Marketing in a Bad Economy

Marketing budgets are one of the first things business owners and CEOs consider cutting when the economy starts to get rocky. The rationale is legitimate, it is more important to pay employees than play the radio commercial this month. It’s a balancing act, leveraging resources to cover the basic necessities while continuing to try to grow the business. If not careful however, owners and directors will see a bad situation get worse. It is important to not only maintain advertising spend during the economic downturn, but to also explore new ways to market the company brand and ways in which the situation can be used to the advantage of the company.

Now is a great time to shift some of your company’s advertising budget from print, TV and radio to online mediums. Regardless of the fact that online advertising is typically less expensive than other forms, it is also easily targeted to the market you choose, can be used to interact with your potential customers, allows in depth analysis of consumer behavior and trends, and promotes quick reaction to changes in this behavior. You only have to pay for the advertising that people see and you can make sure that only people that care about your product category are seeing your ad. When they do see your ad you have the opportunity to engage them in ways that are not possible with the other forms. In two clicks you can sell them your product or teach them more about your service.

You may see your competitors cutting back on their advertising and wonder if you should do the same. The “save for a rainy day” mentality will most likely help your company come out of these times unscathed, but is that really good enough? It’s time to realize that it’s raining today and it’s time to go out and buy an umbrella. Basic supply and demand comes in to play: if everyone is staying inside, no one is buying umbrellas and they’re cheap. You’ll find that you may be able to buy ad space on a site or publication you couldn’t afford before. Expand your marketing efforts while others cut back and enjoy a greater percentage of the medium and hopefully an increase in market share.

Although fuel prices are on the way back down to reasonable levels it’s safe to assume that more people will look to the internet for their Christmas shopping to save a few dollars on fuel than in years past. Even if the economy shapes up soon and gas prices fall back to $1.05/gallon you can expect that the percentage of shopping being done online will continue to increase. Whether purchasing a new pair of shoes or gathering the initial information for buying a home, there is an ever increasing number of people using the internet to make purchases and to guide their buying decisions. So why not focus your advertising dollars to a medium that reaches these millions of shoppers where they are spending their time? They’re already looking for your product/service anyway. Why not help them find it?

Practical Web Design Issue 182

Pick up a copy of the November issue of Practical Web Design (or .net if you are in the UK) and turn to page 90. Thanks to Practical Web Design for asking us to be a part of their mag!

Web safe fonts

I am working on a presentation and wanted to compile a list of fonts that work well on both Mac & PC. Keep in mind that different browsers and operating systems will display these fonts differently. Mac is known to have better font handling that Windows so make sure to test the list below on different computers before deciding on a font for your next project.

For the Mac fonts I have included acceptable substitutes as well. The fonts are listed below in order of the most common to both operating systems to less common based on a variety of sources.