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Times are tough. Companies are tightening their financial belts and sitting on their wallets for protection. Businesses must preserve the bottom line with responsible cost-cutting measures. As a small business owner or marketing manager for a small to midsized operation, you somehow come to your senses that while everyone is worried about the bottom line, you are concerned about the top line: growing customer base to make up the cash flow difference.
A quick scan through the marketing bag of tricks yields little to spark the kind of ingenuity required to set sales on fire. Experienced marketers understand three very important factors for today's troubled market:
1. Marketing in an economic downturn isn't about ROI, it's a battle for market share whose prize is reaped when the market bounces back
2. In order to justify the top line expenses to the bottom line order, strict measurability is a non-negotiable
3. Long-term goals cannot be sacrificed to the "anything that sells, goes" motto
Two of the three marketing principles exist to preserve and/or build brand equity, while the temptation is to resort to survival mode. Why care about brand essence while the business is drying up?
Fortunately following an hour and half session of foraging through search engines and forums, you might be on to something. Search marketing could be a measurable key to success. Perhaps the company may thrive yet another day.
For whatever reason, search engine optimization, or SEO as you come to know it, is a method for garnishing free clicks. Free website traffic! Knowing nothing yourself about the topic, you find a couple of blogs from self-proclaimed gurus and conclude that while the advertising is free of charge, a professional freelancer or agency is needed to push the prospective initiative.
With a strong desire to locate a business that practices what it preaches, you perform a search Google, Yahoo or MSN (now Bing) to find such a novelty. Taken back by the sheer volume of options and terrible white noise found in the SEO search space, it is likely that you begin clicking on the organic, or natural, listings. These are the non-sponsored listings that benefit from Google's ranking algorithm.
After three pages or more of clicking high ranking keyword domains (ex. xSEOcompany.ca OR ySEOcompany.com) and awfully generic and meaningless company names (ex. 123 National Position), you come to a terrifying conclusion. None of these SEOs, SEO companies or SEO agencies seem to understand a lick about branding. None of them act like a brand; they act like rank-mongers who care only about a ranking position and a click.
You know that a keyword domain isn't a brand. It isn't unique or differentiating, nor does it promote brand recall or strike observers in any positive way to leave a memorable impression.
One pervasive yet inconvenient truth finally arrives: SEO activities and branding are nearly in direct opposition to each other, despite what every search engine guru claims. They are "nearly" opposite because while on-page optimization may easily fall in line with brand or company standards, the nature of link building usually employs the dreaded "anything that boosts rankings, goes" motto.
The primary complement to branding from SEO is the exposure and credibility that come with displaying atop a search engine results page for the entire digital world to see. The unfortunate reality is that the hidden and deceitful manner in which SEOs and SEO companies improve search engine rankings is to link just about anywhere the link will stick. Below-standards articles, forum posts and blog comments will be written on your company's behalf without adding a shred of value to its audience.
So while I heartily favor SEO as a branding tool, please do yourself a big favor and invest a few cheap hours into further investigating prospective SEOs and SEO companies and evaluate their own branding strength before you consider turning your own brand over to just another link builder (aka. SEO guru). A few cheap hours of research could save you from expensive mistakes.
I would have to say that I have walked through the shadows of the time consuming task of creating online accounts in social bookmarking websites only to find out later onthat my work is not yet done. I would still have to post hundreds of articles in these websites. 
A lot of businesses tend to spend less on their marketing budgets when things are not going well but that's when they should be spending more! How are people going to know or be reminded about your products and services when the time comes that they need it? You see they might not buy straight away but if you keep sending them suttle reminders about your business by giving them useful information or items so that when they are ready to buy for themselves or give someone else a recommendation then then it's your business that will come into their head?