10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession

Posted by David Armano / January 23, 2008 3:50 pm

The question isn’t if we’re heading into a recession. It’s how bad will it be—and what we learn from it? As marketing budgets feel the squeeze of the housing crisis and a slowing U.S. Economy, now is a good time to think about opportunities. That’s right. Opportunities. It just happens that the digital medium could be your best friend in a time when belts tighten. Here’s a few though starters for how digital can help your business or brand thrive in a recession:

1. Live by the rules of The Beta Economy
No other medium allows you to launch, test, relaunch, test, measure, tweak, re-tweak, evolve, relaunch, quite like the Web. Folks like Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin preach about this all the time. Guy launched his Truemors service on a shoestring budget and uses Twitter to promote it. When budgets get cut—look to digital for new ways of testing out ideas vs. big bang and big budget initiatives (think Bud.TV)

2. Leverage Existing Platforms
Why build from scratch when you can use WordPress as a CMS, Basecamp as a collaboration tool and Concept Share as a way to co-create. Now is a great time to dig into the already existing platforms (in addition to existing social networks). While building from scratch has its place, there are more options than ever to tap into a service that just might do the job.

3. Switch Tubes
Consider skipping mass TV all together. It worked for BMW films and with YouTube firmly in place—it can even work with less production values and high priced talent. Consider ways to make the participant the star. TV has kind of sucked lately anyway since the writers went on strike. Don’t know about you—but my TV consumption has gone from slim to nearly none.

4. Don’t Just Entertain, Engage
When we turned on our “Always in Beta” cam for the first time—we noticed something immediately. People who were using it on either side were engaged. In fact, they were captivated. The simple act of live video and live chat using free 2.0 tools ended up being a practical way to engage users. The next time you think about adding special effects worthy of Lucas Arts to your program—think up alternatives as well.

5. Coordinate Infinite Touch Points
Don’t put all your digital eggs in one basket like a site or banner campaign—look at smart ways to distribute the experience across as many digital touch points as possible. Be smart about it. Think about how your user thinks and acts digitally and meet them on their turf. Of course this doesn’t have to be digital—but in a recession, you might get more bang for your buck.

6. Prototype Often
Digital tools allow us to prototype rapidly. Sure we can start with paper—but why? Digital does not equal high fidelity—use the tools available to use bring new ideas to life which can help sell ideas during a time when everyone thinks about the bottom line. Embrace speed. Break a few rules. Make your digital ideas tangible as soon as possible.

7. Trade Focus Groups For Digital Ethnography
Research doesn’t have to go out the window as budgets get squeezed. Look to the internet for insights. Social Networks and search engines can be rich ethnography tools. I’m not advocating to abandon field research—but before you slash that discovery phase, think about how digital can be used to find things about the behavior of your target.

8. Think Outside The Banner
The recession presents a great opportunity to think about traditional media buys such as banners differently. Online banners are usually the first line of offense in a digital initiative—but there are ways to think about them differently. Quality may replace quantity—Apple’s recent entry into the online banner space taught us that banners can still work—but the ROI improves with creativity. If you’re going to go with online banners, less could me more and creativity may be the best tool in your box.

9. Embrace Delight By Functionality
Listen to Jared Spool when he talks about delight by functionality. When tempted to cut budgets in digital product functionality—think again. Adding or improving existing functionality may lead to product preferences which increase revenue, sales and even saves money. All good things in a recession.

10. Listen
Digital gives you many ways to listen to customers – from direct engagement like Dell’s IdeaStorm to simple surveys or even A:B testing. All are excellent examples of using digital to turn up the volume on customer desires. Those brands that do the best job listening will weather any downturn. Listening doesn’t always mean doing exactly what the customer tells you—but it can make what you decide to do that much better.

http://whitneyhess.com/blog Whitney Hess

This reads like “10 Ways Digital Can Help You *Avoid* a Recession”

Very insightful, thanks
http://www.conversationagent.com Valeria Maltoni

I guess you don’t have a live link to that cute Apple banner ad? The BMW films are still the best execution I have seen on shorts for ads. I own the tape courtesy of Fallon (distributed at FC Real Time event in 2003).

In my view planning should consider a robust and connected mix of media — in B2B print in certain pubs still works.
http://journals.aol.com/lcourtines/AOLGamesLarrysCorner/ laurent courtines

Great insight and totally true. I’m relatively new to the game (social media) but the last 6 months have charged me up to the point that I would be willing to put myself on the line and consult for a living. Thanks to posts like yours, I get more and more inspired.
Laurent
Games.com community manager
http://darmano.typepad.com David Armano

Whitney, well I think you could be on to something…

Valeria, Check the NY Times, I believe the Apple banners are still running.

