Next Steps

Marketing and The Economy

May 12, 2009 @ 5:22pm

Updated — July 6, 2009 @ 5:26pm

by Mason Razavi

We all know what happens when an organization starts to lose money: the creative departments are usually the first to take a hit.

Take public school systems for example. When there are budget issues (and believe me, us Californians know about budget issues), the art and music departments are shut down and the teachers running those departments get the boot. This is all too sad, but I guess some school districts feel that the investment we make in trying to develop creative-minded individuals who are not just left-brained robots is a boondoggle.

In the business world, it’s the marketing and advertising arm of the company that gets downsized. After all, pretty pictures of a company’s products are more of a luxury than manufacturing and other departments, right?

I hate to talk about the economy, as anyone who has had any contact with any news source over the past year and a half is probably tired of talking about it. To that end, I won’t dwell on the economy, but rather the shift in marketing resources and the rise in email and social media marketing.

Excited? Good! You should be.

I was reading an interesting article from the Associated Press about how companies are turning to more cost-efficient, internet-based alternatives to their traditional marketing tools.

That article is a well-written testament to the power of the internet when it comes to contemporary marketing strategy. In a day where companies are forced to steeeee-retch their dollar, e-mail marketing campaigns and websites like MySpace and Facebook are coming to the forefront as powerful and cost-efficient marketing tools.

Some companies have gotten clever and have put together an integrated online marketing strategy. This would involve putting up a website as well as accounts on all of the popular social networking websites. Then, updates are made on all of the websites to reflect what is happening with the company. Smart organizations track who follows them on which website, and they use the information they gather to come up with focused, targeted advertising campaigns. As the Associated Press article says, there is some cost involved in terms of paying the right people to execute such a strategy, but there is no doubt that that the return is significant.