A lot has been said on this blog regarding the current financial crisis we are facing and what it means for businesses, especially online.

What is making everyone rethink right now how they are either spending their ad dollars and how they can keep afloat this year is the uncertainty that we are facing in the coming year and in all likelihood, longer than that.

ClickWise is in the business of performance marketing, we must bring results to and for our clients, or face not working with them much long, this type of service is very demanding and requires our constant management and optimization. But the greatest part of being in such a business is that when we bring results to our respected clients, they make us an integral part of whatever they do. They employ us to help them grow and in return we are rewarded. This pseudo-partnership is what drives our web professionals to think as the client does, to care for the bottom line, the conversion cost, his ROI and of course how we can profit from it as well.

Reading the economy section in the last couple of months (and in the future for sure) you get a feeling that very smart people, hard working people end up giving their money to young, inexperienced analysts, consultants or bank investment managers who probably weren’t qualified to really handle their money, or worse yet sold them unrealistic returns. There is no performance marketing in the financial industry, and if there is, in this climate, its not performing.

Its quite certain that the economical paradigms we where accustomed to will fundamentally change the way we invest. The reality forces it to change, and people and companies are rethinking the way they spend and invest precious ad dollars.
Financial investments might not change overnight, because the alternatives are very few at this moment. In our industry that [re]consideration will happen very fast, ad spend will shift immediately because there are alternative ways to spend it. SEO & Search Marketing to a greater extent offer measurable results and the opportunity to meet your customer when and where he is searching for your product or service, it’s a fundamentally more relevant and personalized form of advertising then alternative conventional marketing platforms, including banner or display ads and email marketing.

2009 will continue to see Search Marketing budgets grow as companies which tested Search in 2008 now will allocate greater ad dollar percentages towards the medium, this is solely to do with the fact that it works and they know what they get in return for $x.

So what will happen in 2009 in the local market.
Firstly, SMBs will get a lot more exposure. Now that business realize the cost effectiveness of search marketing, that budget for paper ads, flyers, banners and direct marketing will shift in proportion to search and agencies will target SMBs with packages that cater uniquely towards them.
Secondly, large top tier spenders will allocate a greater portion of their ad budget for SEM, and ad agencies are done trying to stray that back towards banners.
Another area that will mature this year are the lead generators, all the small shops buying ad space to sell CPL will see their businesses grow and hopefully nicely.
Lastly, perhaps we might see a few creative social marketing campaigns, but nowhere profitable or fit for small medium businesses.

And in search:
-    I don’t see any major shifts this year, perhaps algorithms will become more reliant on LSI and certain links will be devalued.
-    Universal Search, the blending of different mediums and channels into the search results will grow ever more prominent, this makes our work very interesting.
-    Personalized search will perhaps become more variable and customizable, this makes our work very scary.
-    Collaborative adaptation of social and search… more on that here.

May we have a safe and profitable 2009.
Ron