Marketing & the Downturn
For many organisations, getting through the current downturn may require a re-evaluation of marketing priorities.
Organisations that simply slash fundraising or marketing budgets as a knee jerk response face the real danger of losing yet further business or support. This can lead to a vicious downward spiral leading to even less money available for marketing. However the current credit crunch may mean that your organisation has no choice but to cut marketing budgets. What it's critical to do in this case is to ensure that every penny of your marketing budget is well spent - accountability is key and this is where online marketing really comes into its own.
Online marketing is unique in that it provides a wealth of statistics that enable you to monitor in incredible detail how your campaigns are working.
If you use a Pay Per Click service such as Google Adwords you can not only monitor exactly where every penny was spent (e.g. on specific keywords that people clicked on) but by using Google Analytics you can then also monitor what people actually went on to do on your website. If they bought something or made a donation - fantastic! If however people are coming through to your site in large numbers but then either leave shortly after or never go on to purchase anything then maybe you either need to revisit the page they are directed to or rethink aspects of your campaign.
Detailed statistics enable you to constantly monitor, tweak and improve campaigns over time. You can change campaigns within minutes and needn't commit to an ongoing campaign if it isn't working. It is this accountability plus the unique nature of "interest-based" targetting within search engine marketing that is predicted to mean that online marketing is likely to be more resilient during the current recession.
