5 Tips for Recession Marketing

I'm a day late on this one, but MarketingSherpa's research director, Stefan Tornquist, was interviewed in yesterday's WSJ about marketing in a recession.  A couple of quick observations about Stefan's interview:

• It was very hard hitting.  The article was SIX columns, but there was zero fluff.  Having been interviewed by newspapers, I understand the importance of having something "teachable" to say in a clear, concise way.  Stefan nailed this interview.  My article was highlighted from beginning to end -- and I'm pretty stingy with a highlighter.
• His tips were mulitichannel in nature.  MarketingSherpa's research confirms that multichannel marketing initiatives are more effective than single channel initiatives:  Print advertising works better when supported by SEM; Direct mail works better when supported by branding; and so on.  The best marketers today are channel agnostic, and research shows that a multichannel attack on your target market is usually going to be more effective than a single channel attack.

In case you missed it, here are my top 5 takeaways from Stefan's interview:

1.)  In a tough economy, branding matters.  Many small companies see brand building activity as hard-to-measure, and therefore, ineffective.  Yet brand activity makes us trust a brand when we see their ads later on.  Downturns actually create opportunities for small players to increase their brand visibility because there's less noise in the market.  Basically, you should zig when your competitors zag.

2.)  SEO and SEM remain underleveraged.  I have known this for a while:  When it comes to SEO, most marketers just don't know how to put their fingers on the laces of the ball.  Organic search is not complicated, and I'd be wasting your time to tell you how important it is.  However, if you don't know the basics of SEO and SEM, you M-U-S-T get your arms around it asap.  All marketing candidates should understand it -- and all hiring managers should require that their marketing candidates have some SEM literacy.  Word!

3.)  "Increasing traffic is expensive.  Increasing conversions doesn't have to be."  My favorite quote from the interview.  Let's say you have 100 visitors to your website and 3 of them buy something.  Congratulations.  You have a fairly-typical 3% conversion rate.  Now what?  To double your sales, you can either scrounge up another 100 visitors -- or you can increase your conversion rate to 6%.  I'll take option 2:  Increase conversions.  According to Stefan, there are two quick hits for improving your website's effectiveness:  Better web design and usability, and better copy.  In fact, ...

4.)  Copy impacts web conversions more than any single factor, and the time-proven way to improve it is to test and tweak, test and tweak, etc.  Getting back to my mandate about marketing candidates and SEO, I believe that ALL marketing candidates should be asked to write something during the interview process.  This doesn't have to be complicated.

For hiring managers, this can be as easy as asking a candidate to pick up something off the hiring manager's desk and write a short ad for it -- complete with a headline, a subhead, and a 25 word logical or emotional appeal which directly precedes an offer or call to action.  If there's no offer or call to action, then your candidate has failed the test!  No soup for you!!!  Moral: Learn to write copy.

5.)  Direct mail is still a marketing workhorse.  Research confirms what Gary Halbert started saying in the 1980s:  Short, single purpose direct mail pieces will outpull a 75-page catalog.  Define your target buyer and mail them something that will drive them to a highly relevant website -- ideally, with a campaign-specific URL.  Think like a sniper.  A sniper with a postage stamp.
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Comments

[EH]

Businesses should consider putting these suggestions together with a marketing blueprint that way they can better see how each of these marketing ideas can work together to increase business.

[Valeria Maltoni]

What I forgot to write is that I precede Direct Marketing ;-) There is a place in there for social media tools as well, although we do not employ them externally yet.

[Jen]

I like your marketing tips, I am currently working for a new web 2.0 company and we are starting the whole marketing/advertising process - this post has really helped! Thanks!

[20 point checklist for direct mail success]

Re Googling candidates before they arrive: Amen to that! Regards to your other points, I'm sure you are bringing it all together. Have they figured out yet that you are famous?? ;-)

Re: your marketing -- Don't forget direct mail. Ted Grigg has an excellent 20 point checklist for direct mail success at http://tinyurl.com/6hokeb

-Harry

[Valeria Maltoni]

Harry, I'll make you a deal on candidates writing on the spot at interviews if managers promise to Google candidates before they meet them. No waste of time on both sides. Deal?

I am pleased to say that we have a multichannel team in place at my current company - and that we get what the others are doing and fit it all together. I precede with PR and media opportunities as well as articles/white papers (when I can), Web copy as a marketing conversation (now up yet, soon, I hope! Where it is up, we increased traffic from search more than 100%), and so on...

Thank you for bringing it home again. I shared your post with my colleague. Always good to learn more.

[Ted Grigg]

It’s refreshing to see a post that doesn’t see online marketing as the only strategy worth considering. I agree strongly with your assessment that the best marketers today are media agnostic.

One comment about SEO: the search engines are getting better at finding relevant sites. Meta tags have given way to real content (i.e. copy) and links as key determinants of site selection by the new algorithms.

Multichannel marketing still requires the best minds and the most enlightened marketers. Why? Because we recommend what we know and we do what we like rather than what really needs to be done.

[Josh]

Re: SEO and SEM, I'd even emphasize SEO more these days. There seems to be an acceptance that SEM drives revenue at all levels, but the idea that you can impact search rankings still seems foreign. Which I'm sure resonates with anyone who's had to walk through the "this is a paid ad, these are natural results, and yes, it's possible to alter where you appear in both" discussion.