subject: B2b Search Marketing: How To Make Your Seo Efforts Pay Off During A Recession [print this page] No matter what the economy is doing, if you market online your B2B search marketing dollars can pay off - big - if you know how to leverage them. Following is some advice on how to make your online marketing efforts pay off when the economy is not doing so great.
B2B Search Marketing Advice: Repackage Existing Offerings to Reflect the Current Economy
The way your customers respond to marketing in a recession is different than the way they respond when the economy is doing well. Hence, the language you use to reach them will be different as well. What does this have to do with your search engine optimization efforts? Everything.
Successful SEO marketing begins with keywords and how you use them to position your offerings online. For example, in a recession, your customers are likely to be looking for ways to save money, get discounts, take advantage of special deals.
In order to capitalize on this mindset, you may need to pair your best keywords with traffic-generating words like "free," "save" and "discount" to reflect what's going on in the economy at large.
Take the Long Route to the Sale
As mentioned above, when the economy is not doing well, customers tend to take longer to make purchasing decisions especially if an item is not a "must have." Hence, you may have to take the longer route to the sale. How do you do this?
You can tweak your PPC campaigns. For example, instead of having a landing page that ask for the sale directly, ask consumers to "subscribe to get more info," or "sign up and receive a discount" on their next purchase.
This type of B2B search engine marketing gives you two advantages: (i) it builds your customer database, which as any savvy online marketer knows is a virtual goldmine for every business; and (ii) positions you well for when the economy turns around because you have that list to market to forever.
Tweak Site Pages
Just like major retailers like Macy's change their store windows to reflect the season, your site should change its "window dressing" to reflect what's going on in the economy. In terms of B2B search marketing, this means making sure the main pages on your site reflect what's going on instead of that luxury watch on the main page, showcase less expensive watches there.
You never want to be out of step with your customers. Savvy online markets know that to accomplish this, they must run effective B2B search engine marketing campaigns that reflect how their customers, think, feel and live their lives.
