Is cutting your marketing budget during a recession a good idea?

Short answer: No. Cutting your marketing budget during a recession is actually a terrible idea.

Check out this great post by LinkedIn:

https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/b2b-content-marketing/2020/all-weather-marketing

On these difficult times:

“Don’t touch your face, don’t touch your stocks, and don’t touch your ads.”

“Unfortunately, as much as marketers don’t like to hear this, the data suggests that spend may be the most important variable in marketing success. Big budgets get you big reach, and big reach gets you big growth”

Do NOT cut your marketing budget during a recession. You have been warned.

If you need help with your digital advertising strategy, book a consultation call with me and let’s create a custom plan for you:

Check out this weird pivot idea: from travel/tourism to e-commerce

(extract from my guide to digital marketing for travel/tourism businesses)

I recently had a call with someone that was somewhat related to the tourism industry, and he decided to reinvent his business by pivoting to E-commerce.

He started selling merchandise for his business.

He did a quick test for selling hats with the logo of his brand, launched it on his social media, and he was able to sell a few of those hats. He realized that people actually care and want to buy his merchandise which features his brand, because they love it.

Performing a pivot like that in your market could be a good option for you.

E-commerce is huge these days, because everyone is online and everyone is buying things online, because offline commerce is pretty much dead.

If you can open a second revenue stream through E-Commerce, that could help you very well survive this time period, or at the very least add some cashflow so you have a stronger position for when things start to improve in the travel/tourism industry.

… to be continued

Want to get the rest of my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses? Comment GUIDE below and I will send it to you.

Online travel advisor seeing ‘whiplash’ return of US travel market & consumer confidence

James Ferrara, InteleTravel’s President and co-founder is seeing some interesting trends in the US travel market & general economy recovery.

According to him, cruises are leading the recovery. A 300% increase in bookings has been seen since mid-april, and in the last 3 weeks it has doubled again

Where are people looking to go?

Keep in mind this is mostly for the 4th quarter, and 1st quarter of the next year.

People are choosing places where they don’t have to take a plane to get there.

Places like:

– The Caribbean
– Domestic river cruises (the Mississippi river, the Great Lakes, the Columbia river)

Also, while the entire season has been canceled in Alaska, small ships are still allowed to cruise.

The right time to travel is when is it safe, but we are getting very close to that. How are you preparing for the return of travel?

Why not get my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses? Comment GUIDE below and I will send it to you.

How to prepare for the next disruption to the travel market

(extract from my guide to digital marketing for travel/tourism businesses)

I think this pandemic will not be the last one we will suffer. Maybe there will be a second wave of coronavirus after everything is said and done, I’ve seen some people talk about that. It’s also possible that we have a different virus in another time, or some other kind of disruption to travel.

Recessions typically come every 10 years, so you should be preparing yourself for another recession near 2030. If it ends up disrupting travel, you need to have another way to generate income during that time as well.

It’ s not just about generating cash flow in the short term, which is really important, but it’s also about being prepared from when this happens again.

It will happen again, most likely. Travel will be disrupted again, it’s just a matter of when.

You need to be prepared for that, don’t just rely on whatever travel service you provide right now. Start thinking about your digital strategy and how you can monetize your audience with digital products and services.

… to be continued

Want to get the rest of my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses? Comment GUIDE below and I will send it to you.

How to make money in the travel/tourism industry NOW, even if your business is closed

(extract from my guide to digital marketing for travel/tourism businesses)

Your customers and prospects got in touch with you for a REASON.

That reason still exists, even if your business is closed right now or people are scared to travel. That means you can still make money in the travel/tourism industry.

If you don’t have a way to meet those needs that the market still has, you could offer other businesses’ products or services that help meet those needs. For this you need to get inside their head and see what DRIVES YOUR MARKET.

If you realize that your market is really big on entertainment, for example, you could become an affiliate of companies that provide that, such as Netflix, any kind of streaming service, video game companies, try to think along those lines, anything that provides entertainment.

You can find if out they have an affiliate program and sell the products/services of that company and you would make a commission every time someone buys something related to entertainment. So that’s an option, affiliate marketing.

Also, it would be good to think about how you could fill some of those needs yourself and reinvent your business that way.

To be continued…

Want to get the rest of my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses? Comment GUIDE below and I will send it to you.

Here’s what to say in the travel market during this time

(extract from my guide to digital marketing for businesses in the travel market)

In terms of what to say, or what to market during this time, I would say just be very thoughtful and emphatic. Be very careful with your tone and the message you are giving to the travel market.

People have bigger things to worry about now than travel and vacations, but they are still dreaming about those things, and they still have those needs to escape, have fun and everything else that comes with travel.

Try to think about what you could do for your market to help them solve those needs. You can start creating content about those different topics that your audience is enthusiastic about.

For example, if you are marketing to solo travelers (I know that market very well because I’m a solo traveler myself), I think you should be thinking in terms of the following needs: independence, having fun, exploring, getting to know other cultures, self-development, personal growth.

All of those things are recurring themes for the solo travel market.

… to be continued

Want to get the rest of my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses? Comment GUIDE below and I will send it to you

To market or not to market in the travel industry during COVID-19? That is the question

(extract from my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses)

One of the questions people have in the travel/tourism industry during this COVID-19 time is whether you should be marketing or not.

It’s a very important question. You need to make a decision on whether you are going to stand by and you are just going to wait for this to end , or if you will actually do marketing and try to position yourself for when Coronavirus is gone, or at least has diminished a bit.

I think you shouldn’t just wait, you should actively be keeping in touch with your customer base, trying to position yourself and being very active in social media, doing outreach to your current customers and even to potential customers.

Research has been done on this. What they found out is that in times of recession, businesses that do nothing, when the recession is over, they just end up worse.

The businesses that during the recession decide to go on the offensive with their marketing, once the recession is over, they do much better.

… to be continued

Want to get the rest of my guide to digital marketing in COVID times for travel/tourism businesses? Comment GUIDE below and I will send it to you.

Bad things that happen when you use the wrong attribution model for your digital advertising campaigns

Continuing with my mini-series about attribution models, I was previously telling you how  the last-click model gives all the credit, as the name says, to the last click that preceded a conversion (typically a lead or sale).

However, generating conversions is a team sport!

Each medium and campaign plays a role. Think about a soccer game. Would you give all the credit to just the player who scored a goal, but none to the rest of the team that helped create the opportunity?

It’s the same with digital advertising campaigns.

If you give all the credit to the campaign that generated the last-click before a conversion, and make budget decisions based on that, you will probably underspend on other campaigns that also played their part on generating conversions. Ultimately, this will decrease your marketing ROI vs using a more appropriate attribution model, and allocating your budget to each campaign in proportion to their contribution to generating conversions.

In other words, “promote” (give more budget to) your campaigns according to their true merit!

Comment CHANGE MY MODEL if you want me to tell you what model you should be using instead, and how to change it on Google Ads (there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there is one model that works well in many cases).