What to do when marketing budgets get slashed in a downturn ?
Last week I had the opportunity to interview Paula Drum, the VP of Marketing at H&R Block, at the Social Media Strategies Conference. Just like the last time I interviewed Paula, the conversation was rich and informative.
One topic that I found especially interesting was when Paula made recommendations on what to do in the face of reduced marketing budgets in an economic downturn. Based on her experience that traditional marketing program are more capital intensive, and social media marketing programs are more labor intensive - she recommends that you move some of the people resources which are going to free up because of the budget reductions to social media marketing programs. Now that they do not need to manage as many lead generation or brand building campaigns, have them engage in the social media world.
Of course, you could take this a step further and voluntarilly move some more budgets from traditional marketing programs to social media marketing programs. Your returns may very well justify that…
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November 3rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Paula’s pretty sharp and she’s right.
But in the case of H&R Block, isn’t the ideal model to a) mostly increase visibility/awareness through advertising and field office signage, and b) sell potential customers on peace of mind (money-back-guarantee)?
H&R Block is one of the rare businesses for which social media may not have as great an impact as traditional media, right? Or am I missing something?
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Hi Olivier - Thank you for taking the time to get back with me. H&R Block has some real interesting social media programs in the works, which Paula described in the last interview we did together (see link above). They have YouTube programs, 2nd Life programs and real interesting initiatives on Twitter as well…
One of the benefits of these initiatives is that they can smooth out some of the seasonality of their business - which I think is great.
November 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am
She had stated a good comparison between traditional with social media marketing. According to a survey, Marketers know that marketing spend is still widely viewed as a discretionary expense. Apparently, marketers believe that digital marketing is the way to stretch their budgets.
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