Will the declining economy benefit online marketers?

With the economy going through a really bad stage and the rand plummeting against the dollar, euro and pound, I wonder to myself how this is going to affect web agencies and more specifically, online marketers.

Let’s face it, most companies have websites already, some being brilliant and others being simple static ones. Regardless of how the website looks, it’s there and it’s available to anyone on the internet. I sent out emails to 10 companies and individuals, whom I know, in South Africa, asking them for an idea of what they charge for the development of a website. The results were, unfortunately, very spread, from as low as R6 000 to R150 000 depending on the sort of project. Let’s assume a company wanted a blog designed, developed and customised — I would say that any company charging less than R20 000 for such a development would be crazy, unless they’re a small team and the requirements are very simple. Let’s stick to the value of R20 000 for discussion purposes.

R20 000 is a great deal of money at the moment relative to what everyone is facing with the decline in our economy. That being said, companies will be more hesitant to spend that amount on a website when they could be using that to rather drive targeted traffic to their website and work on conversion tactics. After all, the whole purpose of a website is exposure to a product and service, which is where the ROI comes into play.

In my opinion, I think the decline in the economy is going to benefit online marketers in a huge way, as companies shift their tactics from spending large amounts on new websites to rather more exposure of their websites.