Ok, let's get the Google talk out of the way early.... the monster company is set to release its 3rd quarter earnings numbers on Thursday, followed by Yahoo on October 21. A market analyst has downgraded the ratings of both of these internet companies based on the overall deterioration in the economy citing that he sees "no business model based on advertising or consumer spending that will be immune to a downturn."
Hmmmmm..... honestly, I feel that internet marketing is the least expensive advertising method, especially considering many people may cut back on newspaper, magazine, even cable/satellite programming purchases. Most people will still have access to the internet, either at home, school or work. During the upcoming days of belt-tightening and penny-pinching, I think consumers will turn even more to the internet to do research on necessary big purchases and more scouring for coupons and deals on everyday items and utilities. If a company cuts out or lessens its web presence, it most certainly will be missing out on sales or at the very least increasing brand exposure.
Check out the NY Times article for details.
What if a company just doesn't know where to push its marketing dollars? TV is too expensive with ever-decreasing audience size, newspapers and magazines are also diminishing on audience returns, so how can a company tackle internet marketing with more than just its corporate website?
As mentioned in class, blogs are the place to be and be seen these days. But a branch away from blogs are online articles. This story in the American Chronicle suggests companies should write articles about themselves and their products, post them online, then take the step their competitors seem to stop short at - spending the hours of time necessary to submit these articles to online directories. It seems so simple, but many businesses can't seem to grasp the return on investment of someone's time seeking out all these directories. Even so, the benefits are clear - the more places your article is linked, the higher your article will likely place in a keyword search on the big search engines. Money in the bag!
Ok, one last return to Google.
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, they have made their oldest available search index available online (it's from January 2001). It's kind of fun to search for today's big names and businesses and see where they were ten years ago. A tip - click on the "View the old version...." link to get a blast from the past!
http://www.google.com/search2001.html
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1 comment:
Great commentary! Well argued, cogent and passionate.
I would add that there was some consensus from the advertising community that the Adwords profitability was due to decline. However, the financial crisis may actually increase demand for this form of advertising.
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