Economic downturn = offline advertising (unmeasurable) spend down, online marketing (measurable) spend up?

That’s what a lot of people seem to be saying [here and here]. But not me.

Not entirely anyway. I can see online marketing spend increasing in line with the already forecasted increases, but in terms of a higher jump because of the downturn no.

A downturn should not necessarily lead to an increase spend in measurable online marketing tactics such as PPC and email, instead the growth area will be social media monitoring.

So the majority of spend moved to online in theory should be spent on monitoring services (analysing brand conversations on blogs, forums, social networks etc.) rather than spending on pay per click.

That’s my crystal ball view at least, only time will tell what will really happen.

If you subscribe to the idea that businesses that brand build through traditional advertising, such as TV, during an economic downturn benefit greatly when the economy picks up, then you’ll agree the best thing big brands can do is to push spend to monitoring their brand online. They can use this insight to increase the effectiveness of their brand building activities.

It would be nonsensical to conclude from this that direct response isn’t the way to go. For many businesses budget restraints and aggressive targets there isn’t a choice.

What I am saying is that any business that is thinking of moving spend away because they assume it is the thing to do in the short term should consider the benefits of continuing with awareness building and how social media monitoring can help.

A fair criticism that marketers can point at this analysis is that brand building doesn’t bring in the sales like direct response, but after the downturn you will have to keep selling. When people have more cash they’ll be choosier, and they’ll buy into a brand, not into what suited their pocket the year before.