Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Make The Most of What You've Got in 2009
Sometimes a forced tightening of the belt can have positive outcomes. Be forced to deal with a smaller pot of money can help us develop habits and tactics to reduce our costs and spend more efficiently, this is true both for individuals, and for companies and their marketing budgets.
The US Store owner John Wanamaker famously stated that ‘Half the money I spend on links is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half’. The truth is that most modern marketing departments waste a heck of a lot more than 50% of their budgets, and the tragedy is that when this comes to online marketing, we have a heck of a lot more data and transparency than Wanamaker did.
That’s why in 2009, we have to shift focus. We literally have no choice, the economic crisis means that budgets are being frozen or even reduced, so we don’t have the luxury of just throwing money away and hoping for the best. We need to get right down to the nitty gritty, auditing, assessing, analysing and optimising our online marketing to make sure we’re sucking every morsel of meat from the bone. Website are still converting less than 5% of their traffic, banner ads are still getting less than 1% click through rates, doesn’t that seem shocking when you stand back and look at it? Can we really not improve upon this?
I believe we can, I think we use the old 2% conversion maxim as a crutch to lean on ‘oh well, we’re converting 2% of our visitors, that’s industry standard’. So what? We can do better, it takes time, hard work, thinking, experimentation and risk taking but it can be done, and now, is great time to do this. Now when we’re forced to make more out of what we’ve got, is the best time to take the hard steps needed to really challenge the tyranny of the 2%.
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