Digital’s Advantage in an Economic Downturn

We are all being affected by the credit crunch – to a greater or lesser extent. Business may be slowing, costs may be rising. Who knows where it will end? A time of uncertainty like this can be very stressful for smaller businesses that rely on a positive cash flow to stay afloat.

So what should your marketing approach be at a time like this? Certainly there is a temptation to cut back on the marketing budget or even to freeze it completely, as well as a number of other costs across the business. However, all the expert opinion I have read about best practice at a time like this reconfirms my own opinion – you freeze your marketing budget at your own peril! So, to this end, a medium term view is just as important as the short term view – how are we going to get through the next year v how are we going to get through the next couple of months?

So… you’ve made a sensible decision – you’re going to keep marketing, maybe at a reduced level until the period of economic uncertainty passes. Now… what should you do?

My first recommendation is TRACK EVERYTHING! Knowledge is power and right now that may make all the difference between staying afloat and going under. If you know which campaigns are performing – leading to the best conversion rates and the lowest Cost per Acquisitions, then you know where to focus your budget.

Second recommendation is it’s TIME TO TARGET! Get very specific with your campagins – by sector, by size of client, by geographical area. Increased granularity leads to increased control. And increased control should lead to lower costs.

Thirdly – INTEGRATE OFFLINE AND ONLINE CAMPAIGNS. The synergy that happens when an offline campaign is backed up by online efforts can be incredible – the value being easily more than the sum of the parts. Don’t miss this trick now.

The good news? Well, I’d say that this cloud does have a silver lining. What’s that you may ask? Well, it’s simple. Difficult times really call for you to get serious about your digital campaigns – optimising and tweaking them to make sure you squeeze every ounce of value out of them. Now, when the economic troubles pass and things start to build again, you will be extremely well positioned to take advantage and should be able to steal a march on your competition!