Avoid making the big mistake of not planning to invest in Marketing during a Recession
Marketing during a recession
During economic downturns, your instinct as a business owner may be to start cutting costs. Often, marketing seems like the most logical line item to reduce or remove altogether from a monthly budget. However, seasoned business owners know that to ensure continued financial solvency, even during a recession, your marketing investment should be the last line item you cut from your budget.
It would be best to look at it as a long-term protection strategy rather than an immediate reaction to cut costs and save money. The BEST thing you can do is continue to invest in your marketing during a recession. To ensure that your business can continue serving its customers, you must consider key strategy points and reasons for keeping and even increasing your marketing budget.
Your Competition Will Keep Marketing
What is the impact of choosing not to invest in marketing during a recession? If you reduce your marketing budget during this time, your brand and voice will become silent, giving your competition center stage. Where does that leave you if your competition has a strong strategy and decides to redirect most of their spending to marketing to ensure they stay top of mind and relevant during the economic crisis?
Marketing to existing clients
The return on investment for your marketing strategy is still very real even during a recession. Normally, your strategy is to drive sales and build relationships – During a recession, staying focused on the relationship-building side of things can keep your customers invested in your success. Having a loyal customer base is a great asset most of the time, especially during an economic downturn. It’s cheaper, simpler, and definitely more effective to keep your sales budget during a recession and market to your current client base rather than spending extra effort to find prospects and win new clients.
Your current client base wants you to succeed as much as you want to see success and stay in business. They don’t want to see you and your business struggle, and a good marketing team can help you show the right amount of vulnerability and transparency while sending a strong message that you are still here and ready to help.
Maintain Consistency with Branding and Visibility
Many businesses will instinctively cut all extra sales and marketing spending – especially if they are not seasoned and do not realize that this is absolutely the WRONG time to do that. The smarter and more strategic choice is to choose to invest in your marketing during a recession.
In reality, this time can work to your benefit if you increase your marketing as there will be less overall noise from other businesses cutting their marketing budgets. So, this means more opportunities for your business to work your marketing magic and take center stage with your message. So, aim to avoid the lure of axing the marketing spend altogether.
The best strategy now is to be consistent with your branding and continue engaging with your audience. Make sure to have a monthly plan for tactics such as blog posts, e-mails, social media, newsletters, PR content, and advertising in a downturn. A good strategy will keep you top of mind and allow you to leverage the recession environment to stand out even more.
Support and Encourage your Audience
An economic crisis is a crisis for many people. How does consumer spending change during a recession? Your marketing should always be up to date and aligned with world news and situations, and this is no exception. Maintaining a crucial connection to your audience and offering empowerment and positive messages during sensitive times will maintain that powerful emotional bond.
An analysis of nearly 880 case studies published by the World Advertising Research Center found that advertising campaigns that focused on emotional engagement turned out to be more profitable than campaigns that prioritized transactional messages, such as special offers or discounted prices during a difficult financial time.
Strategize your Resilience
Business strategy during a recession time is paramount. Over the years, you’ve invested considerable time and money in growing your brand and its reach. If you scale back now, you will lose all of that effort. Reducing your marketing efforts when a recession hits will leave your business in a weakened condition when it is time to come back.
Instead, strategize with your marketing team on ways to keep your reach consistent and maintain your message clarity during the downswing. Then, when the economy bounces back, you will not have lost the years of progress that you already achieved; all you will need to do then is a pivot and perhaps ramp up your efforts.
Staying true to your Goals
A recession is not meant as a time to give up. And, after all your work, that is not something you should want to do either. During a recession, you will want to keep moving forward and keeping your business goals in mind. Your marketing team can support you in finding new strategies to meet those goals.
A good marketing team is a versatile and powerful tool to keep your business growth consistent regardless of the world situation. If you cut or ax this magic team from your toolbox during an economic downswing, you will remove your most significant asset to staying relevant, top of mind, and connected to your audience. Instead, it would be best if you found ways to balance and see the value of your marketing spend in a recession.
Even amid a downturn, you still want to move forward. Your marketing team can help you keep your goals in mind and find new strategies to meet them. Don’t underestimate a marketing team’s versatility and the potential to keep your business growing, even when the economy is less than ideal.
Strategy always wins
At a Cue, we endlessly promote the power of a good strategy over reactions and tactics when marketing your business. An economic recession is a perfect time to bring this business prowess to good use. The evidence is clear from history’s results and recession marketing examples – A McGraw Hill research study assessed 600 companies and they found that businesses that maintained or increased their marketing budget during a recession also maintained or increased their base revenue significantly once the economy had recovered.
Outsourcing is your ticket to effectively maintaining your marketing budget during a recession.
Maintaining an in-house marketing team can get costly, and when a recession hits, the balance between saving and spending money is critical for businesses to stay afloat. A fantastic solution is to outsource expert and skilled talent at a fraction of the cost of an in-house team or employees.
Outsourced teams come with years of expertise and the knowledge you need to strategize your growth and meet your goals even in a recession.
Marketing in a recession doesn’t have to be complicated or too expensive. The right team can put you miles ahead of your competition and bring you financial peace of mind. Our team can help you through this time and ensure that you are well prepared and continue to stay center stage for your audience no matter what the outside world presents.
Connect with us today to have a deeper conversation with our specialist team on how we can help you maintain solvency and still profit during a recession.
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Leading a highly skilled Marketing and Revenue growth team, Kaare long works with some of the most powerful and innovative entrepreneurial-minded leaders, CEO's and successfully established businesses in Canada and the US. A creative, and critical thinking visionary who is led by over 20 years of experience using both intuitive leadership skills and business expertise based on extensive training and study in marketing, communications, sales, leadership, writing, public relations, relationship dynamics, human behavior, psychology, philosophy, arts and culture, and health and wellness.
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