"Recession" Marketing for 2009

13 Nov 2008

According to the latest “State of the Net” issue from Amas [1], Ireland’s marketing decision makers are moving more of their budgets online, with 56% of marketing professionals spending over 10% of their budget online. What impact, if any, will the current recession have on this trend as more marketers require not only results, but also value for money with their shrinking budgets?

Marketing spend has been steadily moving to the online arena over the past few years. Recently however, due to the “global economic crisis” all marketing budgets, it seems, have been reduced, causing the Internet marketing industry to ask “What affect this will have for online spending?”

Most agree that the current economic situation will not cause a reduction in online spending in the foreseeable future, and some would argue that it will cause an increase as advertisers start cutting on print, outdoor, tv and radio [3].

However, this does not mean that the Internet marketing industry can rest easy. There will be more competition among the agencies, and those agencies that truly understand the online arena along with the traditional channels will be the ones to survive.

The Internet has created a different marketing and advertising arena where traditional approaches don’t necessarily hold true. The consumer is (allegedly [9]) in more control of their media experience on the Internet. The term “pull marketing” has been around for a while, meaning that the consumer can seek out and directly view/download (or pull) the content they want, and, as irrelevant and annoying pop-ups and banner ads (“push marketing”) slowly dissappear, this is becoming more the case, with search marketing [8] at least.

Traditional marketing and advertising agencies have slowly been waking up to digital over the last few years. Most have been talking about being “full service” and going “digital”, but now they have to deliver, because the market wants them to. There is still a big place for tv and radio, print is falling away, but online and mobile is where the real growth is. The race is now on to become a real “full service” agency, where both offline and online marketing are used effectively to communicate a clear message to consumers.

Consumers searching for products, services, or information will happily view (and interact with) advertising and marketing media that is relevant to what they are looking for. And this is not just true of the Internet. Mobile advertising has been growing rapidly (have a look at blyk.com, blyk.co.uk) and the forecasters seem to think this is set to continue [6, 7].

Social networks (bebo, myspace, facebook, etc) and social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, dig, reddit, etc.) are also receiving a lot of attention and are expected to continue grow in a big way. One report from MyersReport.com [10] predicts 70% in the US for 2009, even after growth of 128% in 2008.

So, in my opinion, there is much to be hopeful about for marketers and marketing agencies alike in the next 12 – 18 months. There are plenty of new opportunities for the marketing industry, as long as agencies invest in understanding the online arena and not simply applying traditional techniques, and marketers should be able to find value for money out there. Those expensive tv productions might be on hold for a while, but they will find plenty of ways to engage people, which is what its all about really, isn’t it?

Ian Corcoran, 13 Nov 2008

References

[1]: “State of the Net issue 10 Autumn 2008”, Amas.ie,

http://www.amas.ie/reports_softhen10contents.html

[2]: “Economic Depression 2.0”, Erik Qualman, Search Engine Watch,

http://searchenginewatch.com/3631055

[3]: “Good News for People who Hate Bad News”, Jason Calacanis, calacanis.com,

http://calacanis.com/2008/10/28/good-news-for-people-who-hate-bad-news/

[4]: “Is Calacanis’ optimism about online marketing justified?”, Ernst-Jan Pfauth, thenextweb.com,

http://thenextweb.com/2008/10/28/is-calacanis-optimism-about-online-marketing-justified/

[5]: “Digital marketing”, en.wikipedia.org,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_marketing