What should marketing directors act on right now?

Wed 23 September 2009 15:15, Louis Venter

Many businesses have weathered the storm of the current recession and have started coming out the other side meaner, leaner and battle hardened. Changes have been made internally with financial directors demanding more accountability and ROI from marketing spend. This, in turn, has resulted in a budget shift from offline to online marketing. Search has blossomed as a key facet of online marketing and so have the prospects of any really good SEM Agency.

Let’s roll the clock forward a year (yes, I am being optimistic); the economic crisis ends and marketing budgets rise as recession turns to boom. How would these increased budgets be allocated?

Search worked well during the recession, so I would assume that it would continue to be high on the agenda for most marketing directors post-recession.

Marketing directors often see PPC as a safe bet, so one can expect an increase in budget spend there. This would drive up the CPC of PPC and ads would struggle to deliver the same level of ROI as they did in the recession. It’s a simple case of supply and demand with Google being the only real winner.

Many could see the next logical step as distributing the search budget more evenly between paid and organic search. SEO takes time to deliver results, so directors won’t be able to see any immediate reward; however, it has the advantage over PPC in that results improve over the long term and continue to deliver great ROI.
So, what can be done right now?

There is an age old adage that says, “Build in a recession, and reap in a boom”. This could not be more relevant to the present. Invest in a solid SEO strategy that is accountable and you’ll sow the seeds to dominate organic search when the recession ends. It also means that when the PPC land grab happens post-recession you can be far more discerning with your budget choices.

Just make sure you appoint a reputable, specialist SEO agency and you’ll be in good shape.

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