Having avoided heading to the office on the 5th January, 2009, by working from home on the company's business plan for 2009, today I am now ready to get started. Like any company, marketing in 2009 has become more important than ever before. Having only been in business for 10 years, I have never experienced such tough economic times, nor do I hope to again. Touch wood, it really hasn't hit me yet, but is this just the lag effect? Will it happen in the next quarter or will the new marketing campaigns that I am currently putting in place safeguard me from what is believed to be the toughest economic environment that I have seen in my lifetime? Whilst not all of our staff are back on board (some have taken longer holidays overseas to visit family, or in the case of our Marketing Director, Julie Schoneveld, a working holiday to Cambodia helping out in an orphanage) the ones that are, are refreshed and ready to take on the year. Now is the time to capitalise on their enthusiasm and the ideas that come from being fresh and innovative. In December we launched a campaign whereby clients that sign up for a 'Marketing Eye' get a free website (or a website revamp). This is worth $7,000 to each client, so it is an enormous saving. To do this campaign we had to weigh up whether giving so much away, dimishes the value of our brand and our service offering. In the end, we believed that given the fact so many companies are doing it tough, it is important to give a helping hand and ensure that they use marketing as the platform to stand out from the crowd. This campaign has been enormously successful and although we have had a long Christmas break, we are expecting the phones to keep ringing. One campaign is not enough though. This is not for everyone because some people don't realise the value in their websites. I do. In December, 59,000 unique page views showed me that our website is our most valuable marketing tool and combined with public relations, advertising and direct marketing, will showcase our value proposition to the market. Our website is also integral to growing our business in new markets. In December, we had people for South Africa, London, United States, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong approach us to join our team - just based on the information and branding of our website. Whilst we can all start the year focusing on the numbers and worrying about what is going to happen next, by taking an hour out of each day and focusing on marketing your company you will see a difference. Till next time.
http://www.marketingeye.com.au
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3 comments:
We may be experiencing a downturn but I agree that businesses should keep up with marketing initiatives, after all the recession isn't going to last forever and businesses will want to remain in the consumers mind.
Good luck with the campaign. With the current climate as it is, any results you can get will be twice as important as everyone seems to be tightening their belts in anticipation of the times to come.
Although this is a hard economic time, people need to keep up with the marketing and advertising of their companies. Just because the times are hard, doesn't mean that they they are going to stop everything they are doing. It just means that they are going to be thinking more thoroughly with the decisions that they are making. This being said, the marketing and advertising is going to be crucial during these times.
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