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Shelter From the Storm

Written by: Max Kalles

Article Overview: Budgets for marketing, advertising, PR, corporate communications - media in general - are often the first ones slashed by businesses in tight economic times. Internet marketing is different (if only because there might be no budget to slash)

Shelter From the Storm

“The sky is falling!”, “everybody get out!”, “everybody get in!” – in the early to mid stages of a recession, it seems like everyone is shouting. From the mass media, who are trying to maintain sales, to pundits, who are trying to maintain credibility, there’s no shortage of warnings and advice about what is and will be.

It is a confusing storm of information that, for most SMEs, makes a guessing game of many business decisions. Nowhere is this truer than for marketing and advertising. Even in the best of times, there is debate about the wisdom of marketing, advertising, public relations and corporate communications. When money tightens, media budgets are often the first ones chopped.

It’s not difficult to see why. Throughout their history, they all have struggled with finding accurate measures of their effectiveness. Of course, it’s often easy to see an increase in sales following a media campaign, but was the outlay worth the income? How much of the income was due to the campaign? Is there a less costly way to get the same result?

Too many questions. Without solid measures of its effectiveness, marketing and its ilk will always suffer budget slashes in tight economic times.

At least until internet marketing becomes more mainstream – if it isn’t there already. If anything, the current recession might be a bit of a coming out party for IM. While it is difficult to keep all forms of IM under one umbrella - the internet is a medium of media – the truth for all of them is that they are thoroughly measurable. Every view, every click, where they came from, where they went and what they bought, is all there for the analysts to analyze, in full-colour, up-to-the-minute graphs and charts.

Regardless of how “measurable” is your marketing, sometimes tough times call for cuts and you can’t avoid them. The internet is where a marketing “budget of limitless possibilities” can exist. In simpler terms, with IM, you can spend as much or as little as you like, even nothing, and still have a successful campaign. IM might be the perfect shelter for your marketing budget during a recessionary storm

The downside is, you can spend as much or as little as you like, even a million dollars, and have an unsuccessful IM campaign.

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Article Tags: communications media, marketing advertising, tight economic times



Related Forum Posts
Re: Are Economic Recessions Good for Franchising? - well, I can't give you any verified stats at the moment. But, it's a fact that as more and more people face layoffs they look in the direction of franchising. These are folks that need the security of a proven business model and have resources to jump into a franchise. It's a clear trend that has been witnessed in past recessions. My concern is that we are not in a simple recession... If you look at a recession as a big storm that will create some havoc and disrupt lives, then the events we're facing in the near future could be a supersized hurricane. We're heading into uncharted waters. High fuel costs, which will probably fluctuate for a while then jump again High debt loads... now in the trillions Sinking housing market... how low will it go? The US war machine is in full swing... with eyes on IRAN All of these factors are clashing to create the Perfect Storm and I don't like it one bit. I tell ya, there's a bunch of madmen at the helm. So how does this bode for franchising? jeez... I don't know... I'm gonna get myself a double scotch on the rocks. Cheers.


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