Online Marketing in a Recession
At this point in the economic cycle, when business is difficult and every penny counts, it is imperative to invest in future growth. The last ten years have seen the growth of the internet as a medium that did not exist during the last recession. Business is being conducted online at unbelievable rates. The rate of online growth is matched only by the rate of traditional enterprises contraction.
The internet is primarily seen by the majority as a place to find either the solution to a problem, and answer, or the cheapest of an item. It is the perfect window shopping venue as it allows you to compare many shops in a few clicks. This has been a boon for many, but for others who do not sell on price it has worked against them.
One thing we know for sure is that the internet has traffic, and traffic is fairly easily measurable. We know where this traffic goes and what the people are looking for, and based on that, we can place websites in their path to meet the users needs. This method has become a great way of “buying” customers, which is essentially what every business does when they advertise. If you compare the cost of customer acquisition online to the equivalent amount of high street advertising, you will see that online, it is far more cost effective.
The companies that position themselves now by increasing their spend on marketing and promotion are the companies that will weather the storm of recession. The economy is forecast to contract by 3.5% this year before returning to some mythical Darling growth forecast in 2010. Whether this happens or not, is not the subject of this article, but if we see growth in 2010 then this will be the shortest, least damaging slump on record. After all, with 7% unemployment, we still have 93% in work, shopping and spending money.
The smart-thinking business owners in the UK are buying market shares during the recession while their competition are simply trying (and very possibly failing) survive. A few businesses are still growing despite the dry spell in the economy, to be among them is simply a case of moving with the times and making full use of the largest information resource on the planet, which is of course, the world wide web.
It is said that in times of economic boom, every 10 you spend on adverts, you will return 19, in an economic dry spell however, you will return 51 for every 10 spent on advertising. This is because during a recession there are fewer businesses advertising, therefore there are more potential customers to be had with every advert.
To increase traffic to your website, there options, one of which is “search engine optimization” which basically, is positioning your website near or at the top of search engine “organic” results listings, “Google” primarily, which has over 80% of all search engine traffic. The Pay-Per-Click system is the process of listing your website around the top of Googles paid results. This is a far quicker process than search engine optimization, but in the long run can end up costing far more as it depends on you paying a set fee every time your ad is clicked.
Put both of these mehtods into practice, along with an email newsletter in order to update your clients about what you’re up to, combine with article submission and a blog, and you can end up with a huge online presence, ensuring your company’s survival and growth during the recession.
