Marketing budget under pressure? Shift spend online.by Steve Lionais

It’s obvious the US financial market is in a seriously bad spot. Lehman Brothers just went Chapter 11  and now the US government has backed AIG in attempt to rescue it from collapse. It’s times like this that marketing budgets are tightened and spending reigned in.  So, now’s the time to ramp up your online strategy.

I know – it sounds mad, but follow my logic: Return on Investment.

The Internet is one of the few mediums that is practically 100% measurable. Want to know how many sales leads were generated from an email campaign?  How about the number of people who downloaded a whitepaper from that paid search ad?  How much was sold from your e-commerce store from the banner buy?  It can all be tracked, measured, and a ROI attached to your marketing spend.

Can a newspaper buy do that?  Sort of… there are ways to track it, but it’s a guess at best with a whole lot of assumptions. The same with many other traditional media: radio, TV, magazines, etc. I’m not saying that these media are ineffective – but when budgets are stretched you should be investing where you get the highest return. On the Internet, you’ll know exactly what works and what it’s worth so why not dial it up if you’re getting a positive return? 

Still don’t believe me?  Check out these stats and articles:

1.    Online ad spending predicted to grow 17.4% in 2008 (Emarketer)
2.    Online media spending to make up 8.5% of all media (Emarketer)
3.    Lehman Brothers (ironic I know) predicts $20 Billion growth (Techcrunch)
4.    Wall St Turmoil not likely to touch online ad spend (paidContent.org)