Investing in Sales and Marketing

Sales and Marketing - cost or investment? Which mindset do you have? Regardless how you perceive it, history has shown that companies who continue to invest in Sales and Marketing during an economic downturn stand a better chance of surviving it. Those who cut their spend, reduce their sales potential and lose out.

Inflation has just hit 3.8%, up 0.5% since May. This is an 11 year high and much greater than our Governments 2% target. As a result the Bank of England is unlikely to cut interest rates, currently 5%. The BBC and Financial Times both report daily on the impact of oil prices and the credit crunch on our economy. It is not going to improve overnight.

It is not enough to offer a fantastic set of products and services, unless of course you can survive on repeat business!. Your message needs to get to your potential customers. Your message will come in a variety of forms from advertising and web presence to verbal and sales materials. It is even in the emails and invoices you send. If your message is not up to scratch change it. If your message is not reaching your target audience or the wrong audience, change that. Continual improvement and investment will help you survive this economic downturn.

Disadvantages of SEO

Despite it’s importance you cannot rely solely on SEO for your eMarketing:

• Google has 25.8 billion pages with a .com ending and 1 billion with .co.uk - that’s a lot of competition. In competitive sectors (e.g. loans, property, games) it may be very difficult to get good rankings.
• Only the search engines control what they display, where and when. Rankings cannot be guaranteed by anyone else! Occasionally they change the rules and that can be catastrophic for your rankings.
• Some companies may employ black hat techniques to improve their results. We refuse to use them as you will eventually be blacklisted.
• Successful SEO does require a high degree of specialist knowledge which is reflected in the cost. The initial SEO work can be quite substantive and, as importantly, does require on-going maintenance.

Advantages of SEO

Most people would agree that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most important elements of search marketing. Why pay for the initial expense of SEO?

• The cost is fixed regardless of the number of clicks so in the longer term it provides better value for money
• Generally 80% of the clicks come from the natural listings and 20% from paid listings
• Research shows some searchers NEVER click on the sponsored listings as they believe the natural listings give better, more relevant results
• Combined with paid-search it can also offer a highly targetted audience