Like most people in the world, I am spending a lot of time these days trying to understand how the global economic meltdown will impact my business which has developed a do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) social marketing platform to help SMBs promote themselves online so they can attract more prospects and generate more business.
Times are definitely hard — especially for small businesses — but I am 100% convinced that the value of D.I.Y marketing platforms will increase significantly during this downturn because millions of SMBs will be drawn to low cost (no-cost) tools and services that are capable of helping them connect with prospects through simple-to-use, word-of-mouth-marketing (WOMM) techniques.
And whilst there is the possibility that I could be totally delusional — the simple fact is that more than 75% of people trust recommendations of other consumers, compared to only 34% of people trusting PPC ads, and even fewer who associate trust with a print yellow pages ad (if they even look there).
In summary, I truly believe that the current economic downturn combined with the rapid rise of the social web represents the brewing of a perfect storm. A storm that will drive rapid and signifcant uptake of D.I.Y. online marketing services because SMBs have no choice but to become better producers of user-generated-content in an effort to cost effectively market themselves online.
An additional element to the storm may be the lighter pocketbooks and wallets of the consumer, compared to the cited study from 2007. While overall spending will surely decrease, consumers will be looking for increased value in the dollars they do spend. SMB’s that align with communities of significant size and brand-recognition among consumers should be better positioned than those that chose to go it alone.