Historically, business operations shift after a major recession. The way we did business before a recession changes afterwords. For instance, you can make a case that the recession of the early 1980’s was responsible for the shift away from banks of secretaries pounding out letters and memos on a typewriter to the use of word processing software and personal computers. Before the recession, the average executive never used a keyboard. When the recession hit, scores of administrative assistants were laid off. Executives had to figure out a way to get the work out without the assistance of a secretary who could take shorthand, type like the wind, file carbon-paper duplicates and make sure the coffee pot was full. They had to make do all by themselves. Along came the personal computer with its ability to allow mistakes to be corrected before printing, coupled with the office copier that allowed you to make as many duplicates as you needed with the push of a button. Goodbye secretarial banks, hello Microsoft and IBM. The companies that tried to go back to the secretarial pool after the recession soon found that they were at an administrative disadvantage with the competition. The recession spurred a shift that demanded that everyone learn to use a keyboard and to be more efficient with their use of time and resources.

Why would a recession make us change the way we do business? The answer is one of human nature. Most of the people I meet do not like change. It certainly is true in my case. I get comfortable with the way things are. I like the familiar. What we could do to make ourselves more efficient in business before a recession gets put off. It requires change and change is hard. So in the good times, we leave well enough alone and stick with the familiar. In a long economic downturn, all of our business methods are challenged. We have to find more efficient ways of doing things when we are asked to take on the task of employees who have been let go. We seek out a better way for our survival. "Necessity is the mother of invention,”  wrote Irishman George Farquhar.  

So how will marketing change on the other side of this recession? First, we must realize that marketing simply follows the most effective methods of communicating to a target audience. Back in the 1980’s, that method was the printed page. Little did anyone realize then that the personal computer would overtake print as the main communication device in the coming years. Today, electronic communication is king. Print media, particularly newspapers and magazines, have been sickly for years. They have experienced a declining readership and, in step, have seen their advertising contracts shrink. The nation’s biggest print media firms have been struggling while electronic information became the media of choice for communications. It was faster and cheaper to produce. On the other side of the recession, those who are sickly will finally pass away. The first shift will be the funeral of the print news publication. Electronic advertising will emerge stronger and more innovative. "Wait a minute!” you may object, "electronic media has been around for a long time now and advertising on a web site has been happening for the past decade. How can you say it is new?” I did not say it was new, I just said it would become more robust than ever. Microsoft was not born in the 80’s, it was born in the 70’s. It was here before the recession of the early 80’s, it just skyrocketed after the recession. But what it was at the beginning of the 80’s and where it went at the end of that decade were light years apart. Remember MS-DOS, the platform where you had to have advanced training in programming before you could type a letter? Along came the Windows platform with its point and click, drag and drop interface and, all of the sudden, the world opened up to possibilities. The before and after effects of the recession is this: what is proving to be a success will sprout legs and run after a recession. What electronic marketing has already done for us is to help us decipher response rates to e-blasted ads. It has helped us to drive large numbers of respondents to our web sites via web browsers. It has enabled us to make a strong impression on a target market before they ever talk to anyone in our company. It has given us the ability to get feedback from our clients and track buying trends in real time. It is about to get bigger, much bigger, than it is now. We are playing with tinker toys compared to the emerging skyscraper that e-marketing will become. To get ready for this marketing shift, companies should look at the unique ways that they can advertise goods and services online. Currently the boon in social networking has crossed over to business. Facebook ads are targeted to a person’s listed interests on their profile page. These are minimal ads. The client is able to opt out or give a thumbs up to an ad. In this way, the ad becomes interactive. When planning for the other side of recession, think beyond the traditional static ad. How can you succinctly make your advertising point and give the target a way to interact with you in the ad? Those who can emerge with a way to engage the client in advertising will be poised to market well on the other side of recession.

Another thing to consider is how the complicated world has been reduced to a list of groups and causes. Your political views, your religious views, your favorite movies, activities and restaurants are all now the subject of group pages on Facebook. I am asked to join groups that make very short (and sometimes, shallow) statements about my likes and dislikes. Fans of a certain cause can prove to be fertile soil for marketing. Those who emerge with a marketing plan on the other side of the recession should not miss this point. Building popular sentiment around your product may never have been so easy to do as it is right now. In the past, we have spent millions of dollars doing extensive market research before launching a product. We have spent countless more millions on building brand recognition and making the market aware of our products. That process has been reduced to a group page with opinions shared, customer satisfaction recorded, and the power of a social network to grow interest.

Web sites will also change on the other side of the recession. For most, web sites are a place of pure information. As more people work from remote offices (another shift I see coming to pass in the aftermath of the economic downturn is the home and near-home office) being able to do more on a company’s web site will become imperative. The consumer will expect to get real-time quotes, be able to securely view and pay their bills, chat live with a customer service rep, etc.

So much for print media, what about other forms of advertising such as TV and radio? The web has already had a great impact here as well. At Hulu.com, I can pick up a TV show that I might have missed. I listen to online radio stations at work. They allow me to build my own play list and toss any song that I am tired of listening to in favor of something else. Again, we see the impact of the consumer making choices. The successful marketing efforts will be the one that engages the client in some kind of choice.

  Choice is the key word here. We have always had choices in marketing, haven’t we? It is what drives us to the big box stores in droves. It is why we pass five restaurants in favor of the sixth. We have built our lives around choice. The marketing plan going forward will recognize a new dimension of choice. Consumers will choose how they want to be advertised to and push allegiance of a product on their friends in an interactive way. The consumer will demand a certain amount of kowtowing to be coming their way from producers. This is also where formerly in congruent worlds will collide. Those who merge social life with charity work with politics and religion (two formerly taboo subjects to marketers) will do well. So the sale of your product may need to give a portion of the cost to a charitable cause of the consumer’s choice. So you may be giving dollars to fight AIDS in Africa, the local Boy Scout troop, a church, a hospital, a fire department, etc. The smart marketer will get ready for this and curtail any problems that certain groups might cause for your company.

On the other side of the recession lies a changing environment. Make sure you are ready to move your company on to success when the economy rebounds.