It is a common knee jerk reaction to want to cut your spending during an economic downturn. The novice entrepreneur often chooses to cut their advertising budget in the hopes that client loyalty and free “word-of-mouth” marketing will keep food on the table.
While the others zig, you should zag.
Loyalty is a nice thing to have but even the biggest brands know they have to constantly be ‘out there’ advertising in the consumers face. This is the only way they will be fresh in the mind the day the customer needs their services.
Word of mouth rarely carries any business (large or small) successfully through a depression.
Increase Ad Spend During a Recession
Advertising online can be expensive if you go at it the same way you approach the offline ad hoc methods. You can have success if you start with a few of the networks that are more likely to be successful. Take the time to learn their methods, test your conversions and stay on top of it. In short order you could quickly increase the number of your customers and your market share.
Rather than thinking of your online marketing efforts as an expense, you can consider them an investment.
The most common and most used online advertising platform is Google AdWords. They give you the ability to completely target the area of your marketing efforts. If you want to have your ads showing only to people who live in the just the town area, you can do that. You also have the ability to exclude certain areas that you don’t want to advertise to.
As well, you get to choose the methods of billing. You will be charged only if a potential client clicks on your ad, or you can choose to be billed by by the number of times your ad is seen.
Another popular advertising avenue is on Facebook. The biggest difference with Facebook advertising is its more of an “interruptive” advertising style. Meaning that when people see your ads, they probably weren’t looking for your product or service which is similar to television style advertising.
What’s really cool about FB marketing is you can super target your audience. Because Facebook is a social network you have access to choosing the people’s gender, age, interests, likes, as well as their geographic location. All these demographic and geographic points combine to super target your ads.
Choosing your options is why the only people that will see your ad are the ones that fit your customer profile. The added bonus is you choose how much you pay per click, or by number of impressions.
LinkedIn is another type of social network initially attractive to the professional business or persons that offer B2B commodity – like lawyers and accountants. Today it isn’t as ‘exclusive’ as it once was but there is still much to be gained to set up your profile. Take advantage of their advertising methods. It isn’t just for the so called professionals either. Trades and general knowledge workers can profit nicely by advertising their business and services on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also allows for super target marketing. It has advertising settings that allow you to hone in on specific companies and job titles, as well as location.
Regardless of the avenues you choose to put your marketing budget, it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on what’s working and what isn’t. Keep making only small changes and remember that each platform has its nuances. You know that if you get 100 clicks and no phone calls, something needs to change in the way you are marketing your message.
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