It’s hard to get through a business conversation lately without someone bringing up the scary economic times in which we live. I try to nod my head in sympathy, but I have a secret.
Business has never been better.
It’s not just because I’m in the business of Internet marketing -- the flavor of the month. We've all seen trends fade quickly in the face of economic conditions. (Internet bubble, anyone?) No, I am noticing a new pattern in the phone calls I get:
Caller: Do you do Internet marketing consulting?
Me: Yes, I—
Caller: We need you right now. We've been ordered to cut our ad budget 20 percent next year without affecting sales. We were wondering if it makes sense to not only cut it 20 percent but also reallocate 10 percent more from that ad budget to Internet marketing. That way, we would have a chance of keeping our results the same even at the lower cost.
Me: That sounds like a good idea—
Caller: Because we could pay you to consult with us how to improve our search results, and after that it’s free. And you can conduct training on social media, and we can then execute those future campaigns for free. It is free, after we pay you, right?
Me: Yes, you still have costs to create the material, but there are no ad costs to—
Caller: Great! When can we get you in here?
So, you can see what a terrific salesman I am. I basically know how to answer a phone and respond “yes” to each question. At first I was surprised by this recent groundswell, but when I started to think about it, it came to make sense.
The change from traditional advertising approaches to free Internet marketing techniques is a profound one for many marketers. It’s not just a change in their behavior, but requires an adapted way of thinking about what they do for a living -- marketers can’t just send messages to customers without listening to what they are saying, and then responding. It’s a philosophical change from merely getting attention to also paying attention.
Given the required adjustments, it’s reasonable that marketers would be looking askance at this big change, circling around it, and inspecting it -- but not actually jumping in, until a crisis forces action. With the kind of economic pressure most businesses are now under, the need to cut costs in the traditional ways of marketing leaves us groping for something we believe can make things OK even while we economize. So it makes sense that this strange animal we’ve been circling suddenly becomes “the way out.”
Is it? Sometimes the leaps of faith we make in a crisis are no more than wishful thinking, but in the case of Internet marketing, its return on investment is well documented. And when traditional marketers begin to see the results from these first large commitments to Internet marketing, it will be interesting to see what they do next. Will they accept that their cozy marketing budgets “dodged a bullet” fired by the economic crisis? Will they now double down and continue to aggressively shift budget from underperforming segments of mainstream marketing to what seems to be working?
I know what I’d do, but I don’t know what the average marketer will do. And the reaction of the average marketer might be what tells us whether this boom in the Internet marketing consulting business has legs or is just a temporary boost caused by a crisis.
— Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly, is a speaker and consultant on Internet marketing
I think we should all follow YouTube's model of marketing. Be most popular, and not find a way to make money. Yes we are in a economic crisis, but all looking now at streamlining ways to make money. Finding that untapped source. But wait, we have a 15 year old kid making "Fred" videos in his house that is being hit over a hundred million times so companies are paying him 6 figures to put products in his home made videos. I'm going to start putting a coke can sitting in the background while I make a video. Maybe the coca-cola corporation will start paying me!
I agree that the distinction between digital natives and immigrants (illegal, with green card, naturalized) is useful, but I'm wondering if the ad agency compensation schemes have had anything to do with the slow movement to Web-based advertising by the big companies. In other words, do agencies still get paid a percentage of the total media bill? If so, no wonder they still choose broadcast TV even though so many of the actual staffers at agencies are digital natives!
But there's nothing like a crisis -- the economic depression we're sinking into -- to provoke change. And as companies follow the phone script you recorded for us, when the economy recovers, I don't think they'll be going back to their automatic reliance on broadcast.
Internet is a newer marketing channel... thats all. Marketing department in most of the traditional organizations (3M, Colgate, P&G etc) have not invested in creating brand awareness in a social media environment. They lost interest in the potential of Internet after the dot com bubble. Now they are catching up. Some weeks back there was an article in WSJ on how Google and P&G are swaping employees so that P&G can quickly learn about this new channel (link to the artilce is http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB122705787917439625-lMyQjAxMDI4MjE3OTAxNTk3Wj.html). The new generation of consumers (aged 18 -35 years) spend more time on Internet than on TV (from the same WSJ article). They are more proactive than the passively TV watching consumer demographics. I think that is the main reason companies are agressively investing in this new marketing channel while they are cutting their investment in other channels due to economic slowdown...
I'm rarely described as "restrained" but perhaps i am branching out. :-)
I think that the difference is between what we think should be the response of marketers to what actually IS the response. I find Gartner's characterization of those under age 30 as digital natives while the rest of us as digital immigrants as enlightening.My generation might speak digital, but we do it with an accent. Because we are controlling the budgets in most large enterprises, we are dipping our toes in the water while the digital natives are touching bottom.
I think there is a larger acceptance of social networking sites growing even as we speak. I have personal knowledge of an organization that is currently found on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and another Social Networking site I can't recall that is very heavily engaged in management of these social network relationships.
Remember, businesses are like battleships. They are large, powerful, and very very slow to turn.
Great article, Mike, but I found you a little restrained on this. Why don't people realize that the Internet is becoming the space where more and more people are spending time as compared with the time they are interacting with other people in physical marketplaces.
This is particularly true for what some have called the digital generation. That's anyone under 30. Whatever description of the world applied five years ago no longer applies.
So it's not a question of reacting to the current hard times and readjusting budgets. It's more a question of smelling the coffee and planning for the world we have now rather than the world as it existed five years ago.
I agree, Paul. TV didn't kill radio or the movies. Each time a new technique comes in, it doesn't obliterate the others, they just move over to make room for a new player. And, you're right, the companies I work with are looking at redefining their customer experiences across all marketing tactics so they can measure the results of each one individually and in the aggregate. The trend to measuring ROI on all marketing techniques is not one that I think will fade as the economy improves.
I don't know if it's most companies, Insultant, but certainly some haven't figured out social media yet. Perhaps it's because I work for Converseon, a social media agency, but the companies I talk to all get the value of social media and are stressed because they aren't putting enough emphasis on it yet.
Great Post and i'm particularly impressed with the nascent methods been explored now to 'dodge the bullets" fired by the economic crisis.Some of these may be wishful thinking as you rightly mentioned but some will definitely endured even if things are to return to normalcy.
No matter ensuing success of this aggressive switch to internet marketing, internet marketing should always be consider as been only a piece of a bigger pie. I believe the success of this internt drive will also depend on how much marketers can integrate the various media campaigns in order to produce an active marketing strategy. I really can't see internet marketing putting to death other traditional marketing outreaches that has got a long track record of success. We are now seeing real colloboration between TV and internet marketing and certainly many new innovations will emerge in the future to integrate the various advertising channels!!!
Is there a real role for social media/networking to play in most companies' marketing campaign strategies? Seems like most companies still look askance at social media, no?
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