Name of the Game: Acquire and Retain. More than ever the recession is forcing marketers to sharpen their focus on tactics that are cost-effective and contribute to the bottom line, and many of them are looking to the Internet to get the job done.
“Tight budgets are driving companies’ efforts to increase ROI,” says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Getting and Keeping Customers: Search and E-Mail Tactics. “In turn, the greater emphasis on ROI adds extra pressure to get new customers and to keep existing ones.” In a MarketingProfs survey, which looked specifically at the impact of the economic crisis, all of the respondents cited some form of customer acquisition or retention as their most important marketing objective. When asked about their most important advertising goals for 2009 in a survey by Datran Media, 63% of marketers said gaining new customers; 44% said increased customer retention.
Search Spending Swells Worldwide. According to a joint study by Econsultancy and search engine optimization (SEO) firm Guava, online marketers around the globe (particularly in the UK) are increasingly turning to search marketing tactics.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said they planned to raise spending on SEO, and 45% said the same of paid search. In addition, 31% of SEO and 32% of paid search users said they intended to maintain their budgets. Savvy search marketers use paid search and SEO to accomplish different tasks, however. In 2008, marketers said that the main objectives of paid search were (in order) to capture online sales, generate sales leads, drive Website traffic and enhance the brand. As for SEO, most marketers said its primary purpose was to drive traffic, create leads, generate sales and brand.
C-Level Execs on Marketing Success. According to Heidrick & Struggles, the No. 1 focus for C-level executives in 2009 is the customer—acquiring new ones, increasing retention and improving their lifetime value, in that order.
Eighty-eight percent of the executives surveyed said acquiring new customers was important, and 87% said the same about customer retention. Least important on their list of priorities were improving marketing’s impact on shareholder value, retaining talent and expanding to new geographies. This makes sense in current economic conditions—if a business is struggling, further development gets pushed to the back burner. Talent is easy to come by when unemployment is high, and if sales increase, shareholder value will naturally follow.