On Bluebonnets & Branding
by Herndon Hasty on 04/24/2009 at 2:35 pm in Online Strategies, SEO
It’s springtime in Texas, which, if you’re a Yankee that means it’s time for beautiful weather, margaritas on the patio and, of course, the bluebonnets. For a few weeks every year, the Texas Bluebonnet is in full bloom along every road and in every field. If you have a young child, you are more or less required to throw them in a pile of them on the side of a major freeway at some point in the season and photograph them until you fill up every data card in your possession.
In other words, we Texans love our bluebonnets. Tell a Texas expat that the bluebonnets are out and you’re likely to get:
- Tears
- Smiles
- Stories about home, Shiner Bock and hot weather
- All the above
And then, just like that, they’re gone. Hot weather settles in for the next six months and the Texas bluebonnets are the first to go. The next few months are spent pining for them until the fall, when we can be mesmerized by high school football instead. With such a short window for the bluebonnets, you really have to make the most of them.
Unfortunately, times are tougher this bluebonnet season, even though Texas seems to be weathering them better than a lot of other places. It’s a great reminder, however, of the opportunities that lie ahead of us, even in the face of a recession. Sure, customers are harder to find these days and maintaining marketing budgets is a tough sell – let alone increasing them. Everyone’s feeling the pinch right now.
That includes your competitors.
You know, the local guys who had just a little bit of a leg up on you before this? The huge national chains that seem to have you beat on size of selection and price point? They’re all having to cut their budgets, too. That means that there are going to be fewer voices fighting for the attention of your potential customers. There’s a vacuum that can be filled by anyone who has the courage to step up and keep their profile high during this time.
While it’s tougher to get shoppers to buy than before, the bar for being able to reach customers and to put your brand in front of new faces is lower than ever. Finding ways to make the most of your branding opportunities and ways to reach new customers through targeted and low-cost methods online – especially through SEO and paid search programs – will not only help you to find new customers to take the place of those that aren’t buying right now, but will help establish your brand in the minds of consumers at a time when everyone else is pulling back their efforts to do so.
Like bluebonnet season, however, the window is short. By some estimates, the US will be pulling back into positive territory as early as later this year, at which point everyone’s advertising budgets will start to rise again and it’ll be just as difficult to get your unique message heard across the din. Optimizing your current campaigns and looking for ways to drive new, free or cheap traffic via natural search, social networking and feeds or even stepping out into broader branding campaigns are ways to find new revenue now and plant the seeds for further revenue down the road.
Bluebonnet season 2009 is definitely in the sunset of its days, so in Texas we’re all looking for ways to squeeze in a few more memories while the opportunity is there – how about you?
