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Advertising and Marketing in a Questionable Economy
I’m at my desk this morning having been asked by my CEO, Marla Johnson Norris, to write an article on advertising and marketing when things aren’t so great with the economy.
It’s certainly a timely topic with the state of the present economy (i.e. corporate bailouts, the housing crisis, the stock market bouncing around like a yoyo).
In business, a slumping economy spares no one — from the largest corporation to the smallest of small businesses.
It’s becoming more apparent everyday; all I have to do is look in my email inbox. The marketing e-newsletters I receive aren’t very upbeat; there’s the one about how print advertising is more than 20% below last year’s spending levels and the one about how local TV stations are taking a beating because some of their major advertisers — the automotive and real estate industries — are depressed.
But amidst the marketing and advertising negativity sits a client e-mail with the subject line “OPR works again!” Inside the email is a link to her daily sales reports. Her sales are up 500% for the last two days as compared to an “average two days”.
The OPR is an online Optimized Press Release, and it did indeed “work again” — on a day when the stock market fell more than 700 points.
Businesses hope for an opportunity that can allow them to quickly gain market share among their well-entrenched, deep-pocketed competitors. Strategies such as an optimized press releasees prove that there are still effective and, most of all, efficient ways to market your company, brand and/or product during a time of economic struggle.
Ironically, many businesses are unwilling to take advantage of the opportunity when it arises.
Tactical Recommendations for Today’s Economy
- Focus on previous visitors to your website. Current customers are easier to market to since they are already familiar with your website. Focus on e-mail content and plans for the upcoming months. Stay in regular contact with email subscribers. The best content is timely and compelling. Send them to quality landing pages with video links and unique content or discounts (not already on the website).
- Consider ways to re-bundle and/or package your products. In a struggling economy, you should make things as easy as possible for visitors. For example, a hotel might promote a Valentine’s Day Package that includes a two-night stay, meals and a bottle of champagne in addition to just promoting a room rate. Furthermore, adding “economic romantic packages” to compliment your “luxury romantic packages” is another example of a promotion than could further increase conversions.
- Make your website generate more leads. Make sure pages have strong “calls to action” and consider adding response forms to landing pages. This should create more leads for the same number of advertising dollars. Use A/B testing on your landing pages to see which version consumers favor. Just a 10% increase in “closed sales” may provide huge dividends.
- Optimize your landing pages for search engine performance even if their primary purpose is for an advertising or PPC campaign. There is an up to 41.3% increase in conversions for optimized landing pages as compared to the same pages prior to optimization.
- Shift budget dollars from print advertising to search engine marketing. Almost all businesses get a higher ROI from search engine marketing (optimization, link building and pay-per-click) than from traditional print.
- Pay-per-click (PPC) -- while most advertising channels are seeing less volume this year than last, pay-per-click continues to see 23% quarterly increases in sales. Why? Pay-per-click continues to be a measurable, reliable, and predictable source for generating visitors and revenue for industry partners.
Although temporarily increasing your marketing budget to combat a slumping economy (and your slumping sales) is a popular strategy, it is just a short term “patch” and won’t necessarily be effective over the long-haul.
In a questionable economy, consumers will spend a little more time to make sure they are spending their money wisely. This is a great opportunity for any company that can react fast enough. Changing your marketing strategy instead of your marketing budget can allow you to benefit from the current economic downturn instead of being a part of it. More effective marketing with trackable ROI will allow you to move ahead while your competition has “their head in the sand.”
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