Despite early optimism, the recession is likely to be with us for some time yet. This means that more people will be out of work, fewer people will be spending money and businesses need to cut back on their costs.
Cutting costs is important for businesses to survive the recession. This should not include your Internet marketing however. Internet marketing is unlike any other form of promotion or advertising, in that you can clearly see your return on investment. Using stats software such as Google Analytics, you can see where your customers are coming from and how they are using your website. You can see what marketing is working and what areas you need to improve upon.
For example, you can see if PPC is working for and earning a profit, or if natural
SEO is working for you. You can see how your customers are finding your website and you can balance your profits against your expenses.
In addition to the obvious tracking benefits, by promoting your website now with SEO you can ensure that your site is strong and well placed for when the recession ends. It can take months or even years for a website to rank well within Google. By slashing your Internet marketing budget now to save money in the short term, you could be harming your website in the long term.
When the recession first came along I did some research into who came thorugh the last one and why. The answer seemed to be, those who ignored it and carried on as normal. Abandoning advertising is not something a firm would do under normal circumstances and historical evidence seems to suggest they’re unwise to consider it now.
BB