Online Marketing in a Recession - by Elyse Tager
Came across a beautiful article through my personal emails about a very cost effective and easy to perform article on online marketing in this present recession scenario.
There is no escaping the fact that we are in the depths of one of the worst economies in decades. The media won’t let us forget it, as it dominates the headlines. But we need to keep our businesses growing and healthy, no matter how bleak the prognosis. Below are a few tips for all marketing and media professionals to help get through this:
1. Keep marketing. The tendency is to pull in the corporate horns, and save the money for something solid – like payroll. But if your brand disappears from the radar, so will your customers and prospects when it comes time to think of buying again. You may need to scale back budgets, but keep brand and logo current and on peoples’ minds.
2. Measure everything – accountability for every marketing dollar spend is more important than ever. Are you sure you know where past successes have been? I’m amazed at how many companies minimize the analysis of all aspects of past campaigns for the sake of trying something new. If you have not been measuring all marketing activities, start now.
3. From a media buying perspective, think globally. Within the enterprise can you counter the tendency to silo and cluster as many departments together as feasible? Walking across the aisle or cubie, you may find opportunities to consolidate objectives or at least spends and get much better pricing for any media.
4. Also from a media buying perspective, think long term. If you can possibly forecast 2 - 4 quarters out and make even minimal commitments, you can command much better pricing. The market is soft and softening. Take every advantage of it. We are pounding on pricing and not-so-subtly-nudging our clients to make even the most conservative of commitments past a single quarter and have been able to negotiate some great deals with this strategy.
5. Stay close to your customer. Isn’t the old dictum 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers? The corollary of that is, in a down-turn, 95% or more of your growth will come from your current customers. Be sure you are emailing them frequently with new offers, discounts, thought leadership whatever is appropriate to your business to assure their loyalty. Are you sure you have captured your entire customer base? Does the training dept, or HR, or tech support have pockets of customers that aren’t consolidated on the main marketing database? Revisit your in-house email strategies, Newsletter schedules – CRM is the cheapest and most responsive marketing method. Now would be the time to start experimenting with Social Networks – to keep the conversation with your customer flowing, and at very little cost.
6. Revisit your creative versions, current assets, and tried and true marketing activities for more cost efficiency. Can you put a new headline on previously used email copy, rework the abstract to a white paper so it appears fresh, and save money on creative?
7. Don’t stop testing – even modest testing. You will still need to find new opportunities when the old successes tire and the economy turns around. The good news is that since demand is down, most types of media are willing to work with you on pricing. Your competition will be marketing in anticipation of that time – so should you.
In fact, all of this advice will stand when we are out of the recession. The marketers that focus on getting the most out of every dollar spent and on demonstrating marketing's impact on revenue will be in a good position to come out of the slump looking like stars.
There is no escaping the fact that we are in the depths of one of the worst economies in decades. The media won’t let us forget it, as it dominates the headlines. But we need to keep our businesses growing and healthy, no matter how bleak the prognosis. Below are a few tips for all marketing and media professionals to help get through this:
1. Keep marketing. The tendency is to pull in the corporate horns, and save the money for something solid – like payroll. But if your brand disappears from the radar, so will your customers and prospects when it comes time to think of buying again. You may need to scale back budgets, but keep brand and logo current and on peoples’ minds.
2. Measure everything – accountability for every marketing dollar spend is more important than ever. Are you sure you know where past successes have been? I’m amazed at how many companies minimize the analysis of all aspects of past campaigns for the sake of trying something new. If you have not been measuring all marketing activities, start now.
3. From a media buying perspective, think globally. Within the enterprise can you counter the tendency to silo and cluster as many departments together as feasible? Walking across the aisle or cubie, you may find opportunities to consolidate objectives or at least spends and get much better pricing for any media.
4. Also from a media buying perspective, think long term. If you can possibly forecast 2 - 4 quarters out and make even minimal commitments, you can command much better pricing. The market is soft and softening. Take every advantage of it. We are pounding on pricing and not-so-subtly-nudging our clients to make even the most conservative of commitments past a single quarter and have been able to negotiate some great deals with this strategy.
5. Stay close to your customer. Isn’t the old dictum 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers? The corollary of that is, in a down-turn, 95% or more of your growth will come from your current customers. Be sure you are emailing them frequently with new offers, discounts, thought leadership whatever is appropriate to your business to assure their loyalty. Are you sure you have captured your entire customer base? Does the training dept, or HR, or tech support have pockets of customers that aren’t consolidated on the main marketing database? Revisit your in-house email strategies, Newsletter schedules – CRM is the cheapest and most responsive marketing method. Now would be the time to start experimenting with Social Networks – to keep the conversation with your customer flowing, and at very little cost.
6. Revisit your creative versions, current assets, and tried and true marketing activities for more cost efficiency. Can you put a new headline on previously used email copy, rework the abstract to a white paper so it appears fresh, and save money on creative?
7. Don’t stop testing – even modest testing. You will still need to find new opportunities when the old successes tire and the economy turns around. The good news is that since demand is down, most types of media are willing to work with you on pricing. Your competition will be marketing in anticipation of that time – so should you.
In fact, all of this advice will stand when we are out of the recession. The marketers that focus on getting the most out of every dollar spent and on demonstrating marketing's impact on revenue will be in a good position to come out of the slump looking like stars.
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