Recession SEO - Internet Marketing in a Bad Economy

If you’re reading this, you probably searched on something to do with ‘recession’, ’seo’, and maybe ‘bad economy’.  This means that you are probably educating yourself on looking for the most effective marketing during the recession. Good for you. This post is to get some ideas rolling in your head to make your Internet Marketing more effective.

Small Businesses are feeling the pinch, so make your Internet Marketing more effective during the recession

The answer is not to pull out of your marketing strategy. You’ll go out of business if you do that. You just need to be more effective in your marketing strategy during a recession. Face it, during the good times, there’s a lot of wasted dollars on marketing. Most small businesses that I deal with wasted lots of money on print Yellow Pages, and even YellowPages.com, and they don’t even know what the return on their investment was!! (Yellow Pages ROI is pretty bad, by the way).  They didn’t need to track their marketing dollars because money was plentiful. Well that has all changed.

First things: Differentiate your business on customer service

This isn’t necessarily about SEO, but it’s SUPREMELY important. You aren’t going to beat the WalMarts of your industry on price. Stop trying! You can, however, keep your existing loyal customers, and attract new customers by providing excellent customer service.

Here’s an example… Every morning I make the choice to walk 100 yards to the corner 7-11 and get a coffee refill for $.99.  Or, I can make a 2 mile drive to Starbucks and pay $1.98 for my coffee.  I choose Starbucks.  Why?  It’s not because I’m brainwashed by Starbucks, or even because I think they have better coffee.  It’s because I take my dog with me and they give me a dog treat when I go through the drive-thru.  That’s excellent customer service! The ladies greet my dog (by name) every day. They give me a wonderful customer experience. That’s why I spend the extra time and money to get my coffee at Starbucks.

So, first things first… get your customer service in line. That means getting rid of the 20-something person answering your phones that is not nice to your customers. That means look for ways to go above and beyond and create a unique customer experience for your patrons. That means acutally being friendly and genuinely greeting customers as they enter your store. That means not letting your staff conduct personal conversations in front of customers (this one particularly annoys me).  You get the point.  There are plenty of people looking for work, don’t settle for staff that doesn’t demonstrate excellent customer service skills… there are 20 people lined up behind them with families to feed that can probably do their job better. You might have to subtly remind them of that point. Don’t let your business suffer because your employees aren’t nice.

Once you get your customer service in check, look for ways to make your marketing more effective. My business is INTERNET MARKETING, and I’ve seen plenty of businesses GREATLY BENEFIT from effective Internet Marketing.  I’m not saying that Internet Marketing should be your only strategy, but it should be part of your overall Marketing Plan. Here are a few ideas to think about.

Update your website: On-page SEO and persuasive web copy

Now’s the time to whip that website into shape that you haven’t updated in 5 years! Follow my tips for redesigning your website with SEO in mind. Your website communicates the image of your business. If you still have a 1990’s looking website, please update it.  It’ll be the best thing you’ll do this year.

Next, start thinking in terms of PERSUASIVE text on your website. There’s nothing worse than having a website where when people view it, their eyes glaze over because all you do is present them with dry information and facts. They tend to hit the BACK button.

Here’s a tried and true formula for turning website visitors into buyers or callers. Three steps to persuasive web copy:

1. Pose a problem that the person might have that you can solve. If you run a Plumbing business, your opening headline could be “Are you having plumbing problems and are looking for a Plumber you can trust?”  Note, I didn’t stop at “are you looking for a plumber”.  Most people looking for services are concerned with being able to trust service people. So, expand your thinking to consider what people really want.
2. State how your business solves their problem… but do it in terms of BENEFITS, not facts or features. A benefit explains how it helps the person. A feature is about you. A benefit is about them. So instead of just saying “We are XYZ Certified Plumbers”, say “You can be assured we know what we’re doing - we are XYZ Certified”.  Make sense?
3. Have a CLEAR call-to-action. “CALL NOW!!! (555) 555-1234″.   Or, “Fill in this web form now and we’ll respond within 24 hours!”.   Make sure the call-to-action is big, bold, and unmistakably clear to follow.

Monitor your competition: Re-evaluate your keyword phrases

If you are already doing some SEO effort, or are thinking about it, you should be aware of the importance of targeting keyword phrases on your site. This post is not about keyword phrases, but it is about re-thinking your SEO during the recession. So consider this novel idea about keyword phrases.

Some medium to large sized businesses are going out of business because of the economy. You should watch for openings for marketing opportunity. Are there some strategic keyword phrases that other companies used to dominate that aren’t any more? Re-evaluate all your keyword phrases and look where you can fill the gap and go after the long-tail search phrases.

If you’ve always gone after the most compeititve search phrases, you’re probably a small fish in a big pond. Try going after some phrases that pick up long-tail searchers. I’m not going into exactly how you do that in this post (Google it), but you can certainly experiment with some PPC ads to identify those search phrases. You might be surprised at how much traffic you can pick up.

Ride it out and set yourself up for the upswing

Those businesses that don’t use the down-turn to maximize the effectiveness of their marketing strategies aren’t going to make a killing once the good times return. Those that put in the effort right now will get an EXPONENTIAL pay off when things start picking back up.

On the flipside, those that don’t tweak their marketing right now will try to do so when the good times are back again…. but it will be too late.  Those that worked hard on their Internet Marketing strategy during the bad times, will already dominate the Search Engine Rankings, and there will be no easy entrances into those search query spaces.

Good luck! I’ll share more ideas as they come to me. These are hard times, but it forces us to think more strategically, and sometimes, that’s a good thing for business.