So we’re heading into a recession, some would say we’re already in it; It doesn’t have to mean doom and gloom, and it doesn’t have to mean your business is going to die. All it means is that in certain industries people spend less, leaving a smaller pie. You need to find a way to take a bigger bite of that smaller pie, whenever you can, plus be careful about your spending—there’s no reason why a recession should mean the end of your business.
In a recession, many companies fail, so it is certainly likely that some companies in your industry will go bankrupt; this does not mean that this should include your company.
When consumers spend less, we have to do more advertising and marketing to make sure we maintain and grow our market share; Companies that don’t do this are much more likely to fall victim to the recession. So companies that scale back their marketing, or stop it altogether in times of recession, are really missing the point: It’s times like this that you really need to push your marketing as far as you can.
At the same time, however, when we head into bad times, we must be careful what we spend; therefore, the best marketing strategies in times like these are those that get maximum results with minimal cash investment.
SEO – Search engine optimization (search engine optimization if you are in the UK) is, in my experience, one of the activities that businesses that want to survive the recession absolutely must engage in. The reason is that SEO, when done correctly (the safe, white hat approach), generates targeted buying traffic, day after day, week after week – free organic search engine traffic, with little or no ongoing investment.
Yes, you will need to invest in someone to do the SEO for you, or invest the time and effort to learn how to do it and then do it yourself if you wish, but contrary to popular belief, SEO is not something you have to continually work on. to maintain positions in search engines. I still have positions at or towards the top of Google and other search engines from the SEO work I did three or four years ago! SEO, if done correctly, leads to long-lasting results – not all positions will last this long, and it’s a good idea to review your SEO from time to time and continually work to find new keyword areas and add new content. But you don’t have to constantly work on SEO to maintain your positions, if you do, you’re probably searching for the wrong keywords.
Whenever I calculate how much a customer would have had to pay for the traffic I got for them over a given period if they had used pay-per-click advertising, it usually turns out that it would have cost at least five to ten times as much, or even more, to get the same amount of traffic through PPC marketing.
So, if you want to make sure your business doesn’t take a hit from the recession we’re heading into, don’t neglect SEO, it could be your ticket out of doom and gloom!
