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Sometimes nothing makes the case for search engine marketing like numbers.
First, it's helpful to see what's happening to marketing dollars as we approach the end of 2008. As seen in the subsequent chart from MarketingSherpa, businesses are cutting traditional advertising significantly more than they are adding it, while social network marketing and emailing to house lists are being added much more than reduced.
Marketing Tactics in the Economic Downturn
This shouldn't come as any surprise, but the continuing confirmation of the general direction of marketing dollars might be reassuring to those who fear the brave new medium. In other words, if everybody else is throwing their ad dollars online and gaining conversions, loyalists, and mindshare, you hope that you're in on the party.
Along with other compelling thoughts about why we should pay attention to this data, see Virginia Nussey's take on the State of the Market Survey for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO). I would also encourage any readers to take part in this survey.
Contributing to the current wealth of economic downturn commentary in the SEM blogosphere (see here, here, and here) I highly recommend OnlineMarketer Blog's excellent 5-part series on marketing during a recession last week. He also had a great response in our recent interview, pointing out evidence that ...
... companies who cut marketing during recessions lose market share to companies who don’t.
It bears repeating that if you are concerned about how to afford marketing during a recession, the prudent question to ask is Can I afford not to market during a recession? Look at the numbers and your competitors for guidance. Do you want to be behind or ahead?
If you haven't already seen the place for SEM in your overall marketing strategy, then maybe it's time for you to raise the white flag or abandon the Internet entirely. Or you should be congratulated, because you're already at the top and have invincible market share or brand allegiance.
About the Author: Paul RichlovskyA member of the company since 2006, Paul is a College of Wooster graduate who has served in various writing, editing, and account management capacities. He currently helps lead Fathom's internal marketing strategy, contributing to brand and product activation while helping manage content on the company website. A former teacher of English as a foreign language, he has previously written about vocational education on YouShouldGoToSchool.com.
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1 Comment so farOne Response to “Downturn This! Marketing Tactics and Recession Reading”
At the Search Engine Strategies last week in Chicago, Jack Menzel, senior product manager, Google said they had access to one trillion URLs. On top of that the number of Web pages is growing by several billion per day. With these numbers in mind it has to make you think that businesses are turning more toward the use of social media sites, PPC and other means of advertising as a way to generate more traffic to their sites.