• by Blaine Mathieu , August 14, 2009

When it comes to this recession, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says it best: "Maybe we should think of today as normal ... as opposed [to] today as the tough times, and yesterday as normal." The pre-2007 economy is gone for years, and some elements might be gone for good. And that means that marketers must adapt to four new, here-to-stay realities.

Reality #1: Consumer and Business Spending is Forever Changed

As you already know, this isn't a typical "six months and we're out" recession. Some experts compare it to the Great Depression. Not in terms of outward effects like massive unemployment and bread lines, but in terms of an attitudinal sea change that may last for a generation. In a recent consumer survey, two-thirds of respondents say the recession has "fundamentally changed the way they think about saving and spending money."

In both B2B and B2C environments, customers are no longer buying on impulse. They don't have the access to credit they used to have. They're hoarding their limited resources. Bottom line: they're spending less.

What does this mean for us marketers?

It means that over the next three to five years (the average length of time most marketers stay at any one job), things are going to be more like the way they are now versus the way they were then. It means that every single company, including yours, has to demonstrate more value in order to hold on to the customers it already has, let alone attract new ones.

Reality #2: That 20% Cut to Your Marketing Budget is Permanent

According to a recent Forrester Research survey, more than 7 in 10 chief marketing officers experienced 2009 budget cuts. Of those, more than half lost at least 20% of their budgets.

I think I can safely speak for most of us CMOs when I assert that by and large, we received orders from on high to make these cuts. We made our best cases for keeping our existing budgets, and then waited for our CEOs to hand down their decisions. This reactive stance made sense when we thought the recession and the resulting budget cuts were just a temporary blip.

But now that we fully understand that CEOs won't be giving back our 20% any time soon, we must be proactive.

That means driving true integrated marketing that goes beyond campaign-based metrics like opens, impressions and clicks to ROI-oriented metrics like conversions, purchases and leads. We can maximize our limited budgets only when we clearly understand which strategies and tactics produce the best bottom-line payoffs. And hopefully, we are not waiting for someone to tell us to do it.

Reality #3: Measurable Marketing Tactics Get Funded, Others Get Cut

In the aforementioned Forrester Research study, CMOs who anticipated or had already experienced budget cuts cited lack of measurability as a key reason why they were spending less on certain areas like TV, print, radio, magazines, branding and advertising.

But even as marketing departments scale back on classic offline-marketing activities, they're putting more focus on online-marketing tactics, including:

• SEO and PPC: New investment in SEO has been particularly dramatic, as companies realize that getting on page one of Google's organic search can be a lot less expensive than displaying a paid-search ad for the same keyword. This greater emphasis on SEO, however, does not imply that companies are abandoning pay-per-click advertising. Search-engine marketing continues to perform strongly and at a high ROI when done correctly.

• Email: Companies are pressing their marketing teams to squeeze more value out of the channel by experimenting with things like frequency, segmentation and customer-loyalty programs, in connection with social-media sharing efforts. Email is widely recognized as the marketing-ROI leader, and today's economic environment further accelerates email's long growth trajectory.

• Social: Based on its sheer popularity, this is the new ROI wild card. Everyone suspects it could become a marketing gold mine, but its potential remains largely untapped and unmeasured. How do we harness it? How do we define and measure success? As we learn the answers to these questions, it is likely that many of us will begin to allocate more time and resources to social initiatives.

The shrewdest marketers will not only continue to concentrate on measurable online campaigns, they will also build real-time ROI dashboards that detail their results. These performance reports serve two primary purposes. First, they make it easy to spot which tactics aren't working, so you can quickly trim the fat out of your budget. And, secondly, they make it easier to prove Marketing's relationship to revenue, thereby eliminating the call for additional budget cuts.

Reality #4: Highly Competitive Job Market Means All Marketers Must Up Their Games

It's no secret that this recession, with unemployment rates higher than any we've seen since the 1980s, has caused marketing salaries to remain flat or drop. And like overall marketing budgets, salaries are likely to stay where they are for the foreseeable future.

So how do you distinguish yourself as one of the lucky few who deserves a superstar compensation package ... or in a worst-case downsizing scenario, who deserves to hold on to your current paycheck? Whether you are a CMO or individual contributor, this deserves special consideration.

The only surefire way to distinguish yourself is to deliver superstar marketing results. One often overlooked key to stellar results is making better use of your company's investment in marketing technology.

As any technology provider can attest, no matter what the offering, most users never venture beyond the most basic features. But it's the more advanced capabilities that often give you the power and flexibility to drive ROI better than your peers.

One simple example from the world of email is deliverability testing. (Read "Not Testing for Deliverability?! I'm Speechless.") Despite a lot of education on this topic, many email marketers still don't understand the consequences of poor inbox delivery. And even when their email-marketing software provides free, built-in deliverability tools like Lyris HQ does, a significant percentage still don't take advantage of this capability.

In cases like this, it's unwitting ignorance -- not technology constraints -- that keeps individual marketers and marketing teams from being the best they can be. You owe it to yourself to stay informed on industry best practices in your specific area of expertise and to explore what your marketing toolset can do (or what a better tool could do), beyond the basics of getting your next campaign out the door. If you lead a marketing organization, challenge your team to take this on.

This extra effort can transform "average" marketing results into "outstanding" ones, and even in this new economy, outstanding marketers are better positioned to succeed long-term.

Making Peace With the New Marketing Realities

This recession has been anything but fun, and the recovery will be anything but quick. But now that we know what we're working with, we can all take a deep breath and accept the new norms: different B2B and B2C spending patterns; more focused marketing budgets; an even greater emphasis on measurable, online-marketing tactics; and increasing pressure on all marketers to produce concrete results. Here's to your success in the new post-2007 economy.