Laurent, the past year has thrown many industries for a loop. More to come on that—I’m sure of it.
http://www.altamirano.org/archives/recession-a-bloggers-lending-a-hand recession | ‘A’ bloggers lending a hand – antonio altamirano

[...] seems to be a blossoming of posts on “how to survive a recession”. Experience matters has its version. Scoble, of course has a post about it. That is all good and I respect the fact that folks are [...]
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[...] are my links for January 20th through January 23rd: 10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession – Here’s a few though starters for how digital can help your business or brand thrive in a [...]
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http://www.crayonlondon.com Steve Mulholland

Hi David, I hope you didnt think i was having a go with my post about offline and online shops. I just think what will happen will happen.

Below is an article i wrote many many moons ago when i was at JWT.

Campaign 06-Jul-01, 12:00
CAMPAIGN-I: Perspective – Stop the moaning and start enjoying

by STEVE MULHOLLAND, the creative director of digital@jwt

The past six months or so have been like a depressing soap opera

for me. Each week I thumb through the industry press, hoping for an

exciting plot development and dose of inspiration.
ADVERTISEMENT

Invariably, my hopes are floored, as the grand scheme of this drama

seems as unchanging as Pauline Fowler’s frown. Inevitably there may be

different characters but the script is depressingly familiar. It’s the

same bleating tone about the bad state of our industry and the same

plethora of opinions on how it could and should be changed.

Every week all I read is: “My agency knows this, the clients don’t

understand this, media this, banner that, click this, blah, blah, blah.”

Oh come on people! Is perpetuating doom and gloom like this really the

way forward?

Subjecting anyone to 17 episodes of EastEnders at its worst is surely

not good for the soul.

I make an exception and doff my cap in the direction of Mark Girling

writing in the trade press last week. He’s a media man with a statistic

or two to cheer us up, starting with the fact that according to

PricewaterhouseCoopers, UK online advertising revenue has already

overtaken cinema and is closing in on radio. In addition, a recent MMXI

survey reveals that for the week ending 10 June, almost ten million UK

at-home internet users accessed the web, with an average surfing time of

two hours, 25 minutes. That’s more time than most people I know spend

watching telly! Impending doom? I think not.

These figures are undoubtedly inspiring but need to be coupled with a

simple reality check. We are here to service clients’ needs, needs that

will ultimately enhance the consumer’s experience of their brand in the

new-media age. In the majority of the articles I have read, very rarely

has the consumer even been mentioned. Are we really listening to what

the consumer wants? More importantly, do we even care? Are we simply

selling to our clients and carrying on our merry way, safe in the

knowledge that a happy client represents a job well done?

The public who choose to consume our media are not the naive surfers

they were a few years ago. They are there for specific reasons and we

should be giving them what they want instead of discussing the latest

0.5 per cent or whatever click result our campaign just landed. We all

need to start enjoying what we do, otherwise this infectious moaning

will spread to our clients and more importantly on to the customer. It

really ain’t that bad!
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http://www.theinternationale.org Paul Caplan

I like your focus on using the tools that are out there and ongoing prototyping. If I could just add one other thought picking up on your ‘ethnography’ point. There’s a lot of emphasis starting to be put on ‘monitoring’ as though having a whizzy piece of software that tracks ‘mentions’ gives you any sense of how a ‘business story’ is being built in the conversation economy. Companies (and in my experience public bodies) are being sold the idea that they can monitor the blogosphere and beyond with graphs and PowerPoint slides. I try to show them that they need a more qualitative approach, similar to your idea of ethnography but based around discourse analysis. The tools and approaches you outline enable new services and relationships to be developed but unless they are underpinned with a real qualitative approach to maintaining those relationships and understanding and working with the ‘conversation attractors’, they could be undone. Planning needs to see ‘people’ but so does ‘evaluation’.
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http://www.squidoo.com/melissasuffield eastender

Interesting post, was curious if you would permit me to link to it in a post im currently writing for my own site? Thanks eastender
AlanDodaro

Hi eastender,

Feel free to link to this post and let us know when your article is published so our team can check it out. Thanks!
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[...] digital efforts are astoundingly inexpensive in alter. Armano calls it the Beta Economy (#1 on his list). As a marketer, it's imperative that you check your web statistics, garner knowledge from [...]