Don't Use The Economic Downturn To Delay Building Your Digital Competency

The latest relevant data on the adoption of digital media by financial services marketers comes from our partners at SwanDog Strategic Marketing. According to survey results released today as part of a SwanDog/FRC update to the 2007 ground-breaking Beyond The Collateral research, more than 50% of investment management marketing executives expect digital media to have a significant or moderate effect on their brand in the next 24 months. That’s about 3 percentage points more than when the groundbreaking Beyond The Collateral research was conducted last year.

When asked about their implementation of a range of media, the chief marketing officers (CMOs) acknowledged using video (87%) and podcasting (33%). Other options (specificially: RSS feeds, blogs, mash-ups, other forms of social media) produced crickets.

To be sure, if you don't have a digital media competency in place, you're going to need to invest (time, people, money). According to the Beyond The Collateral's information on how the financial markets crisis is impacting marketing budgets (view Dave Swanson's video presentation on the Beyond The Collateral site), now may not be the time for a big splash. But it's an excellent time to start thinking about something new with unlimited potential--you'll want to test before launching, and tests are affordable. Google AdWords anyone?

Earlier in the week Marketing Sherpa distributed the following chart, which provides a look at the digital tactics that marketers overall are turning up and turning down in this environment. Missing from this list, one commenter pointed out, is organic search engine optimization.


If you truly believe that digital marketing has the potential to impact your business over the next two years, there has to be a way now to commit to doing more than video and podcasting. (Not that there's anything wrong with video and podcasting!)