Marketing strategy during the economic downturn

November 26, 2008 5:15 pm 4 comments
Offline marketing cut during recession while online marketing increases

Offline marketing cut during recession while online marketing increases

According to a survey done by Marketing Sherpa, it would seem that online marketing is going to jump during the economic downturn. Offline media such as print, direct mail, radio, television and events are going to be taking a big hit the study indicates.

Not surprisingly, online marketing such as social media marketing, email marketing are going to be seeing increases. For paid search on Google and Yahoo, the results are mixed, with some marketers cutting back and almost an equal percentage increasing that marketing tactic.

Online marketing vs. offline

But why would there be an increase in online marketing rather than offline forms of marketing? Well, one of the big advantages to online marketing is that through web analytics, it’s far easier to measure the results of your online efforts. It’s much tougher to measure the return on investment of a television, radio or other type of ad.

Online marketing is generally less expensive, although you could spend just as much if you really wanted to. One banner ad in an Edmonton daily newspaper could cost you thousands of dollars per day. Ouch! Take that same budget online, and you can do a lot with it.

That’s not to say that offline marketing methods don’t work. They do, but more and more, people are going online because it’s easy to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, get comparable (if not better) results and in the end, spend less. It does depend on your market though.

Social media strategy

It’s one thing to increase your social marketing efforts, but doing so without a social media strategy in place might not be the most effective thing to do. Like any marketing effort it really pays to set the groundwork and have a good plan.

As much as social media marketing is about conversations and engaging with your market, you need to know information about them. Do you know who your audiences are? Do you know what messages you’d like them to come away with? Do you know what forms of social media your market is most likely to use and what forms might be most effective for you?

This is the groundwork for your social media strategy. Once you’ve got this, then you can start looking at the most effective ways to engage with your market. Which would work for you? Twitter? Facebook? Blogging? A combination of these or maybe other social media?

The conversation

Knowing your audience and the messages you’d like them to take away doesn’t mean you can’t have a natural conversation. You just have those messages in the back of your mind about what you feel is important for your audience to know.

Even more important than that is to make sure you listen to your audience. The whole purpose of social media marketing is to engage with your audience. They have a lot of valuable things to tell you, so make sure you’re receptive to them.

Just using social media marketing with old-style push marketing won’t work. Push marketing is part of the reason traditional marketing is on the wane and online marketing is becoming more popular.

Your audience will begin to tune out if you’re only pushing out messages without listening. There’s still room for a certain amount of push marketing, but if that’s all you’re doing, you might be a good candidate to develop an effective social media strategy.

Marketing in a bad economy

Marketing is often the first expense to be cut when the economy turns sour. It is certainly an easy target, but that’s a risky strategy. Why not consider keeping your marketing budget at approximately the same level, but look for more effective marketing methods?

If your competitors are cutting their marketing budgets while you keep yours the same, it’s almost like water draining out of a lake. As the level decreases, islands become visible. Your company can be like that island: more visible.

Right now might be the perfect time for your company to take a serious look at its marketing plan and make sure those marketing dollars are being allocated to marketing methods that are most effective. There are many good ways to market online, and social media is one of them.

Is your company planning to change its marketing because of the economic downturn? If so, what kinds of changes are you making?

Alain Saffel

  • David

    I think you misread that graph. The “jump” in online advertising you mentioned is actually a net loss of 8%, although that number is still quite a bit higher than the net loss of 233% that is predicted for offline advertising.

    Similarly, email marketing is down 3% and the “mixed” results for Yahoo and Google ads (losing 6%) is actually better off than the -8% “jump” that you assert online marketing will make in the economic downturn.

    It’s great to use facts and figures, but please use them without first filtering them through your business plan.

  • http://www.fusedlogic.com/ Alain Saffel

    David, I’d like to thank you for dropping by and commenting. I’d like to address the issues you’ve raised.

    What I had indicated is that, according to the chart, there will be in an increase in online marketing, not advertising, and that paid search will be mixed (slightly more decreasing than increasing). Nowhere did I suggest any specific increases. This chart indicates the intentions of marketers to either increase or decrease their particular tactics.

