The economic recovery is coming and depending on your market segment it should arrive sometime in 2010. But regardless of when it happens you can gain market share and an edge on your competitors by strategically positioning your brand right now. Here are five steps that can get your started:

1. Communicate Your New Advantages – If your company is like most it had to downsize staff cut back on new product introductions reduce services and take other painful cost-cutting measures. While these actions can be very traumatic and potentially damaging in the short term they do have long-term advantages that need to be communicated to all your target audiences (customers employees suppliers media etc.) when the time is right. Your “new” company is probably much leaner and more flexible your products are probably less expensive to buy and represent a limited-time bargain and your payment terms are probably more flexible than in the past.

Consider creating a communications/PR strategy for communicating the advantages of your “new” company to all your target audiences. This could include a letter from your CEO a series of news releases to customers e-mails to customers and employees articles in your key trade magazines and perhaps even print and online ads. You want to beat your competitors in getting out the word: although the recession has been tough on everyone your company is coming out of it as a leaner more strategically focused partner!

2. Embrace Social Media – The social media revolution is coming at a perfect time for your company. It allows you to have ongoing conversations with thousands of your customers and key target audiences about what is happening with your brand. In addition to being a very cost-effective way to reinforce your brand during turbulent times it demonstrates that you’re at the cutting edge of online technology and want to listen to what your customers have to say. At the very least engage with them on Facebook LinkedIn Twitter and YouTube. There are no doubt many social media groups that already exist in your market segment and you need to join the conversation.

3. Ramp-Up Your Marketing Communications Efforts – Ideally your company was one of the few organizations that actually increased its marketing spend over the last several months.  However if you were like most companies forced to cut marketing costs it’s not too late to position yourself to capture market share from your competitors. While everyone else is cutting back on communicating to customers and prospects to save money you should be increasing your marketing to them via social media PR direct mail advertising and whatever other means you can afford to communicate your new advantages (see item #1).

4. Have A Strategic Communications Plan In Place – In order to implement the three key actions outlined here you need to have an integrated marketing communications plan in place and ready to launch.  This means getting all the stakeholders (advertising PR marketing sales HR and product management) involved in a strategic planning session where you identify the entire organization’s key messages and determine the most effective methods of communicating them. The appropriate time to launch your “Recovery Communications Program” will vary by market segment and other factors. However you need to have all the elements in place as soon as you sense a recovery is imminent.

5. Partner With Experts – Assuming your marketing communications team has been down-sized you may not have the internal resources to initiate the activities outlined here. That is when it is best to work with a MarCom/PR agency that has experience in your market segment knows the social media universe and has implemented strategic MarCom campaigns for organizations similar to your own.