Smart Marketing |

Smart Marketing

The economy is in the gutter. Left and right, companies are laying off employees because the funds aren’t there. In the meantime, other companies that are trying to hang on by a thread are finding other areas to cut spending…and one of these areas is marketing.

Smart Move?

Any savvy business owner knows that the last place you want to cut your spending is in the marketing department. Especially in this day and age when marketing is taking on a whole new face and an entirely different meaning with the wonderful world of the Internet, there is no better time than now to really regroup and figure out how you can use online marketing to your advantage.

I have to hear it all the time from my boyfriend what a sham sites like Twitter and Facebook are and how social media is almost completely worthless.

And I have to disagree.

Take this example from the other day. I was at home when I received a phone call from my boyfriend. He was stuck in traffic at a particular cross street and called me to kill some time. He also wanted to know if I could turn on the news to see if there had been any traffic reports for that particular area that he was in.

I did him one better.

I immediately brought up my Twitter account and used the “search” feature to type in the name of the cross street that he was at. Within nano-seconds, it not only brought up the fact that there was a major car accident that had shut down the street, but there were hundreds of people tweeting about other delays that were a result of the accident as well as what routes to take to get around it. When I relayed this information back to my boyfriend, he asked me, ” The news channel gave you that much detail?!” That’s when I told him that I had not gotten my information from the news channel but from a news anchor who happened to tweet about it.

Take that, social media doubter!

Smart Marketing

All kidding aside, the story above is just one example of why it pays to keep social media and online marketing in the mix: people take advantage of it! Online marketing is where it’s at nowadays, so old-fashioned employers beware… Cutting out online marketing is like cutting out your key audience…you know, the people who actually utilize your services, buy your stuff or use your products. Keep it in the mix and if your business is in a slump, think of new ways to re-invent yourself on the Net. You won’t regret the decision.

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