There has been a lot of talk about the recent economic meltdown and how many large organizations are cutting back spending in all areas including marketing in many cases. In the past the opposite has held true. In past recessions the logic has been to increase marketing budgets in order to reach reluctant consumers. In many cases this has worked but only for organizations with a solid foundation and the capital to weather the financial downturn. In this recession many companies are dialing back their marketing budgets but many of the smart companies are moving more of their traditional marketing dollars into search.
Why would you spend more on search during a recession?
There are quite a few reasons to move more of your traditional marketing budget into search but two of the biggest include the the fact that search simply costs less when compared to traditional media and the fact that the effective of search is easier to measure. On top of that changes can be made quickly to improve performance. Unlike traditional media you only pay when a user clicks on your ad so instead of paying per impression you pay only when some actively seeks to learn more about your offering. Of course this pay per click model only refers to paid search. While paid search is inherently more valuable than traditional media SEO provides an even better value to businesses.
SEO is the ultimate marketing strategy during a recession
SEO offers the ability to target potential customers who are actively seeking your product or service through search like paid search but you don’t have to pay each time that user clicks on your listing. SEO may be a large up-front investment and take a bit longer to provide measurable results but once those efforts begin to propagate the pay off can be huge. More users click on the organic results so with SEO you are targeting a larger cross section of the search universe. And unlike paid search you don’t have to keep paying for every user who comes to your site. Many smart businesses are beginning to shift their money into search and the real forward thinking businesses are moving more of that spend into SEO. Instead of paying agency fees along with the monthly media budget these businesses are paying for the optimization of their websites and getting the media for free through the natural search engine results.
Moving budget to search just makes sense
IMO it is important to cover all aspects of search, both paid and SEO. Studies have shown that sites who have a presence in both the paid and organic results tend to be more trusted and achieve a much better return on their investment than just being in one or the other. Both paid search and SEO can be tracked and optimized for best results. It makes sense to do both but putting some of that money toward SEO during tough economic times is an easy way to get more bang for your buck right now and in the long run.
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