Go ahead, say it, the crisis has got you a little bit panicked. Whether you're trying to keep your business going or have already been crushed and are plotting your glorious return, there's almost no one that hasn't been struck by such a worldwide mess.
The Fog Has Lifted
There are a few parts of the industry that are particularly struck hard by this whole mess, and although it's not a great thing to rejoice in the hardships and pain of others, there are some positives when it comes to expanding your online presence that are only at this moment making themselves known.
Primarily, this is all about the old-model daily paper. It's falling fast, generally because its form is out-dated and just can't pull in the advertising money like it once could. At the moment, all those ads have essentially been withdrawn, mostly because the #1 item to get cut in a crisis is the marketing budget.
Don't Slash Your Marketing
Instead of making your employees angry with big decreases in wages, why not slow down your advertisements for a few quarters? Although this attitude is generally counter-productive, it means that the delivery-method for advertising (ie, newspapers) is dying, rushing to its ultimate finish line through lack of money making from all corners, which leads to cuts, and further declines, and so on.
Why is this important for you? Well, when the credit system finally gets going once more and companies re-establish proper marketing budgets once more, where will they go? There's only one area: the internet.
Dinosaurs Aren't Dead Yet
It's taken a legendary amount of time for old-fashioned ad agencies to adapt to marketing online, and the market is still immature in many ways. But there's nothing like a big financial panic to knock people out of their shells, so even the most ancient, most incredibly traditional agencies of the world of marketing are at least learning about things like microblogging these days.
Big Chances Aren't Such Common Things After All
But you have a golden opportunity: there will not be another moment similar to this one, where you can take unprecedented advantage of a massive sea change in the industry, and ensure you maximize the fact that internet marketing is still a bargain compared to what it's going to cost in the future.
It's also remarkably transparent. You can run a
paid search campaign and find out heaps of information about possible converts. But why should you do any of this now, and not when the crisis is over?
Things Are Changing, but They Have a Long Way to Go
Because the big change hasn't happened yet. The big players still haven't started to dominate internet marketing yet, meaning there's a great opportunity for the fresh entrepreneur to get in there and aggressively build her market. Sure, when the huge sea change comes, it'll be hard to keep up with the huge ad accounts available from big-time companies, but by that time you'll already have a strong hold on online advertising in your back pocket.
And with any luck, beyond that, you'll have a great amount of customers established for your product or service. And you'll know what they want through
analysis, how they find you, and what is necessary to get them to help you earn the money you need to earn.
Where You Should Be to Take Best Advantage
This way, you won't spend a ton of money on "market research" and the like, because you'll have found how to get the better of a crazy, never-before-seen break in the internet advertising marketplace that just happened in these last few months.
It's weird to see the crisis as positive, but it's not at all unprecedented. Some of the world's top organizations and richest companies grew from various crises because they knew when to take advantage and knew when to profit from a rapidly altering marketplace. Make sure you do the same.
