A recent survey of marketing professionals conducted on behalf of PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee by research firm Millward Brown indicates that 68 percent of marketers expect their advertising budgets to stay the same or decrease in the coming year although, 75 percent of those same marketers say they expect to spend more money on digital marketing campaigns.

Marketing services firm Epsilon in August released a survey that revealed 59 percent of senior marketing executives expect to decrease their traditional marketing budgets, while 63 percent plan to increase the budget for interactive and digital marketing programs.

To compliment these initiatives, Forrester Research concluded that e-mail marketing would more than likely increase during a recession, while advertising dollars would go  toward online media, that is tracked such as search marketing. Forrester then concluded that interactive social applications such as online communities, social networking sites and word-of-mouth marketing prove worthwhile because they depend not on a diminishing ad budget, but a human factor: potential customers. Social media cost is not dictated on a cpc or cpm bid and can reach a large audience on a fairly small budget.

Whether we are headed towards a recession,one thing seems very clear: interactive and digital marketing—social media marketing
strategies in particular—will play a part in how your brand survives and through rough waters.