Everywhere you turn there is news about the economy and its poor state. Companies are laying people off, the auto manufactures are scrambling for money, some things appear to be falling apart. Even the post office is seeing slow downs. Direct mail, once an effective marketing medium, is becoming less effictive. Why is it less effective? Because it costs a lot of money to snail mail things to people who don’t want it. The article says that credit card companies are being more selective about who they are sending things to because of this. I remember when I was 17-18 years old. I had boxes and boxes of credit card offers that I had been mailed. Sometimes I would get the same one more than once. That had to cost a lot of money in postage just for me to throw away. I’m sure the trash company felt pretty secure with their business since they were the ones hauling all of it away.

On to my point. So with this downturn and the ineffective and expensive marketing, where do companies turn? The internet is where those marketing budgets should be put and here is why.

1. When people want something, they search for it. Why not reach someone when there is an interest? There is less effort to acquire a lead when the person is asking for something vs. forcing it upon them.

2. A tangible ROI. You can track everything on the internet right down to how many phone calls you received from a particular pay per click (PPC) keyword on Google or how much of a particular product was sold due to organic search traffic and how did they navigate through your site to get there.

3. Direction of your business. The internet is a great way to test new things or get feedback on existing things.

4. Cost. It’s more cost effective to do online marketing than it is to do most traditional marketing like direct mail.

Search engine marketing is a huge benefit in this day and age. There is the old adage that you can’t “beat a dead horse” but some people are stuck in time and they keep trying to get business by using marketing methods that are not getting results anymore or are not as cost effective as online. So, chin up and get with the times, the outlook will be much better then.