As the first quarter of 2009 comes to a close, it may be an opportune time for some marketers to revisit and re-evaluate the marketing budgets you’ve laid out for the rest of the year. Why? With so many changes taking place in the economic climate, you need to be able to adapt and change as well, and basing your budget off of previous years might not cut it.

Whether it’s money spent on groceries, entertainment or your kids’ allowances, budgets across the country are tightening and the same goes for marketing budgets. Simply basing your current budget on last year’s won’t work, because consumer spending and behavior is very different. However, instead of looking at this as an obstacle to be overcome, search marketers should view this as an opportunity. When budgets are being spread thin and every dollar needs to count, ROI is more important than ever. In many ways, search is more cost efficient than other forms of traditional advertising and it’s more accountable. Shifting budget from other media outlets to online is a great way to cut costs and improve ROI.

You should take into consideration what you’re doing in other marketing efforts when you evaluate how much to spend in search. Have you allocated enough search dollars to capture all the traffic that will be generated by your offline efforts? Failing to do so is a missed opportunity and is not making the most of your search campaign or your offline marketing. Creating an integrated, holistic marketing plan is more than ensuring consistent messaging between on and offline, but is also taking into consideration the impact one has on the other when allocating marketing dollars.

Budget for Efficiency and Relevance

One thing to consider is that if you’re planning to increase cost efficiency by shifting budget into search, your competitors probably are as well. While this makes it even more important for you to ensure you have a presence online, increased competition can also lead to increased cost. There are ways, however, that you can minimize these increases.

Ensuring that your ads are relevant and well-targeted can help you improve your quality score, and keeping your CPCs relatively low allows you to break through the clutter of your competitors. Make sure that your ad copy and landing pages are relevant to the keywords that you’re bidding on. This will keep your quality score up. Also, consider other targeting options, such as if it would be more efficient to geo-target your campaigns to reach consumers in specific regions or cities, rather than running nationally.

Cutting costs doesn’t have to mean cutting ROI, and this is a great time to revisit your marketing budget allocation and see how you can use your online marketing to leverage your offline efforts and maximize your results.