Note: This post originally appeared on the old Balihoo blog on 01/26/09
Balihoo’s Director of Media Buying Katie Bergerud wrote the below article for the Idaho Statesman’s ‘Starting Up’ series early last year. Katie shares her abundant knowledge and provides useful information for any local business trying to determine how to market during this formidable economic time.
Read her full article here:
Starting Up: Tough Times are the Right Time for an Integrated Marketing Plan
Originally Published: February 26, 2009
One of my favorite mantras is, “The greatest fortunes are made in down markets.” A reason for this is that as an economy decelerates, the cost of goods and services required to build a company correspondingly decreases. Among these costs are the media space and advertising services required to market your 
company.
Savvy marketers know that during a recession, their competitors will reduce marketing expenses, thereby creating an opportunity to grab market share at a relatively low cost. While advertising costs are down today, over the past few years media options have grown exponentially and become more sophisticated. So you should take this downturn as an opportunity to refurbish your marketing strategy.
My company, Balihoo, offers software and services that allow franchisees to market locally. We have a bird’s-eye view of marketing trends and a wealth of experience helping companies leverage the down market to boost sales.
There is no universal marketing strategy that I can advocate. Every company has to reach different audiences and offer varying messages, thus you will need to develop your own plan. However, I can offer one general approach in light of this economy and the modern advertising tools you have at your disposal: Build an integrated marketing plan, negotiate the heck out of it, measure performance, and adjust your media mix accordingly.
Now is the time to build a marketing plan that uses multiple, coordinated advertising media - otherwise known as an integrated plan. You know your demographic best, so select media that give you best access to your target audience. Further, your plan should have clear goals and measurable objectives aligned with your strategy. Ensure you differentiate between brand-building tactics, which should have longer-term objectives and measurements, and direct response tactics, which will yield shorter-term results and different metrics to measure them.
Ad sellers are caught in the same economic pinch as you - they have goals to meet and abundant competition, and they will negotiate. Shop around for the best advertising rates, which may mean exploring new media. For example, even if you’ve never advertised on radio, it doesn’t hurt to see what radio stations are offering. So long as that medium offers adequate access to your demographic, such exploration may lead to a more cost-effective medium.
Build a strategy that puts return on investment first and construct metrics that measure performance. An important first step is to choose media that allow you to measure performance whether it’s through an online tool, report or service offered by the media vendor, or through tactics you implement, like varying phone numbers or referral codes in different ads.
While tracking results by medium is important, with an integrated campaign you’ll need to measure results holistically across all activities to know when one activity might be affecting another. For example, if you are concurrently running Internet and newspaper ads, a significant portion of your leads could come from Web searches people conduct after seeing your newspaper ad. Failing to account for this could make you over-value online advertising and misappropriate ad dollars in the future. Tracking these interactions will be challenging, but to see the whole picture you should combine your per-medium metrics with old-fashioned customer feedback. Ask customers what first drove them to your business.
The advertisement itself is as important as the medium you choose. Whenever possible, test different ads within the same medium to measure which is more effective. As you see different approaches or media winning over others, be ready to reallocate ad dollars to the winning combination. Perhaps the best advice I can give is to stick to your plan despite the recession. By advertising when others aren’t, you will be able to relatively increase your brand awareness, then leverage it to gain even more market share once consumers start to spend again.
Katie Bergerud recently relocated from Seattle to join Balihoo in Boise, where she is director of media buying.
She can be reached at kbergerud@balihoo.com.
Starting Up is a series published on Thursdays. The columns grew from discussions between the Statesman and local tech and entrepreneurial leaders and are coordinated by Julie Howard, a marketing specialist for the Idaho Department of Commerce. Reach her at julie.howard@commerce.idaho.gov.
60,000 in just seven weeks after launching their Facebook-based "The Del Taco Super Special Show". 
low for many months. This struggle spurred the launch of their famous advertising sign program that aided in massive sales growth and success for many years after.
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