Search Marketing in a Recession

13Feb09

Why Use Search Marketing in a Recession

Let’s face it. We are in a recession and it is affecting almost every one’s business. I personally feel that luxury medical procedures are a great sign of the health of the economy, so I used Google Trends to see how search volume has been affected for a couple of luxury medical procedures and then for chapter 7. This is what I learned:

*Please keep in mind: According to comScore 2008 witnessed a 21% increase in total search volume across the top 5 search engines

Elective Medical Procedures Researched:

Relative search volume for the phrase "breast augmentation"

Here is the relative search volume for the keyword "lasik"

As we can see, the decline for these procedures has declined at an alarming rate for anyone in either of these industries. Can some of the blame be allocated to factors other than the economy? Probably, but can we also assume that teh exponential decrease in search volume in the past 12 months can be associated to the recession, you be the judge.

Now, let us look at the results from “chapter 7″:

Here is the relative search volume for the phrase "chapter 7"

For those who don’t know, chapter 7 is the most common form of bankruptcy in the U.S. and I am willing to say that the increase in search volume for this term can be directly correlated to the economy.

Why Focus On Search Marketing Now?

If you are seeing an overall decrease in demand for your product or service, good luck trying to drive demand through traditional marketing channels. You could take advantage of the decreased rates being offered by publishers and other people with ad space that they can’t sell, which “could” have its benefits when the economy recovers, but that really doesn’t help you to bring in customers now.

Search marketing gives you the opportunity to reach out to the most important consumers in your market right now, the people that are actively researching what you offer. With the proverbial pie of possible customers shrinking, consumers that are near the bottom of the sales funnel are even more valuable now than ever. People are searching for your company’s product or service and the company’s that own the search engines for these terms have a serious advantage over the competition. Is your company willing to leverage search marketing or are you willing to lose market share?