Why SEO & PPC Thrive in a Slow Economy
On Wednesday night I found myself standing at the bar at ConnecTech’s Annual Launch party at the MGM Grand Casino chatting with another interactive marketing business owner. As we traded stories about our companies, he commented, “I just heard you talking with that girl about how good business is for you guys. It’s the same for us, but I feel like I need to down-play it so I’m not rubbing it in.”
I don’t. I really wasn’t boasting, I was just telling her the truth.
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen many of our clients’ paid search and organic optimization budgets double, and then double again. Some of it can be attributed to the holiday season (for the B2C clients that we serve), but the rest of it can be largely tied to the recession.
It’s no secret that an economic downturn will drive businesses to run more efficiently. This means reducing operating costs by running with fewer employees, putting the clamps on purchasing procedures, reducing capital investments, and yes, slashing the marketing budget.
This squeeze brings on an evaluation of the company’s current marketing initiatives. Those of us in the interactive space know that the more return-on-investment (ROI) and cost-of-customer-acquisition (CPA) focused our customers are, the better we look. When our clients evaluate their marketing spend from a ROI perspective, the web often rises to the top. They can understand dollar-for-dollar what they’re spending, and the leads and sales that it is creating.
This realization not only leads to a reappropriation of the marketing budget to be more web-heavy with regards to current initiatives (e.g. increasing the PPC daily budget), but it seeds conversations about online opportunities that haven’t been explored yet.
“If PPC and SEO are working for us now, why don’t we start attacking the social media space, and make some much-needed improvements to our website that we’ve been putting off.”
This is no time to be paralyzed. When new product development goes on hold, use the time to do the things that you’ve been trying to find time to do. Take a good look at your web analytic data, review your site and your competitors for opportunities, and talk it all over with your web marketing consultant!
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