Adapting Your Digital Marketing for the Changing Economy

A special guest post from Alpha Chi Omega's Justin "...Credible" Goodman.

Recently there have been a multitude of articles and blog posts in regards to how to stay alive in an economy that makes life more difficult. Having read through many of these articles I admit that there are a multitude of good ideas and valuable information throughout. However, all the information included in the articles are things that should not just be done because of the down economy.

For example, one article talks about further targeting your PPC campaigns to optimize geographically. This is a great idea! But why aren’t you doing this already? It should not take failure to push you towards success. You should have already been optimizing your PPC.

Another article talks about increasing content on your site and providing customers reasons to buy from you and no other retailers. Again, great idea, but why has this not already been implemented?

Perhaps these articles and blogs should not be titled dealing with the economy, but instead a refresher course on digital marketing.

While thinking about this, I wondered, why now, when money is clearly the tightest it has been in a long time, are people going out and either spending their time or money to do something that should have been done all along?

At this point, is the cost of time and money worth the benefits gained by going through and optimizing everything that should be worked on and optimized already? Is your time more valuable now when money is tight? Should you start working on these things now? Or should they be put off until things start to turn around? Will making all these changes help in time?

The clear answer is that you should not have to make these changes, and that in fact you should be monitoring your success. Unfortunately it appears that this is not the case. So the answer comes down to an individual basis.  Do the costs outweigh the benefits right now?  You definitely should implement PPC and SEO optimization as well as the plethora of other trustworthy suggestions, but is now the time? If you are doing these things yourself and you find yourself sitting around wishing business was better, YES! Act now, the down economy is a great time to learn new tactics and new ways of improving business. If you are hiring someone to do the work for you, will they be able to help turn your business around fast enough to keep you in the positive? If yes, again ACT NOW! If you are in a business that really cannot be helped instantly by having that extra bit of traffic then you really should consider why you have not acted already and how you are going to prevent this kind of thing from happening again in the future.  I would never recommend not making improvements, but there is definitely a time and place for everything, the key is to determine when to implement these improvements.

-Justin

(Note: Justin is a part of our Alpha Chi Omega class of interns.  Check out their blog here: eBoost Interns Blog)

Comments

[Michael Slawin]

Justin,
I think you make some good points. Maybe one of the reasons some of these strategies need to be "re-done" is that they were not based in a solid strategy from the beginning.

Having a solid plan and then working that plan will pay huge dividends in PPC, SEO and all the other forms of online marketing.

[Micha]

Good points Justin. While the current economic situation creates a more challenging environment the most important thing for companies to do is invest the time in the groundwork. Set objectives first, build the strategy, and then align those with the individual marketing tactics. Its never to late to start, if a company is looking for fast results on average PPC and Email Marketing have the quickest ROI scenario.

[jim]

Thanks