Keeping Up With Your Marketing During A Recession

Are you dealing with the realities of a dreaded recession, having the right strategy to adapt and deal with it is now more important than ever.

In a recession or any economically tough time, businesses will tighten their belts and often, the marketing budget is the first to be cut or completely axed. It’s done because the marketing spend is the easiest to cut, it’s dollars you can’t ‘see’. Unlike downsizing a company vehicle, or making someone redundant, cutting your marketing budget is far easier to do.

So why should you keep marketing?

Brand awareness

Marketing is essentially standing in a crowded room waving your hand around for attention. If you don’t wave as often, people won’t notice you as much. If you stop waving altogether then eventually, people won’t even remember you. And when leads and revenue start to drop, you won’t blame it on the fact that you cut your marketing budget right back, you’ll blame it on the recession.

Your customers may not be able to spend with you right now, but when they are, they’ll remember you.

Competitive advantage

The key in a recession is to keep waving. Even if you must revaluate and redistribute your marketing spend – keep waving. As you keep waving, and others stop – you’ll be in a critical position: you can get more ROI (return on investment) by marketing in a recession than in a growth economy. The room is less crowded and so you spend less to gain more sales, than in a growth economy when competition is higher and you’re having to spend more for an ultimately lower return (you’re having to wave 10 times harder).

Reducing your market presence on the other hand, is going to give your competitors an opportunity to take advantage instead.

And what’s the best way to deal with this?

Don’t slam the brakes

Slashing marketing investment is a mistake because it weakens your brand and you’ll come out less profitable post-recession. If you’re finding it too hard to maintain your current spend, focus on the core strategies – quality over quantity – instead of cutting everything off completely.

Invest in a digital marketing strategy

Digital marketing offers all sorts of options, channels, ways to track and measure compared to traditional tactics. There are countless ways you can keep your brand presence alive using digital marketing: Search engine optimisation, display ads, search ads, social media, blogs, newsletters and so much more.

Not only is it cost-effective, but much faster and more flexible compared to traditional media campaigns. Online campaigns can quickly be adjusted to new marketing strategies and offer measurable results on the performance of your campaigns. You can accurately measure ROI to help identify what is working and how you can spend it more efficiently.

Key takeaways

If this is the first time you’re having to take your business through an economic downturn, you don’t need to think of this as a threat, in fact you can still grow your market share by keeping on top of your marketing. Marketing shouldn’t be considered an expense or the first budget cut when times are tough, but as an investment which helps make your climb at the end much less steep than it would have been otherwise.

We are in for some tough economic times, but keep waving your hand, and you’ll be in for sunnier days once the world is back on track.

• digital marketing
• downturn
• marketing
• recession