According to Forester Research, social networking is now mainstream. Granted, they are talking about consumer - not business-to-business - markets, but still this means that marketers have to stop and take a look at the channel. Biggest gains are in reading blogs and writing reviews.
Forrester: Social Web Now Mainstream [via AdWeek].
Here’s another list of strategies for marketing in our challenging economy. This one comes from Marketo. Actually, it’s been around a few months, but it’s a very good list. Worth revisiting.
The 7 strategies are: 1) use lead management to maximize the value of each lead, 2) focus on your house list, 3) build and optimize landing pages, 4) create content for later in the buying cycle (our clients are getting good results with this one), 5) appeal to nervous buyers, 6) align sales and marketing, and 7) don’t be a cost center.
More info in the article.
7 Strategies for B2B Marketing during a Recession: The Definitive Guide [via Modern B2B Marketing].
At premier articles directory EzineArticles, articles submission were at an all time high this past week. Article submission is low cost and it potentially helps with traffic acquisition - both as an aid in search engine optimization and by exposing the article (and your URL) to a variety of visitors at other sites. Some marketers swear by it.
Bring It On [via EzineMarketing]
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is basically an auction system where advertisers bid for the best ad positions - the most coveted of which are on the first page. But price alone isn’t all that counts, especially on Google.
Quality scores greatly affect the price you’ll pay for a top position. These scores are the search engines’ attempt to rate how good your campaign is in terms of its relevance to the searcher. The better your quality score, the less you’ll pay for a given position.
As an added bonus, advertisers with high quality scores generally get more qualified visitors clicking on their ads. Lower costs AND better prospects. Double win!
David Szetela offers three best practices to help you achieve a good score.
Those Mysterious Quality Scores: Fundamentally Simple [via SearchEngineWatch.com]
Wondering what kind of person would start a company in an economic meltdown? A very smart one, according to Y Combinator’s Paul Graham. “…it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.” It also means there’s less competition.
Paul Graham’s Startup Survival Guide For The Coming Nuclear Winter: Be a Cockroach [via TechCrunch].
This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared in December 2007 on the Tatum Marketing blog.
Back in December 2007, “rough economic waters” was more a predication than a reality and preparation was key. Now that those predictions have turned out to be unfortunately true, it’s time to act.
In tough economic times, one of the first “expenses” to get cut is the marketing budget. This is a rookie mistake - even though it’s often made by companies who should know better.
» Continue reading “7 Questions to Help You Market in a Meltdown”
No matter how firmly we believe that marketing is critical in an economic downturn, it’s inevitable that some budgets will get cut. If yours is one, Heidi Cohen, writing on the ClickZ Network, has a few suggestions for proactively dealing with a budget cut. Her suggestions fall into two categories: 1) determine your current business situation and then 2) redirect your remaining marketing spend. Most important of all, don’t panic.
What to Do When Your Marketing Budget is Cut [via ClickZ].
According to industry analysts at Gartner, while IT spending growth will slow in 2009, it’ll be nothing like what we saw in the dot.com bust. Some of this is due to massive reductions that took place in the early 2000s, but Gartner feels that a shift in IT’s position to “active business partner” will help the sector as well.
IT Spending Won’t Rival Dot-Com Bust, Gartner Says [via NetworkWorld].
No doubt you’re under pressure to justify your marketing spend right now. MarketingSherpa is conducting a webinar on Thursday October 30 to address:
The Marketer’s Delimna: Justifying Marketing Spend in a Tough Economy.
There are plenty of “top ten type” lists on how to market in the economic meltdown — and we’ll no doubt see many more. Not all of these lists offer new and exciting ideas. In fact, most of them overlap greatly. That’s because the ideas are sound. And you never know which list will be the one to make you act.
Ten Tips for Winning in a Bad Economy [via From the Desk of Mark Tewatt]
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