Everywhere you look at the moment there is news of the recession. This is no longer a possibility, nor even an event that is somewhere in the future. It is a hard fact that we can no longer deny.
But how does it affect the internet? Are those businesses that are involved in online marketing in danger of going the same way as many bricks and mortar businesses?
There will be mixed views on this. Some think that there are internet businesses that are already in danger of having major problems. Others think that internet businesses are well placed to ride out the problems and simply wait until things get better again.
But one thing is certain. Just because a business is established online, that doesn’t mean it is immune from all the problems that are currently happening. While we can expect internet advertising to reduce, this is pretty much always the first thing to happen in a situation like this. Even though advertising is what brings the customers in, businesses always see it as the first way to cut spending.
The consensus seems to be that the internet will indeed go into a recession, much as the ‘real world’ of shopping and business will. But the difference will be that the internet will not suffer to anywhere near the same degree.
The outcome also depends on how each individual business is set up in the first place. For example, some internet businesses are run by individuals. These people often get started on a shoestring budget – and sometimes nothing at all. As such they don’t have any business loans to worry about covering, and they can therefore afford to cut back on certain things. They have more freedom to continue with their web promotion, taking advantage of a market where fewer businesses are continuing to advertise heavily.
It’s clearly going to be different for those businesses that have large outgoings anyway. In short, the larger the outgoings are, the more careful you need to be about ensuring your business survives into the future.
Of course it would be daft to think that the internet is not going to change as a result of the recession. It is affecting too many countries and too many people to remain isolated. The real question is perhaps which businesses will find it harder than others. And we can expect the bigger ones with the larger outgoings to fall into that group.
So will this mean the smaller businesses run from home stand a chance of actually improving and developing as a result of the recession? It could well happen. In the end it all depends on the knowledge and resourcefulness of whoever is at the helm.
It is clearly a time to take a long look at your own business if you have one though. Decisions you make now could have an effect long into the future – and you may well be able to take advantage of these trying times as a result.
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