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It’s easy to throw money at marketing campaigns when the market is flying along and times are good. With all that extra coin to play with, why not share the love around and make sure everyone’s aware of your brand and its successes?

It seems harder to justify spending money on marketing when times get tough, though. In the down times, the instinct of many marketers is to tighten the purse strings and wait until the market improves – when they can happily start paying for shiny new campaigns once more.

But there are advantages to marketing when others aren’t. Here are a few of them:

Strike out on your own

The impulse to play it safe in uncertain times is understandable. But it’s also a mistake. While you’re being cautious, so are all your competitors. And then when times improve, everyone jumps into the marketing fray all at once. When that happens, your brand and its message is far more likely to be lost in the crowd.

Play the long game with your marketing strategy. As important as it is to take the immediate mood and situation into account, you need to think further ahead and implement a strategy that gets your business where it needs to be in the long term.

Take advantage of others absence

There are plenty of advantages to advertising when other people aren’t. It opens up all sorts of opportunities, not the least of which is the ability to get maximum cut through with consumers. With nobody else to distract them, a cleverly timed campaign takes advantage of your competitors absence and soaks up every last drop of consumer attention span. Even in a quiet or difficult market, people still need to buy and sell property.

Stick it out out in a struggling market

During tough economic times, the natural urge is to pinch pennies until its over. But clever marketing during these times is a winning strategy – because when the market improves, yours is the strong, consistent brand consumers think of first. They’ll have forgotten all about the brands who stopped advertising.

Make noise in the quiet times

Think about using lulls in the market – holidays and the wind down periods just before and after them, a sluggish market, or winter – to time your campaign from maximum impact.

Winter is sometimes considered a dead zone for real estate, but often demand remains strong while the amount of available stock is low.  It’s an ideal time to ramp up your marketing and take advantage of your competitors wariness. A traditionally ‘quiet’ period is a great opportunity to seize attention and momentum.

Plan to get in early

Plan ahead for busy periods and kick off your marketing campaign before everyone else does. If other agencies are waiting until September to roll out their spring campaigns, get yours going in August. That way, you’ve already make some noise, got attention, and are sitting top of mind when people are seriously considering selling.

Your competitors, on the other hand, are battling to get their message heard since they all launched their campaigns simultaneously, diluting their effectiveness.

Build a reputation for consistency

Marketing during quiet or difficult periods is just as important as advertising during any other time, and there are serious advantages to be gained from doing so. When everyone else starts advertising after you, they look like they’re desperately scrambling to follow your lead (which they are). Your brand, on the other hand, is the confident, steady one that can be relied on. Other brands, who disappear then reappear unexpectedly later on, appear inconsistent and disorganised.

With summer holidays just winding down, things are still quiet in the real estate marketplace. What are you doing to seize the marketing momentum in 2014?