Note to CMO: Recession Marketing and the Re-birth of Search

Dear CMO:

A lot has been written recently in many corners about "how to market in a recession," mostly by marketers practicing a bit of psychological projection and hoping beyond hope that they have some money -- any money -- to spend after the CFO leaves the CEO's office. And good luck to them, too. But there's a Darwinian force at play that I believe will help rapidly prototype the future of how marketing dollars are allocated.

What happens to a poorly led company when the economy goes south? The marketing budget gets cut. What happens to a well led company when the economy goes south? The marketing budget gets cut, as well; but in a well led company, the budget doesn't just get axed -- it gets reallocated. Intelligently, with considerable thought and internal trade-offs considered, and based on facts uncontaminated by over-wrought emotion.

All this hard thinking is needed to ensure that the few remaining dollars are best spent on one thing: quickly boosting revenue. "Interesting" ideas, 'what-ifs', and other assorted pet projects are eliminated, as are esoteric "rocks and trees" advertising campaigns. These may build brand preference with untrackable but Zen-like wabi sabi but for now they will be shelved in favor of the stuff that sells more stuff. You see more channel promotion, more marketing development funding, more sales incentives. You see the intellectual capital of your team put to the test, because smart people don't sit on their hands during a downturn - they come up with ways not just to stay busy because they have a need to do smart things.

Companies of all sizes and shapes will also be pushing more dollars into search -- particularly those campaigns that push actively interested consumers past the front door of your site, into the back room where things are sold, and ultimately to conversion. There's a certain pragmatism about making yourself easier to find to those who are actively looking for you, regardless of economic conditions.

Search is the ultimate recession marketing weapon, because it's revenue-focused, fast to implement, easy to measure, and bloody effective. When you know that your conversion costs are $7.72 and you know that you net $20 on each widgit that gets sold, you do more search -- because your CFO gets it, your CEO digs it, and your sales force loves it. You probably like it, too, as a result.

Now, predicting that 'search engine marketing will grow' is a bit like predicting the continued rising and setting of the sun. Could we also agree that the recession and subsequent re-allocation process we will all go through will act as an accellerator to the growth and widespread acceptance of search as a major marketing budget line item? In other words, as we ease out of whatever shaped recession we slide into, there is no real compelling reason to assume that we will end up allocating our dollars away from search and back into lower performing marketing activities. This has a number of interesting ripple effects across your company:

> You will want to take a good, hard look at how you're doing search. In-house or through an agency. Which agency? What are they doing for you? How much are they pocketing for doing nothing? Are you paying for clicks or are you paying for qualified leads? (The right answer is "just leads"). Are you paying a monthly management fee so that the agency management can take expensive vacations? (The right answer is "hell no"). Do your homework in this time of tightening budgets.

> You will want to re-evaluate how your team is assembled, from skill sets to interdisciplinary training. Your channel marketing guy should be very conversant in how search can re-invent how you work with your channels and how you allocate MDF dollars. Your PR person should know how press releases and SEO should work together. Even your product marketing people should understand that those white papers buried somewhere on the website in PDF form could be optimized and thus become "useful."

> You might even want to spend a little quality time yourself getting much smarter in the world of search.

Because the more you, personally, understand this part of your business, the more bullet points like these you could write.



Regards.