Marketing budgets shrink and web spend goes up!

 It seems as if the tightening economy is forcing businesses to look hard at their marketing budgets for savings.  We think this is always a good thing.  It's very easy to be wasteful with traditional marketing, mostly because it is tricky to measure.  Smaller budgets force people to get their calculators out to see what they can save.  And once they have a calculator in their hand, they start to appreciate more measurable marketing channels.  Because they can see clearly what they get for their marketing pound.

Of all marketing channels, the web is the most measurable.

If you are patient enough, or employ someone to do the work for you, you can see where every penny goes.  You can see what works, and what doesn't.  You can spend, test, modify in a virtuous circuit and wring more and more value from your marketing.  More sales at better prices, more leads at lower costs.  This drives business growth.  And as your business grows, you find efficiency, negotiate better supplier rates, lower your service or manufacturing costs and build your business and margins further.

The web allows you to conduct fast, inexpensive market research.  

Let's say you sell widget A and you think you should also be selling widget B, but you're not sure if your customers will buy them.  Using a website, you can put an announcement on your home page telling people you are considering selling widget B and inviting them to read more.  Instantly, you have a means of measuring interest - from the number of people who click through.

Next step - use the web to let your customers define your business.

Because you can use a website to test your proposition, it becomes a tool that allows you to craft your business - your product or services ranges, how they cross-sell each other, what price points provide what volumes and what margins.  Do this well and you are doing something that marketeers would have regarded as impossible even as recently as ten years ago - you let your clients or customers shape your business for you.  No need to second guess the market - the market tells you what to do.

If all the above sounds exciting, here's a shortlist of how to make it happen:

• Use Google to drive measurable traffic.  Use an agency to help you do this well.
• Make sure you get a website with a good content management system, you'll need it.
• Prepare to devote some quality time to this (more than your competitors do) every week.

In an Internet economy, the winner tests and measures.  Not just anything, but hunches and intuition.  So you still need all the skills you've always used, but you have new tools to validate your thinking.  These tools are cheap and they give real-time feedback.  Use them well and you can build your business while everyone else is tightening their belts.

How do we know this stuff?  We do it ourselves, every day...