With the shocking performance of Wall Street on Monday that jolted the world of so many Americans, it is easy to begin to feel like Chicken Little with images of the sky falling. In the last month there has been a lot of chatter in the industry about how this economic decline would affect the money that marketers have to spend and the potential lay offs if marketing budgets are slashed. I, for one, recommend a different approach. Rather than sitting around waiting to see how we will be affected, we should all be putting our heads together to figure out how to adapt to this new economic environment.
1) First we must adapt ourselves to the changing priorities of our advertisers. For decades advertisers have had to design campaigns for TV, print and billboards, and could only hope that customers would be driven to purchase because of these campaigns. Today we have an opportunity to offer advertisers the ability to plan campaigns and then only pay for them when they are successful. CPA is the silver bullet of the online advertising industry during an economic crisis.
Every advertiser is looking for a way to continue the advertising that they know drives income, but they need to cut overhead expenses. Online advertising offers them the opportunity to reach out and touch consumers in their homes and at work. In recent years, advertisers were willing to pay on CPM to dip their little toe in and test the benefits on advertising online, but now they know that the internet is an invaluable tool and they are looking for a guaranteed return on their investment. Offering advertising on a CPA model is the perfect way for advertisers to safely continue their advertising campaigns. Likewise, it is the perfect way for agencies to retain current advertisers and recruit new clients during these hard economic times that will truly go down in history.
2) Secondly, online advertisers must, as an industry, begin to adapt to the types of campaigns we are creating today. There is a saying in fashion that, “The right design for the wrong woman is the wrong design.” This has never been truer than in this current meltdown of the financial markets. Only one year ago, Americans were still spending $5 a day on high end coffee, installing theatres and bowling allies in their lavish homes and spending thousands of dollars to enhance their $40,000 gas guzzling SUVs. But in the last year, the discretionary income of American families has plummeted and priorities have shifted. Consumers are no longer interested in advertisements for SUVs, designer products or extravagant new homes.
As quickly as Americans priorities have changed, advertisers have not been able to make the same shift. Anyone who is worried about keeping their online advertising job in this tough economy needs to begin thinking about the new priorities of American families and thus create campaigns to match. While Americans do still love their designer goodies, the campaigns that are reaching them now are work at home business opportunities for the layed off worker, scholarship opportunities for college students who can no longer afford tuition, and anything that can save their family money on necessities like gasoline, food, clothes and school supplies. If we want to stay relevant and keep our industry strong during tough times, then it is time for us to find the “right design” for our consumers. The extravagance that attracted consumers for the last decade is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
The technology sector has always prided itself on how quickly it evolves and improves. Now it is time to take that adaptability that we have and evolve and adapt like our jobs depend on it, because undoubtedly for some of us it will.
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