Are You Paying Attention? 

Ironic isn’t it? While offline businesses in cities, towns and villages around the world are desperately trying to cut back expenses, pool resources and find a reliable crystal ball during this jaw dropping downturn, demand for website internet marketing services is exploding. Online marketing activities are stronger than ever. The offline and online worlds act as if they exist in two different universes.

Why? Because consumer online spending is still increasing. This is a red flag in this current market.  

An economic downturn is a great time for everyone from individual traders, small companies and even corporations to rethink and refocus their branding identity, costs, positioning, market share and competitors. No one likes to talk about the positive side of any economic downturn because while everything is morphing into something better, people’s lives are affected; often adversely.

Blood will be spilt and not everyone will make it through this ‘character building’ time but when the high voltage spin slows everyone, everywhere will take a collective sigh to work out their place in the world. And do it all over again.

Sure, everyone will get out there and sing about their next generation of products or services as if that’s what they had been planning all along. But this time the landscape will look different. Web 2.0 different.

Internet marketing has a number of powerful advantages over print and other media;

1.      It’s extremely affordable especially when every dollar counts.

2.      It provides a range of tools such as video, audio, twitter, facebook etc to connect with customers and prospective customers.

3.      It gives higher conversion rates.

4.      It gives good return on investment for dollars spent.

5.      It’s relatively quick to build, implement and distribute.

6.      Platforms are scalable and sustainable.

7.      Customers provide an additional resource for information, product development, growth and strategy.

8.      Results are measurable.

No-one has all the answers. But smart individual and companies are improvising. They can’t afford not to, especially in this market, because while others are nursing their wounds and picking up the pieces, they’re running with Web 2.0 tools to build relationships with potential customers and grab market share. This is not the time to rest.

When everything settles in a few months, a year or two years, they will have achieved more growth with cheaper tools and more focus than previously possible. Web 2.0 social media marketing provides it all and more.

Thousands all over the world are hearing the call. They’re using low cost, fast building website, blogging, article writing, marketing by video and email services, pay per click and search engine optimization (SEO) services to stimulate and secure links back to their sites for solid search engine rankings. Costs are low, turnaround fast and outsourcing reliable.

Traditional marketing services are still in demand, and of course they work, but until delivery costs can be significantly reduced they can’t compete and must wait patiently until budgets expand.   

Web 2.0 social media marketing has several unfair advantages:

1.      It costs only a fraction of other marketing and advertising channels to create.

2.      It has greater audience reach with lower costs.

3.      It has high value, long term engineering elements that build interest and trust in companies, products, people and culture by stimulating virtual conversations unlike the usual one-way company shake and rattle delivered with other mediums.

4.      It’s highly measurable. Trial runs, tests and experiments are all easy to measure allowing you to see what works, what doesn’t, who makes up your demographics and where they live. Most of these results are free allowing you to improve your campaigns with laser–like focus until you get it right.  

What this means to anyone paying attention is that no matter how big or small your venture, enterprise, product range or idea Web 2.0 marketing tools can help you grow exponentially. You just have to make the leap, put objectives in place, followed by a set of realistic strategies and focus.    

Stay in touch for tools, strategies and web2.0 patterns.

Christine 

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