There have been early signs about that the Australian economy is starting to slow down and may move into decline during May /June 2013 prior to the federal election

A knowledgeable and leading expert in the environmental science area ,who has been working closely on major mining projects around the world and in growth areas such as China and north Africa said recently to me that the only thing between the Australian economy and a decline is the mining industry

Well ,the mining industry has recently shown some stability to decline activities and this may be part of the reason that we will see a further shift in the Australian economy along with retail sales and other sectors such as Manufacturing that supports the Auto industry and large infrastructure projects.

Is this all Gloom and doom ?

No ,not really because we have had a very good period of high-growth in the Australian economy and we have all enjoyed great affluence as individuals and corporate enterprises

There just comes a time when there is an adjustment and this is bought on by the external economies in Europe and America was in Asia and our own overspending and inefficiencies created in the government market ,and our reluctance to invest in Manufacturing and sectors that are important to us in Australia. The lack of investment in education ,apart from creating an Export industry is a good example of short term takings over long-term gains . We could have been the best in Asia !

Marketing wise its a good opportunity for us to sharpen our strategic knives and get into the business of analysing where we are in the market .We should analyse our businesses for those services and products where we should be sure be spending our promotional and sales effort

The 80/20 rule becomes important and the structure of our service and product portfolio does too. We do not want too much dependence on government business because this is where there will be budget cuts going on in the downward growth . We do not want to depend on one or two key customers because If they cut their budgets then we are in strife

What we must do is think about how we’re going to promote and sell to our existing customer base and to the reference base because we do not want to invest a large amount of money in trying to capture new clients and markets because this takes too long

A major area that was not there several years ago is the online marketing and online communication platform for the company or enterprise . Of Paramount importance is the maintenance and upgrading of your website so that is Contemporary easy to navigate and has good look and appeal

If you have a good website then it must be functional ,easy to act ,on with a call to action in the contact section of the website ,and it must be compared to the competition for performance

By being competitive I mean it must appear on page one or two of Google and it must be competitive with your closest competitors that you should be identify on a weekly and monthly basis

Search engine optimisation that identifies you and your strengths online versus those of your competitors is not a luxury ,but a necessity in today’s competitive market

In addition you must maintain strong brand equity and identity as this is important in attracting existing ,prior , and reference customers to which you will now depend

You also need to understand the investment effective advertising

If you have not been spending on your website or on promotion and advertising or payment for a click campaigns then you will not be able to ramp up your competitive positioning overnight

Even expert SEO activities cannot guarantee you a turnaround within 3 to 4 months so now is the time to get your search engine optimisation going and to get the blogs, social media , and support and even redesign of your site happening so you can gain from the investment before the plunge comes

Investing to late will give you a great result at the end of the downturn and will not give you that was all you need at the beginning ,which is when you need the return

The investment effect says that advertising builds the investment effect overtime as distinct from the Mere writing off of advertising dollars . That if you do not do this early on you cannot benefit from it when you need it most and your competitors are close to you in trying to gain business

Conversely those competitors who do not invest in their online marketing or communication platforms and normal marketing promotion and sales will lose because they cannot quickly get the returns based on immediate access and effectiveness for the dollars spent

Time to marshal your strategies and your knowledge and get to work and it will payback handsomely and may even give you an opportunity to take competitive market share