invested in SEO a few years ago. A common approach then was to write one page and replicate it across a range of similar keywords. Those near identical pages now compete with each other. Google splits the signals between them, so none of them ranks well, and your traffic quietly falls.

The fix is to rewrite the pages worth keeping and turn off the ones that are not. If your organic traffic has dropped and you have had SEO work done in the past, it is worth having someone audit it properly. I would recommend talking to [Janet Camilleri](https://frontpageseo.com.au), an SEO specialist who can help you in this area.

The other shift is where your buyers are looking. [A growing number now start with AI search rather than Google](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/how-do-i-get-my-business-recommended-by-ai-search). Fewer people arrive at your website, but the ones who do tend to be further along and closer to buying.

What Google and AI both want now is information they cannot find on your competitor's site. Specifics about how you work, what you charge for, what you will not do, what happens when something goes wrong. The detail a buyer needs before they can commit.

## A good time to fix the foundations

A quieter market is also the right time to deal with the things you have been putting off.

Many businesses have grown well beyond the brand they took to market. What clients say to us is almost always the same. We have outgrown our brand, and we need a more professional brand to represent who we are today.

[A brand is more than a logo](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/services/branding-services). It is your positioning, your messaging, your marketing plan and the collateral that carries all of it, and every part of that has to describe the business you are now rather than the one you started.

Messaging needs attention too. The message that works when buyers are confident is not the message that works when they are hesitating. In a nervous market you have to understand what is actually holding your buyer back, and speak to that, rather than talking louder about yourself.

## Measure it

I originally trained in accounting, which is probably why I have never been comfortable with [marketing that cannot be counted](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/blog/how-to-connect-marketing-metrics-to-real-business-growth-2).

We measure every client's marketing monthly, and we measure what is relevant to that business, because the channels that convert for a workshop are not the ones that convert for a manufacturer. Then we look at what is working, what is not, and what to change.

Not everything shows up as a single number. Brand builds over time, and it delivers work you cannot always trace back to one source. That is a reason to measure carefully, not a reason to stop measuring.

In a tight market this matters more, not less. What you keep and what you stop should come from evidence, not from a gut feel about what looks expensive.

The time between cutting marketing and losing sales is the same as the time to win them back. 

## **Frequently asked questions**

The research consistently says no. Analytic Partners found that brands cutting advertising risked losing 15 per cent of their business to competitors who kept investing. The better approach is to keep investing, and to focus that investment on your best performing activities and your priority areas rather than spreading it thinly across everything.

Usually two things at once. Buyers take longer to decide in an uncertain market, so your conversion rate falls and you need more leads to win the same amount of work. At the same time, AI search now answers many of the questions people used to click through to your website for. Neither means your marketing has failed.

It varies by business. Retail can feel it almost immediately, while businesses selling to other businesses often see a lag of three to six months. The same lag applies when you restart, which is why stop start marketing costs more than consistent marketing.

Usually, yes. A plan concentrates your spend on the activities that work for your business and identifies what to stop. McKinsey recommends that companies facing uncertainty reduce inefficient spend and reinvest it in growth, which is what a well built plan is designed to do.

Common causes include generic content that AI now answers directly, and near identical pages from older SEO work competing with each other so that none of them rank. If you have had SEO work done in the past and your organic traffic has fallen, an audit will tell you which of the two it is.

AI search is when buyers ask an AI assistant rather than typing into Google. It usually means fewer visits to your website, but the people who do arrive are further along and closer to buying. It rewards specific information about how your business actually works, which is the detail most business websites leave out.

Every week, at a level you can sustain. Consistency builds visibility, and visibility builds the confidence a hesitant buyer needs. A modest amount done weekly outperforms a burst followed by months of silence.

##  If you want a hand 

If your enquiries have slowed and you are not sure whether it is the market, your marketing, the shift to AI search, or something on your website, that is worth getting to the bottom of before you cut anything.

[Book a discovery call](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/contact) 

About the Author

[**Maria Anderson**](https://sustainablemarketing.com.au/maria-anderson-brisbane-marketing-consultant) **is the Founder and Managing Director of Sustainable Marketing Services, where she helps growth-focused businesses make sustainable growth achievable through clear strategy, structured marketing systems, and practical leadership.**

With more than 25 years' experience in marketing, Maria specialises in turning fragmented marketing into a connected, measurable system that gives business owners confidence in where to focus, what to prioritise, and how to grow sustainably.

A Certified Practising Marketer (Australian Marketing Institute), Maria holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing and Public Relations) together with Diplomas in Sustainability and Financial Services. She combines strategic thinking with practical implementation, helping businesses simplify marketing, strengthen their positioning, and achieve measurable long-term growth.

Maria is also the creator of the Sustainable Growth System—a strategy-led approach that connects strategy, leadership, execution, and optimisation into one practical marketing framework. She believes great marketing should never feel overwhelming. It should be clear, manageable, measurable, and achievable.