Ups and Downturns

The downturn of the economy has dramatically intensified the speed at which marketers are moving their budgets online. Marketers are being pressured to spend less and get more from their budgets, like right now, and once again the Internet is looking like the Holy Grail.

This sense of urgency, while in some ways a boon to internet marketing service providers, has created challenges that, if ignored, will once again lead to disappointing outcomes (remember 2001 wasn’t that long ago). Spam, both in total volume and as a percentage of email, continues to rise. Accordingly email response rates have softened, and consumers have looked to other online media, such as social networks, as safe havens for online communication. Marketers, trying to keep up, are chasing social media subscribers, with little in the way of a plan and less in the way of market research. At the same time, social media service providers, seeing opportunity and being pressured themselves by their backers to show results, are providing marketers with more and more interruptive access to their subscribers. Spam by any other name is still spam. It would not be going out on a limb to predict that marketing results from social media platforms will soften even before they get a chance to generate any real traction (if they haven’t already).

Lead generation companies, while under a lot of pressure to improve their practices, are being driven by such strong demand that they are being forced to move further and further away from best practices simply to meet demand.

And at the end of the cycle, many companies, solid, stable, recognized brands, are being pulled into the abyss, at high risk to their online reputation and to their brand. For marketers who are buying the dream, and ignoring the little voice telling them it’s "too good to be true," there will be hell to pay.

But what about companies truly dedicated to following best practices every step of the way? They need to be vigilant, constantly monitoring their online activities, tuning into how the online community as a whole is viewing their brand, and adjusting their strategy to maintain their reputation and improve their results. You need to:

1. Check out each of your service providers carefully to be sure they follow best practices in every program they develop for your company. Be able to break and contract without penalty if best practices are not followed, and be absolutely sure to have *your* definition of best practice, written in to the agreement.

2. Monitor all acquisition programs in real time and be ready to pull the plug as soon as any program exceeds preset dashboards for performance and/or compliance.

3. Monitor the chatter on all the major social networks to understand how their brand is being viewed by the online community.

4. Monitor their proactive campaigns against preset dashboards to be able to react quickly to changes in customer behavior that could be signs of deteriorating relationships.

5. Talk to their customers and prospects, using email and surveys and social media, and value the feedback they receive.

And most importantly, slow down. Take the time to test every online program you put in place, test against results, test against compliance and test against consumer reaction. And even if the results are good, pull the plug if complaints and/or non-conforming/compliant results exceed your dashboards.

The Internet can definitely drive your business to success, but there are landmines every step of the way that you will need to successfully navigate.