Marketing during a financial crisis

So, what do we do then? Marketing by definition is a task that requires the expenditure of money. It can’t be helped. In order to do a proper job, cash needs to be spent as free marketing will only get you so far. As that’s the case, marketing spend needs to be kept tightly in check, else that all important marketing yardstick known as ROI will be unacceptably low. Fortunately, online marketing is extremely measurable and there are a number of ways to exploit this, as well as making the most of performance based budgets. This post will cover 2 distinct areas that you can quickly and immediately try to optimise.

Let others do the hard work

Unless you’ve found a truly magical niche market where you’re the only player, the chances are pretty good that you have competitors. Just about everybody’s who’s anybody is going to have a presence on search engines’ paid ads areas. There you’ll be fighting against all sorts of online competitors, some who will be selling the same products and those who are just comparing them or talking about them. But do you really need to have a presence for every product class and type that you sell? Probably not, as you might find that you only sell a small percentage of your product portfolio, or that only some of them will be able to sufficiently cover the costs of your marketing spend. So you can instantly cut out the chaff and focus on your bread and butter products.

Then there are the keywords that you’re bidding for. The high level, broad, generic keywords are the most competitive and are a great statement of intent. It shows everybody what exactly you’re about and corporate responsibility may dictate that you have to be here as it is your Oxford Street. But, in belt tightening times, it might be more prudent to let these slip a bit. There are far better converting keywords that you could be focusing on. If you have a big brand to protect, then it might not be possible to drop the Oxford Street generic keywords. If, however, you’re a much smaller organisation without much of a brand, it’s probably safe to be a bit sneaky. Let the bigger fish get their speculative traffic, target those people who are ready to purchase, those who are right at the end of their purchasing cycle. These long tail keywords are probably your best bet, particularly if you’re price competitive too.

Collaboration is the key

Love them or hate them, affiliate marketing is probably the best model for online marketing. Remember, it’s a win-win situation a lot of the time. You might be giving a bit away in terms of profit margin, but it is for a guaranteed sale. If anybody approached me and said that my marketing spend would come in every week at exactly 4% of overall sales, I’d call them crazy. Although it’s probably unrealistic to make affiliate marketing your entire marketing plan, it is possible to make them a bigger part of it instead. Provide as much information as you can and try to meet as many of them as possible. In an industry with seemingly little loyalty, you’re going to have to work very hard to get hard working affiliates onside.

Also put a bit of thought into your commission structure and levels. Big market players who have massive brand strength will automatically draw the attention themselves. They’ll get the lion’s share of the affiliates, as well as the lion’s share of the end users. Smaller guys will struggle a little more, but is there an alternative to just offering more commission. If you happen to be a market leader in price, you should definitely consider offering slightly less than the going rate and convince your extended sales force with your undoubtedly stronger conversion. If your conversion is not so good, even though your prices are low, then you probably want to focus on fixing your site!

More to it than that

Of course, this is certainly not everything that you should do with online marketing in a recession. There’s much more stuff you can look at, including improving relevancy with email communications and website personalisation. However, these are quicker fixes than everything else that makes up your online marketing mix and if you are struggling to know where to begin, PPC and affiliates are a good starting point.