Digital Directions: A Road Map for an Uncertain Economy

As the economy grows more uncertain, a common reaction is to cut marketing budgets. But before following the crowd, you may want to look for the silver lining.

It is likely that your competitors will cut their marketing spend, thereby reducing their media presence. With a few adjustments in your marketing plan, you have an opportunity to eclipse the competition while remaining mindful of budget restrictions.

Now is the time to engage the full range of interactive digital media to create a powerful, targeted marketing mix.

Why? Traditional media buys typically have long leads before their effectiveness can be measured, providing little opportunity to tweak campaigns. By the time measurable results arrive, your budget is depleted.

While traditional advertising can be expensive, digital media offers a wide range of affordable advertising options. With the ability to build highly customized campaigns that can be tracked up to the minute and down to the individual user, search engine marketing should be part of almost any advertising campaign.

But before you shift your marketing strategies online, you need to take a look at your customer data.

You've likely been collecting data from numerous channels, like your Web site, call center and direct mail. But if you are like many companies, collection may be as far as it goes. Now is the perfect time to analyze your data.

A thorough analysis may uncover a trend that can be acted upon in a significant way, such as repositioning your Web site. As major overhauls are time-consuming and expensive, it may be easier, less costly and potentially more beneficial to create a targeted micro-site focused on a particular product, service or niche.

With the intelligence gathered, this site should be optimized to yield meaningful results from major search engines. A micro-site is a good way to test the accuracy of your analysis and it can be the basis for a site overhaul later. You may also consider creating several search engine optimized landing pages to target different audiences.

Landing pages are a powerful way to stretch one's Web development investment. A landing page designed around a specific search query, such as "hammer," can send a prospect to the home page of a hardware store, where they will have to navigate through that site to track down the product.