The Economy vs. Zipline Interactive
Over the last couple months the news has been filled with stories about the economic slowdown. With so much publicity, as a business owner, you can’t help but worry about what kind of effect this will have on your business. So far, here at Zipline we have escaped the slowdown fairly unscathed. Other than the loss of a couple construction clients who have closed their doors, our company, and our clients have continued to do well despite tough economic times nationally.
In the last month, I have heard reports from several friends in the advertising industry about tighter cash flow and slowing demand for our services. I have even heard reports of some agencies dissolving, although, thankfully most of our friends and competitors seem to be doing fine. Many of these agencies experiencing a lower demand offer an exceptional product at a fair market price. This leaves me wondering how we as a company can maintain demand for our products in a slower economy without becoming unprofitable.
Shawn and I have spent a great deal of time trying to identify differences between our company and some of the companies that have slowed significantly due to the current economic situation. One major factor we were able to identify that differs between our company and our competitors is our focus on interactive development. Zipline Interactive since its inception has been primarily focused on providing high level web development services. As we examined the current mix of projects in our shop we could see a shift in demand over the last few months towards interactive advertising.
Why has there been so much interest in interactive? I wish I knew the exact answer. Presumably, with a smaller advertising budget many clients are shifting their advertising dollars to their website and other online promotions to try to maximize the exposure at a lower cost. In addition, with a tighter budget it is more important to track the effectiveness of each campaign. This is easily done through the advanced web analytics products.
It seems this is not just the case in our local economy but is occurring on a national scale. An article titled “Digital ad firms strong despite economic woes” published on MSNBC stated, “Analysts, meanwhile, predict ad agencies offering Internet-targeted services will continue to see that business grow at a slower rate, and will fare better than traditional advertising companies over the coming year.” In addition, a report from Advertising Age last week said, “Digital agencies are increasingly winning “agency of record’’ accounts from large clients.” One example it cited was AKQA, which is getting ready to roll out television and web campaigns for Flip Video, Pure Digital Technologies Inc.’s fast selling pocket video camera, as an agency of record.
This trend may spell trouble for some traditional advertising agencies. The cost and knowledge required to add an interactive department to an agency can be a huge barrier to enter the market. At Zipline we have forged strategic partnerships with a number of local and out of area agencies to help them fulfill their clients request for interactive services. As a company we will continue to look for these mutually beneficial partnerships where we can function as the interactive arm of an existing agency.
All in all, thus far, we have fared well in the economic slowdown and we are doing our best to be proactive in finding new ways and methods to market ourselves and our services in a tight economy. It seems as if we are offering the right services at the right time and we are planning to do our best to capitalize on this. We will also continue to work hard to expand our skill set and our abilities as an agency so we can offer a wider range of services to our existing clients.
If any of my readers have good ideas, or innovative ways to promote interactive effectively I would love to hear them. What do you guys think about the economic situation? What has the effect been on your business?
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I work for a SaaS company that provides a Healthcare Practice management application. Primarily our web based application focuses on patient management, scheduling and documentation.
Our sales guy have found that over the past month or so there has been a big increase in people looking for something to aid them in marketing. People are more interested in how our application is going to increase revenue from bringing in more patients, not just cutting costs and improving office productivity.
So we are hastily developing new parts to our application to aid in marketing. Giving them access to more reporting information to aid in traditional marketing techniques, and developing other ways to decrease the number of no-shows.
Simply, we are meeting the needs of our clients.