August 10th, 2009

While America’s brilliant economists are trying to think up the answers to our recessionary stresses, any number of marketing professionals are stating their cases for the immediate use of digital technology.

Shifting a marketing budget’s priority to the digital realm isn’t the only solution, but it will help a brand work more efficiently over the long term. With an increase in smart online tactical spending, a brand will also start to gain market share and influence in the short term. Here’s 11 reasons why:

1. Because your brand requires a cohesive image for a more coherent appeal. Consolidate your graphic design solutions and use a well-defined web identity, especially in conjunction with your website, blog and email marketing efforts.

2. Because insight offered to customers via email marketing efforts will build a more credible brand. Consider reducing the amount of sales-oriented emails and increasing the amount of informational emails that can be more valuable to the recipient.

3. Because the social web is a viral environment. Consider the social space as an opportunity to grow your friends, followers and email list. Again, insight-based messaging will outweigh sales offers.

4. Because maintaining a favorable public image means communicating (and responding) to critics and evangelists alike. Preparing a sound infrastructure for your community managers will payoff as your brand diffuses negative criticism and proliferates the positive reviews.

5. Because when demand goes up, so do the prices. Preparing a digital marketing toolkit today will accelerate your brand down a path for enhanced activation later, which will be especially advantageous when the competition is playing catch up.

6. Because experience is everything. The digital age is new for everyone, so early involvement in emerging technologies will foster increased education and market knowledge.

7. Because those who arrive early get the better seats. An established presence on the social web and in social networks will garner an inherently more innovative worldview.

8. Because web links are the highways that carry the most valuable traffic. Consider leveraging your biggest partners by creating web traffic through contextual links. Be it media partners, vendors or customers, develop a strategy to obtain the links where the most traffic can be gained. Your SEO results will thank you.

9. Because listening to your social community can be more important that speaking to it. Consider it market research; because now, more than simple keyword searching, it’s crucial that your friends, followers and community members know that they’re being heard and your responding with improved services and enhanced products.

10. Because search is powerful. According to a Neilsen and Webvisible study, 82% of consumers and small businesses use search to find information. If it’s on the web, then it’s not necessarily easily found, but manipulating the relevant traffic through targeted pay-per-click can give favorable results.

11. Because search is measurable and measurements are key. Knowing where and when your traffic is coming from is the key to establishing a robust strategy. Also, it’s good to be able to tell the bosses how much is being spent and how many customers are being acquired directly from that one tactic.