Whether you call it communications, public relations, marketing, fundraising, or outreach — economic turmoil is accelerating the move away from traditional media and towards the Internet. According to a recent survey conducted by Marketing Sherpa, commercial marketers are slashing their 2009 broadcast and print advertising, direct mail, and event marketing budgets — and beefing up their online marketing like email blasting and social networking, instead.
Why the shift? In troubled times, online marketing has two distinct advantages over traditional marketing:
1) It’s cheaper. Emailing 10,000 people costs way less than printing and mailing 10,000 letters. Way less. Ditto for putting ads on Facebook vs. TV ads on NBC.
2) It’s more precise. Online marketers have much more information available about how their campaigns are performing. To be blunt, if a campaign isn’t working well, they’ll know it sooner and can pull the plug right away.
So should nature protection and pollution control communicators follow their commercial brothers and sisters? Maybe. Sort of. I think it’s premature to pull the plug on those end-of-year fundraising letters. But if you’ve been planning a big TV or radio campaign, or if you have been hesitating to set up your first account on Facebook, Constant Contact, or PayPal, you might want to rethink that. Your peers certainly are.
P.S. For those of you who still cling to the newspaper as your preferred method for getting the word out, think what those sinking print ad budgets will mean for the financial health of your local rag. Ouch.
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Not only did I enjoy yesterday’s presentation in Tampa very much, I learned something. I’m really starting to think about the words I use to convey my message.
Look forward to learning more from your blog.
This could be good news for bloggers everywhere! I wonder what is the tipping point you need to generate revenue with adds. Realistically, I see companies who want to cross-promote with a certain audience as targeting blogs, not necessarily for generating “click based” revenue. But I may be wrong.