Negative Psyche of the Economy = Negative Marketing?

Lorrie Thomas

October 7th, 2008
by Lorrie Thomas

I love being a marketing therapist, I get to observe a melange of marketing situations, listen and offer marketing advice that all leads to helping people help themselves, their organizations and their companies.

I also get to tap my inner web marketing nerd :)

My therapist/nerd combo loves to watch patterns, as it is through patten observation that you can detect trends, troubleshoot and create solutions.

Case in point – marketing patterns and the cash crunch. Speaking of “cash crunch”, (random diversion…have to share) that the wild web women at LTWM have a coolio banker client and I proposed that they make customized cash crunch candy bars for trade show handouts to shed light/humor and make a meaningful marketing impact at a what-normally-be-blah trade show and I got no love, no ah-ha funny idea, nada….sorry to use the blog for my own marketing therapy…I thought my idea was brilliant!

Is the cash crunching crunching our marketing savvy or forcing us to get more creative?
Is the cash crunching crunching our marketing savvy or forcing us to get more creative?

Okay, back to the cash crunch, negative psyche and marketing (I always bring it back to marketing, what else is there!?) But there are yin/yang patterns…do you fit into either category? Marketing Cash Crunch Patterns:

1. The economy makes everybody all wiggy and people tend to control things they can control like smallish cash spends. Stopping your $300 Google spend is not going to save you with the cash crunch. Killing marketing exposure that may help you get more business may not be a good choice but it’s happening…there tends to be a trend that when people get stressed financially, they loose ability to think, get all spazzy and make crazy marketing choices because
people tend to control things that they CAN control
Guess what? The economy sucks, there is nothing we can do about the big scenario and killing marketing (the LIFEBLOOD of your business) and nitpicking over small spends just because you CAN is a trend I am seeing…I hope the rush of the stress stupidity stagnates soon.

2. On the flip side, the other pattern I see is business people shifting dollars to web marketing because it is the future (duh, hello!!) and capital investments like kick ass (I can swear, it’s my blog) web marketing collateral (only the most valuable real estate on the planet) pays. When cash is tight, professionals can get more creative as they have to work with what they have. This could be adding great content to sites, tapping social media, online networking, taking online marketing classes and doing the work in house or tapping local search. I have even seen companies lay off full time marketing talent to move more emphasis to the web because web marketing is:

24/7
Worldwide
Self-Serve
Instant Sales
Big Human Resource Saver
Huge Traffic Driver
Credibility Tool
WAY cost efficient

Yeah, I could go on forever because I love the web so much I want to marry it but it works!
I know marketing (aka increasing awareness and sales) will never die, cash crunch or not, but I wonder how long the crunch of cash will make these polar trends expand and which one will win…
Thoughts?

Categories: On the Couch

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Comments:

  1. Milka Fhernindez
    (November 11th, 2008 at 7:38 am)

    Hello webmaster. I think you could also make more of it through a bigger exposure about \”Negative Psyche of the Economy = Negative Marketing?\”. Perhaps you can have some pattern for candy bar wrapper.

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