    How that shakes out in dollars is anyone’s guess. There’s not enough data here to come to any conclusion about spending. I don’t know if Marketing Sherpa asked these marketers about the planned percentage increases or decreases, or in absolute dollar terms. That would be interesting data. Breaking this down on a country by country basis would add another dimension of usefulness to it.

    This chart gives a broad picture about what’s the marketing world’s intentions are during the economic downturn and it’s tough to draw specific conclusions on a percentage basis.

    I should have been more specific about the increase in email marketing in referring to emailing to house lists. Yes, emailing to rented lists as a marketing tactic, is going to decline according to the chart. Not having emailed to rented lists, I am confident you’ll have much greater success in emailing to your house list, which might explain its decline.

    Facts and figures can be dangerous things, yes. I am curious how there will be a 233 per cent drop in offline advertising? That would indicate that it’s going to drop to less than nothing. If it drops from 100 to 0, that’s a 100 per cent drop. It’s not going any further.

    I am sure that every business is looking at their marketing numbers and filtering them through their business plan. It’s a smart thing to do in this kind of economy. You want to make sure that the advertising you’re doing is as effective as possible with the least cost.

    Having worked in traditional media, I can certainly say I’m glad I’m not there now. There’s a reason people are cutting back on their traditional media advertising, basically for some of the reasons I’ve indicated in my post.

    Seeing newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor cutting their daily editions and going almost solely online is a trend that’s likely to accelerate. They won’t be the last.
    http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1029/p25s01-usgn.html

    In fact, advertising in the online editions of newspapers can be a good choice, depending on the organization. It tends to be far cheaper and it’s much easier to measure its effectiveness.

  • http://www.fusedlogic.com Alain Saffel

    David, I’d like to thank you for dropping by and commenting. I’d like to address the issues you’ve raised.

    What I had indicated is that, according to the chart, there will be in an increase in online marketing, not advertising, and that paid search will be mixed (slightly more decreasing than increasing). Nowhere did I suggest any specific increases. This chart indicates the intentions of marketers to either increase or decrease their particular tactics.

    How that shakes out in dollars is anyone’s guess. There’s not enough data here to come to any conclusion about spending. I don’t know if Marketing Sherpa asked these marketers about the planned percentage increases or decreases, or in absolute dollar terms. That would be interesting data. Breaking this down on a country by country basis would add another dimension of usefulness to it.

    This chart gives a broad picture about what’s the marketing world’s intentions are during the economic downturn and it’s tough to draw specific conclusions on a percentage basis.

    I should have been more specific about the increase in email marketing in referring to emailing to house lists. Yes, emailing to rented lists as a marketing tactic, is going to decline according to the chart. Not having emailed to rented lists, I am confident you’ll have much greater success in emailing to your house list, which might explain its decline.

    Facts and figures can be dangerous things, yes. I am curious how there will be a 233 per cent drop in offline advertising? That would indicate that it’s going to drop to less than nothing. If it drops from 100 to 0, that’s a 100 per cent drop. It’s not going any further.

    I am sure that every business is looking at their marketing numbers and filtering them through their business plan. It’s a smart thing to do in this kind of economy. You want to make sure that the advertising you’re doing is as effective as possible with the least cost.

    Having worked in traditional media, I can certainly say I’m glad I’m not there now. There’s a reason people are cutting back on their traditional media advertising, basically for some of the reasons I’ve indicated in my post.

    Seeing newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor cutting their daily editions and going almost solely online is a trend that’s likely to accelerate. They won’t be the last.
    http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1029/p25s01-usgn.html

    In fact, advertising in the online editions of newspapers can be a good choice, depending on the organization. It tends to be far cheaper and it’s much easier to measure its effectiveness.

  • David

    I think you misread that graph. The “jump” in online advertising you mentioned is actually a net loss of 8%, although that number is still quite a bit higher than the net loss of 233% that is predicted for offline advertising.

    Similarly, email marketing is down 3% and the “mixed” results for Yahoo and Google ads (losing 6%) is actually better off than the -8% “jump” that you assert online marketing will make in the economic downturn.

    It's great to use facts and figures, but please use them without first filtering them through your business plan.