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Surviving the Digital Economy Meltdown!
By Lee Traupel

"Dying isn't hard for men like us, when every everything around you
has been butchered or slaughtered - living is what's hard."
Clint Eastwood to Chief Ten Bears in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"

The bloom is off the rose, the roosters are coming home to roost –
use whatever metaphor fits your business or culture! But, get the
net/net – the "new digital economy" is starting to get down to some
real fundamentals. Don't get caught in the downturn, learn to grow
organically using targeted marketing and customer referenceability.
New rules for surviving the meltdown:

1)Cash is king – husband your marketing resources as much as you can
by driving hard bargains with all suppliers - or perish the thought
use equity to leverage your cash on hand. If your vendor/partners
take some equity (as we do in our clients) then you know they are
really committed to the success of your company! And, with the
downturn in the IPO market, you may be saving yourself some money in
the long run.

2)Love your customers – be absolutely committed to your customers, do
what it takes to make them successful in the marketplace and they
will respond in kind by recommending your firm to members of their
community. And, yes, you can ask them if they will recommend other
potential clients.

3)Give you customers some equity in your company – this marries them
to your firm (see two above) and helps to motivate them to help your
company grow and prosper.

4)Co-brand or partner where you can – meaning, find a partner in your
market segment who is doing well and develop a revenue share (classic
win/win) model which helps both of you grow by sharing market
information.

5)Get digital in your marketing processes, if your business model is
focused on delivering goods and services via the web. Every marketing
type is recommending opt-in e-mail this Fall, but they are right, it
works well; prices are dropping - YesMail for instance, has an $150
gross CPM Holiday Promo underway for most of the categories, with
about 7M opt-in addresses available!

6)Search Engine positioning/ranking still provides the best ROI of
any interactive marketing. But, you have to be patient and persistent
in your processes – build the right keywords, integrate these with
your site content, then manually submit your pages to the top tier
Search Engines. Or, if the sheer complexity of the task overwhelms
you then hire a specialized marketing firm to do this.

7)Build sound fundamentals into your business – grizzled marketing
veterans like your author experienced the post PC downturn in the mid
80's. I don't think we are going to see such a radical meltdown in
our new economy, but look at the declining valuations via the stock
markets, slowing PC penetration, and Internet access signups. Yes,
it's still a solid global economy with plenty of niche marketing
opportunities for growth, but the "digital high tide" is starting to
recede. So, don't count on mega million advertising revenue as
your "path to profitability" the VC buzz word du jour, develop
fundamental profit centers in your business.

8)There are lots of free marketing resources out there, but be wary
of the proliferation of snake oil salesmen (sorry John D) – there is
a new industry springing up of people who are hyping free or low cost
ways to instant riches. Here's how I set my hype filter – if it
sounds to good to be true, then it is, so click your browser and move
on.

9)Build a web site that's popular, one that's linked and listed by
many others sites. This helps you get high listings via Google,
HotBot and other top tier search engines. Here is a free resource
that helps you setup and participate in a LinkPopularity program – it
can be set up in a couple of minutes via the Fantomaster.com web site.

10)Recruit and hire with an eye to the variances in the market.
Meaning, don't hire until you absolutely have to and use outsourced
companies for jobs, which are not part of your company's core
attributes. This saves money in the long run and lets you quickly
scale up your business when and as you need to, in turn minimizing
your fixed human resources and/or payroll costs.

About the Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing
experience. He is the founder/CEO of a Northern California based,
privately held Interactive Marketing Agency and Software Company,
Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com and can
be reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com

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