Marketing in a Recession

by Paul Butcher

How many times have you heard in the last few months that we're either entering or already in a recession? Whether we are or not is no longer relevant, all the negative talk has already had its effect on consumer and business confidence and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Does this mean it's a bad time for marketers? Absolutely not. Just as experienced investors will tell you that recessionary times create great opportunities to make money, opportunities are also out there for the skilled marketer. While many companies are playing defensive and pulling back, the strong leaders use the prevailing pessimism in the market to their advantage.

How to do this is the question. This may be a tough time to propose expanding your national print or television brand building campaign. Even though it might be an effective time to change brand perceptions, there are a lot of nervous senior executives and shareholders looking to blame anyone they can for poor results and if such a campaign is anything less than a stellar success…watch out.

Over the last ten years we've witnessed a major shift of marketing dollars from traditional offline channels to the online world. This has been driven first and foremost by the increasing importance of the internet in our lives as a source of information and entertainment, but also in no small part by the medium's ability to target, track and optimize every dollar spent - something TV and print can never deliver. We are now seeing in the current climate of uncertainty, an acceleration of the move to the online world where accountability is king.

Our advice for those who want to make a real impact with their marketing dollars, without the downside risk, is to embrace this accountability to the fullest and focus more of your marketing dollars on online, performance-based media.

Start With Where You Want To Go

Anyone who tells you their target customer just doesn't use the internet is wrong. We are at the point where there is enough of almost any particular target group online to enable a highly effective online campaign. Our advice is straightforward. Be as specific as you can about the profile of your ideal prospect or customer and build your online campaign backwards from there.

Target Precisely

The extent to which your marketing message can be targeted continues to increase all the time. We can now effectively reach people based on their geographic location, age, income, interests and their online and even offline behavior. This type of precision targeting greatly improves pretty much every measurable result metric in your campaign, so it makes sense to use it to your advantage.

What's It Worth To You?

It sounds simplistic, but the online marketer needs to have a real understanding of what specific actions they are looking to drive with their campaign and what value they place on each element. How much is a new visitor to your site worth? What about a lead captured online or an actual online sale? What would you pay for each of these in terms of cost per click, cost per action or cost per conversion?

If you can say with confidence things like, "The 100 web inquiries we received last year translated into $50,000 in business for us and a gross margin of $25,000" or "The approximate average online sales generated per visitor clicking through from Google pay per click ad is $2, and the amount we can profitably pay for such a click through is $0.75," then you know you are on the right track. Most marketers can't.

These values are the basis of the goals you set and measure your campaign against.

Track Everything

Results of online marketing activities can and should be tracked in detail. You can see in real time what is working and what isn't. If you are driving people to visit your website you can see whether they came and what they did on the site. You can also track what content they viewed, what actions they took and what they purchased. A detailed tracking plan for all elements of the campaign - encompassing both online and offline (e.g. phone) actions resulting from your online marketing is a must.

Refine Constantly

Monitor each element of your campaign constantly against the goals you set for it. Adjust your campaign to do more of what is delivering and less of what isn't. This involves continually tweaking and testing different keywords, ad creative, budget limits, landing pages and other variables. An online campaign is a constantly evolving thing which may quickly become very different from what it started out as. The secret is not so much how good your initial campaign plan is, but how well you monitor and adjust to constantly improve performance.

Designing and executing successful online marketing campaigns takes planning, commitment and hard work. (We know - it's what we do all day). But in the current business climate, if it's not already a major focus of your marketing, it probably should be.