B2B Web Strategy Blog - eMagine

How a Website Makeover Can Help “Recession-Proof” Your Company

April 4th, 2008 Posted by: Bill Gadless

We’ve certainly gotten some strange looks when we urge our B2B clients to stick with their website-renovation schedule, regardless of the state of the broader economy. But there are some very sound business reasons for doing so, and here are three of them…

In a downturn, smart companies seek to grow market share.
It turns out that down economies are the cheapest time to improve your market share, because so many companies – probably including at least some of your competitors – will retrench, almost by knee-jerk. Investing now to improve your share puts your company in a much stronger relative position coming out of the downturn, which pays obvious dividends down the road. And this isn’t just our opinion… in their recent superb article “The Upside of a Recession”, Robert Croston and Patrick Cahill provide a useful summary of economic research that uniformly supports this view.

Even if you don’t aim for market share growth, you’re likely to find that you need more leads to produce each closed deal. That makes it a very dubious proposition to shrink funding for the marketing activities that produce those leads.

Your prospects won’t stop buying …but they will think about it longer.
The bad news is that while many of your prospects will still buy, they’ll spend more time than ever researching alternatives in support of a more rigorous decision-making process. The good news is that much of that research will be done on the Web.

That makes an economic downturn an auspicious time to ensure that your site is current, properly reflective of your image/branding, attractive, easily usable, compelling (“sticky”), and ranks well with the popular search engines. If any of those things are not true, then a makeover may be one of your most effective short-term marketing investments.

You can’t find prospects any more cost-effectively than via Web marketing.
Study after study has shown that online marketing is the highest-ROI, most cost-effective marketing you can do; which explains why surveys taken even after the slowdown began are continuing to forecast strong growth for online spending (primarily at the expense of more traditional vehicles such as print advertising and events).

It’s easy to understand why, just by looking at a very simple example. That $20 click-thru from your Google Adwords campaign may seem expensive, compared to a response from a $1.50 direct mailer …except that to get that one response, you also had to send your piece to 99 others who most likely tossed it in the wastebasket. Alternatively, you might assign your sales team to a “prospecting day”… identifying, researching and cold-calling new-name companies. At the end of the day, you’d be thrilled if each rep ends up with three accounts worthy of follow-up; but getting them cost you between $83 and $415 (depending on your sales comp plan).

To help recession-proof your company, your website and lead-generation process should be performing optimally. If you’re not sure they are, your Web consultants can evaluate your situation and help you capitalize on the opportunities available …even in a downturn.

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy, Internet Marketing, Lead generation