Digital marketing in more difficult times

In our 22-years as a digital agency we’ve seen many downturns, and disruption of all kinds.

We’ve noticed the way news and press reports often don't align with what’s happening on the ground.

In many cases a downturn provides the impetus for a business to streamline, modernise and improve.

The things we know we should have got sorted in the last 2-3 years suddenly feel urgent so we finally get them done.

The rabbit in the headlights

But not everybody makes progress.

During the pandemic we saw some people sharpen up their lead-generation at the very beginning of the first lockdown.

And we saw others freeze things, pause projects, reduce activity, reduce ad budgets and put forward planning on hold.

They were like rabbits in the headlights.

It’s obvious which approach came out of the lockdowns in great shape and which didn’t.

Let's be honest with each other

At times like these it can be helpful to be frank.

We take calls every week from in-house marketing teams, and we’ve been working with in-house marketers for 22-years.

Some things we see week-after-week are:

• Paid ads that aren’t managed well resulting in lots of wasted ad budget
• Broadly targeted marketing activity that doesn’t generate a steady flow of leads
• Old/poor websites that are achieving only a small % of the leads they could be generating

We hold regular 20-Min Zoom Strategy Calls and it’s common to identify £10,000s or £100,000s of lost revenue in these.

The best of both worlds

But an economic downturn presents an opportunity.

It presents an opportunity to stop, review, and build a proper digital marketing strategy - one that doesn’t have wasted budget, has effective laser-targeted campaigns and websites that routinely convert visitors to buyers.

This means cutting budgets and improving performance at the same time - for most businesses it’s possible to do this.

The cream rises to the top

One of the features of downturns is extremes become more exaggerated.

Businesses that have up-to-date modernised websites and laser-targeted campaigns perform well and grow market share.

Businesses that don’t are left behind and outperformed by those who used the downturn as an excuse to finally improve.

An opportunity to review marketing strategy

We’ve two free tools to offer you to help you review:

• If you haven’t yet done so get your Free Digital Strategy Audit. It takes 5-minutes to get your personalised report
• We also offer offer a free 20-min Zoom Strategy Call where we answer your questions and give free guidance on the best approaches to manage costs and maximise incoming leads for your particular business.

I hope you find these initiatives helpful in becoming one of the better performers in your sector in the months ahead.