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Solid Online Marketing Tips for a Shaky Economy

Published June 25, 2009 by Garry Przyklenk Bing, Economics, Google Analytics, Landing Pages, New Technology, PPC Basics, SEO, Social Media, Webmaster Tips

With all the talk lately about new and emerging technologies, social spheres, and potential easy wins in online marketing, it’s hard to decipher the signal from the noise.  A shaky economy doesn’t help matters, because many companies are moving to either increase short-term gains or foster long-term strategy and right the boat.  Fragmented advice is easy to come by, so I present to you one cohesive strategy of online marketing with a few tactical real-world examples of how you might implement change.

Part 1: Short Term Growth Opportunities

This is the fun part!  The short term opportunities available in a stagnant, recessed economy can be staggering.  With advertising budgets at an all-time low and ad inventories priced to clear, marketers have a ton of options for testing different tactics and media:

• Paid Search (pay-per-click, Adwords, YSM, Adcenter) is always a good short-term option.  Even if you already have established keyword portfolios, the quickest way to make more money right now is testing new products, landing pages, or markets with new keywords.  Example: Test your established paid keywords on Bing, see what happens.
• Traditional/Print campaigns, depending on your city/locale, can be extremely affordable again.  There’s a definite correlation between offline advertising in magazines and newspapers and online sales (and search).  Example: Local newspapers are hurting to move unsold inventory, strike a deal and advertising a smoking hot sale.
• Ditto goes for Digital Media Sales right now.  Inventory is available in extremely interesting bundles, such as online plus broadcast video, etc.  Example: test video opportunities by creating a channel in YouTube, or target YouTube through Adwords.

Part 2: Long Term Online Marketing Strategies

If you’re in it for the long haul (of course you are) and are weathering the recession fine so far, you may opt to accept slow and steady through the storm.  The latest estimates from financial gurus, those same geniuses that got us into this mess, state that we should be through the worst of it by late 2010.  Six to twelve months is a great time frame for establishing strategies involving:

• Social media optimization, social media marketing, social marketing, whatever you care to call it, I like to call it the “SMOoze”.  Essentially that’s what it is, you’re flirting and getting to know communities of people online first and foremost – SELLING is often secondary!  Tons of tools let you do this, but here are a few key examples:
  • Twitter: I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter, but companies such as Dell have claimed to be able to leverage the discount/deals communities by tweeting relevant discounts/specials.  Notice: RELEVANT.  Other companies have used it as a means of supporting communities in an effort to increase transparency and good will.
  • Facebook: Similar to Twitter, the goal here is to increase the power of community.  Facebook’s community just happens to be several million strong, that helps, but can also severely hinder your ability to deal with the community as a whole.
  • Blogs: Yep, I classify these as social, because each blog will have a loyal following of relatively niche readers, sometimes very vocal.  If you can reach out to a few influential bloggers that share your community or target audience and establish a long-term relationship, both sides are likely to benefit.
• You’re probably already aware of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but you may not be aware of things you’re doing wrong.  SEO has changed quite a bit over the past 12-18 months, so reexamining where you rank, auditing your success, and working to improve overall link-building may be the order of future success.  Areas to research:
  • Canonical tag, used to suggest the primary URL for duplicate content arising from the use of a CMS, blog, or online store catalog.
  • Broken or moved links not 301-redirected, pull a 404 server log or analytics report to find out where, why, and who.
  • Got an XML sitemap?  Have you updated it recently for Bing?  Checked the reports that Google Webmaster Tools can provide?  Git ‘er done.
  • See the last bullet for “Blogs”.  If you respect the blogger’s posting/commenting rules, you might find a few solid sites that can provide “do follow” links.

Part 3: Streamlining Online Operations

Now the part that most people don’t want to hear.  Many refer to right-sizing, down-sizing, and cost-cutting in a really negative light, and sometimes it can be done with little prejudice.  However, what I mean when I say streamlining is implementing changes in your business model that make online processes seamless.  It may be straightforward to many, but some of the best things you can do include:

• Conversion Optimization, a.k.a. site tuning, testing, a/b split, multivariate, etc.  What’s a great way to cut advertising costs and turn 2% overall conversion into 2.5%?  Testing and tuning.  Example: using Google Website Optimizer to find incremental (yet significant) lifts in conversion due to subtle changes in text, layout, color, etc.
• Analytics reporting, but more importantly insights and recommendations impacting site operations and visitor base, married to as many other information sources as possible will be the key to incremental growth now and into the future.  Example: Implement Google Analytics for free, setup conversion events, track business goals (not KPIs) and segment like crazy.  For big boys, marry Omniture and your CRM for even greater deep-dive analysis.
• Modernize your fulfillment process.  Example: If you’re an ecommerce store, look into setting up a payment gateway and shop around for the best rates.  Investigate drop-ship opportunities through big-box distribution companies.
• Inevitably, personnel will be the key to your success, so weigh the opportunity cost of bringing on cheaper, junior personnel for experienced specialists.

Part 4: Don’t believe everything you Read/Hear/Watch

Experts all agree, no one can tell you what will work (or won’t work) for your business without trying first.  The best we can do is suggest tactics to test that may have worked for other businesses, companies, or websites in the past.  There aren’t any guarantees in online marketing.  Out of 10 ideas, 2 might be great, 3 might be okay, but 5 will fail miserably (Emanuel Rosen).  But without those 5 failures, we wouldn’t learn from the majority of our attempts at success.

Tags: digital media, online marketing tips, paid search, shaky economy, smooze, social media optimization, twitter