Marketing in an Economic Downturn
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008Practically everyone is feeling the pinch of the current economic downturn. Marketing departments in particular are finding it more challenging than usual to justify expenditures in the face of shrinking sales.
If you happen to be in a market that is immune from the downturn; congratulations! For everyone else; you are probably trying to figure out how you are going to do more with less available resources. The American Marketing Association published the results of a study on the topic this past June, along with a series of recommendations.
Lately we’ve been fielding a number of questions concerning the prioritization of resources for the coming year. One of our primary recommendations is to continue brand-building efforts, a point that is supported in the AMA study. However, we are being a bit more specific in telling our clients to focus much of their efforts around the web. Regardless of market or target industry, the web continues to be the leading sales channel for most companies. Even in the large enterprise sales space, the web is the primary source for prospects to gather information and perform an initial vetting of potential solutions. With less leads to go around, you should use this opportunity to take a good hard look at their corporate web site as well as their overall Internet marketing strategy.
If you’ve not already done so, make sure your web presence conveys an accurate representation of your brand and does an effective job of communication your value proposition to your respective audiences. If you already have a strong web foundation in place, make sure it is optimized for search. With less cash to go around, it is more critical than ever that you boost your organic search performance rather than relying on pay-per-click initiatives. My recommendation is to find someone to assist you in your initial SEO efforts. In the process, learn as much as you can about the discipline of SEO, then spend a little time each day or so on the care and feeding process. Our approach to SEO, is a combination of “give a man a fish” and “teach a man to fish”, hence we tend to do a knowledge transfer as the process goes on.
I’m also a huge believer that thought leadership is a critical ingredient in the sales process. Slowing markets mean that your thought leaders may actually have a bit more time on their hands. Now is a great time to tap into that and develop white papers, case studies and other thought leadership materials. These materials are relatively inexpensive to produce and provide great fodder for cost-efficient email campaigns as well as blogs. On this last topic; blogs - either your own or others in which you participate, are a great medium for expressing thought leadership and an effective tool in building organic search rankings.
So, while nobody likes an economic downturn, look at it as an opportunity to get caught up on all of those things you’ve thought about, but never found the time.