Increasing Marketing Costs During an Economic Downturn
Online reference website Juggle.com recently sent out a press release stating that it spent more on marketing than ever before – despite the economic downturn – and that its aggressive advertising strategy appears to be working.
Nice to know – but the motivations and reasons that Juggle.com gives for its strategy of increased spending, provide some interesting views on advertising during an economic downturn in general.
As a starter Juggle.com refers to an older study by McGraw-Hill that analyzed 600 business-to-business companies and concluded that businesses who continued to advertise during the 1981-1982 recession enjoyed over 2.5 times the growth compared to competitors that decreased spending during the same time period.
But there’s more.
Mobile Marketing is your direct link to customers
Mobile (SMS) marketing is the act of sending spam-free, personalized marketing messages to receptive consumers through their mobile phones or handheld devices. It has been widely used in Asia and Europe for several years now, and is only now beginning to take hold in the U.S.
Mobile marketing is the next stage of customer intimacy, delivering marketing messages to the right individuals at the right time. Marketing to your prospects through a SMS marketing campaign will build your profile and will, in much the same way as email marketing, prompt a direct response from prospects that might otherwise have been hard to reach.
Online Marketing for Offline Businesses
The way business is done has evolved significantly in the past few years and is continuing to do so. Most businesses have adapted and applied an online presence for their business. With the internet becoming more and more important in today’s business world, it is almost becoming a necessity for businesses to have a presence online to survive. Internet marketing and search optimization are certainly strategies that offline businesses should consider.
For example, email marketing has been proven to provide endless benefits for businesses. If you are an offline business, it has removed many geographical restrictions since it allows you to target clients from all over the world. Email marketing can help your business cut down on unnecessary stationary costs, as this method is completely electronic and won’t force you to keep purchasing office supplies and postage.
Track and Test Your Ads with Mobile and Email Marketing
Traditional advertising methods, such as television and print, have seen a sharp decline in recent years. A big part of this is due to the rise of Internet advertising, as well as other more efficient forms of direct marketing. As a consequence, many traditional media outlets are heading south faster than you can say ‘pay per click’. In the race to secure ad spend in the 21st century, the old school are losing badly. There is one key reason for this seismic shift in the advertising and marketing industries – the ability to track results.
Like no other form of marketing, email online marketing and SMS text message marketing each allow the advertiser to track results, as well as test different variables in each campaign. This helps them to determine the best campaign to be running, maximize the efficiency of each one, and make sure that not a single ad dollar is wasted. Business owners are gradually waking up to the importance of email and mobile marketing as one of the most effective ways to secure new business going forward, as well as ensuring that inefficiencies are cut down to a minimum.
Mobile Marketing Growing in the U.S.
Mobile marketing is the act of reaching directly to consumers through SMS messaging, leveraging the growing number of mobile phone owners and users. It is predicted to be the next major global technology phenomenon, and to a certain extent it is already used across Europe and Asia by businesses of all sizes to deliver targeted messages on a wholesale scale. Mobile business consultants and service providers already have access to the frameworks for dealing with SMS text marketing, yet still the US market remains behind much of the rest of the world in this method.
