Blogging, social networking and SEO are among the low-cost ways to ramp up mind share and create market demand even in tough times. With talk of a looming recession everywhere you turn, it’s time to start thinking about how to keep customers coming back and create new demand in spite of the fact that times are tighter.
For many companies, that means finding a way to get the message out in a meaningful way without spending more money—or spending less, if marketing budgets face cutting.
“If you can do a better job at demonstrating value to customers who are spending more conservatively, you’ll do a better job at hedging against drops in sales,” said Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, of Minneapolis.
That means turning to cost-efficient, effective marketing methods that are measurable and that will immediately tell you whether you are getting a good bang for you buck.
Online marketing fits the bill. Eminently less expensive than print ads and other types of advertising, online marketing also is completely measurable.
Most small and midsize companies already use some of these online marketing methods, but now that the economy has slowed and spending is tightening up, it’s an ideal time to try new ways to create mind share, said Michael Boland, an analyst with Kelsey Group, a Princeton, N.J.-based firm that provides market intelligence on the SMB (small and midsize business) advertising market.
If you haven’t optimized your search engine placement, do that by, for example, updating your search terms. If you have never started a blog, now’s the time to try it. And if you have never tried social networking, definitely try that, he said.
Blogs are a great way to start—or to expand, if you have already dipped a toe in the water. By their nature, blogs are search engine-friendly. A company can, for example use a blog to archive press releases and newsletters, as well as to perform content updates. That approach not only gets the company’s name out, but also creates more entry points in search engines, Odden said.
And be creative with your blog, Odden recommends. For example, a discount fabric company in New Jersey competes successfully with larger companies because it has an active, informative, humorous blog that offers tips on fabrics. Each blog post creates a new Web page, and every blog post increases the company’s footprint on the Web and the number of entry points on search engines where customers can engage with the messaging and see products, he explained. What’s more, each blog post has a link directly to the page where customers can buy that product.
Blogs aren’t just for online businesses, either. Even local businesses can get in on the action. A plumbing company with several locations throughout a county or state can start a blog, complete with how-to advice on plumbing fixtures and how to fix faucets. By linking with a locally focused blogging aggregator like Placeblogger.com or outside.in—sites that focus on the goings-on of cities or neighborhoods—local companies can gain great exposure, Boland said.
Blogs are helpful for yet another reason: They automatically include an RSS feed, which creates another communication channel. An RSS feed makes it possible to subscribe to the blog content with browsers or an RSS reader, and allows inclusion into blog and RSS search engines like Google Blog Search, Odden added.
When the blog is part of the main Web site URL, such as mycompany.com/blog/, then any sites linking to the blog also will benefit the main Web site. More links can mean more traffic and better rankings in search engines.
Social networking is another method of fighting the effects of a recession. It takes only about 10 minutes to set up a profile page on Facebook or MySpace. Once that’s done, you can use the functions of the social network to find people who, based on their profiles, would be interested in your products or services. But be aware that although it’s free to start a page, these sites are now charging companies to send highly targeted messages and ads to select users’ pages. “The thought is that these ads will be so targeted that they won’t be viewed by the recipient as spam,” Boland said.
But mammoth social networking sites are just one approach. Another is to turn to a newer social networking technology like Twitter, a free, instant messaging-like service that focuses on “many-to-many” communication.
“If you drop a message in, everybody who is connected to you will see that message, so a company can create an account and harvest a list of ‘friends’ who are talking on Twitter about topics that are relevant to what’s being marketed,” Odden said.
Odden offers this example: A TopRank client—an online gaming site—created a Twitter account to find anyone hosting messages related to games. The company then can connect to hundreds of people it knows are interested in games. To further garner interest, the company posts a short description of its “game of the day” to its Twitter group with a link to the game site, driving traffic to the site.
Although fighting for market share in a recession-bound economy isn’t easy under any circumstances, these inexpensive online marketing methods can give smaller companies a leg up.
“It’s about starting to look at the money you’re spending with more scrutiny and making sure you get as much bang for your buck as possible,” Boland said.
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