The credit crunch is well and truly on us and everyone is worried about the future.
I work in an environment where my income depends on marketing budgets and right now companies are starting to look at them and make seriously bad choices to cut them. I think right now everyone who takes thier business seriously needs to look at how they can get thier brand out there.. One day the credit crunch is going to hit rock bottom and the only way out of it will be up as confidence slowly comes back knowing its turning around.
Right now I think the biggest problem is people do not know if they will hold on to their job so they are holding on to their spare cash.
I feel that some of the companies who have or are going under are companies that didn't grasp the digital age with both hands!!
When I heard Woolworths had gone bust I wasn't really surprised .. I do almost all of my shopping online and in the past visited Woolworths website to see what they had on there. The website was rubbish! I decided it was probably new and a few months later I visited and realised they had employed a really bad website dev team.
When I went to a town that had a Woolworths and I popped in I always seemed to buy a load of junk I didn't really need but wanted because I felt it would make my life easier in some way.. It's a bit like a Betterware catalogue - its full of complete junk but you find things that once you seen them you feel you need one.
Woolworth’s website seemed to lack a lot of what they had in store on the website. I remember looking through Xbox games and there were about 14. The navigation was one of those which you can't be bothered to work out. A bit like theirs stores with items sometimes being in complete random places .. They lacked a logical pattern to their website and stores ..
Another company which has reported on the edge of going under is Land of Leather .. Again in the past when I wanted a leather sofa I visited the website and the company logo was enough to put me off .. Admittedly they have changed their website since - but it was one of those sites which wasn't worth a second look.
I think we take websites on face value these days and unless we can get to the information we want straight away its much easier to go back to the search engine and continue to search.
I guess the other thing that killed Land of Leather was bad press on watch dog .. I guess once your product / brand has been on that show and had a lot of negative publicity, you're on to a loser.
Then the news came that Zavvi was going under - WHO ? .. I had never heard of them .. I don't buy news papers - occasionally I will buy a computer magazine .. I watch the TV and surf lots of websites but never in all my surfing / tv watching had I come across the name .. So their going down - bad advertising should be on their list of reasons ..I took a look at the webiste and it seemed nice to use - I wonder if they were like Game and Game Station and generally were a bit over priced when compared to Amazon or Play?
Adams kids clothes store - well I thought they had already gone under years ago when they disappeared from my local high street. When I had young kids I remember that shop being quite good value for money .. But then I guess when you can go to your local supermarket and pick up every day kids clothes with your shopping to the same kind of standard as Adams - I guess that didn't help their case ..
So with the exmaples I have thought about above - I think some bad marketing is to blame ..
I think once the credit crunch starts to turn around if you have given up on your website and slashed your marketing budget when people are ready to start spending again you are not going to benefit from it .. There will be other websites who rank higher with better navigation .. and they will take your potential business ..
Search Engine Optimization' and felt amused by the paid links .. Surely if you are any good at what you do .. you would have a top ten ranking for the choosen search term and not need the paid links? ..