Those who cut marketing will pay a steep price

02/11/09 02:47 PM

When economic times turn bad and unemployment is on the rise, people tend to network more. In this social media-enabled era that means that many increasingly turn to online social networks and communities. So the counter-intuitive thing to do in this economic downturn - engage more aggressively with your customers, prospects and detractors in social media and social networks. And when you do, remember that the most important behavioral attribute is not transparency, but empathy and reciprocity. Geoffrey Ramsey, founder and CEO of eMarketer, has written the first major report or whitepaper for eMarketer in about eight years. What compelled him to get back in the saddle? The belief that NOW is not the time to cut marketing budgets but to invest in your customers and prospects.

This is the first recession I can remember where people waited overnight for stores to open and waited online for the new iPhone from Apple. That tells me that people have money but they are scared to spend because of all the bad news. All you have to do is turn on the network news and hear about more layoffs and more billions going to bail out bad strategic decisions. The really sad news is that a lot of companies use the recession as an excuse to cut budgets and layoff people. "Surely we don't need so many people in cube farms, there has to be a way that we can cut the population?" Hell even the NFL is laying off people because God knows people are watching less football today because of the recession.

What is really troubling is that when consumer spending kicks in, and it will kick in, people are going to be spending and a lot of companies and marketers will be ill prepared to meet the demand. This means a lot of people will be doing 3 jobs and working 12-14 hour days with little help. This means that eMarketing people are going to asked to implement a whole bunch of tactics with little thought to the strategy or the brand touchpoint.

Now is the time for marketers to get closer to their prospects and customers. Now is the time to listen to what they are saying and respond with a great social media strategy. Oooops? I forgot, marketing is an expense. Well when companies have to spend big dollars to get back share they lost during the recession someone might get up the nerve to say "why?", but then that would make too much sense.

Tags: Marketing budgets, Social Media