Marketing in a Recession: 4 Steps Every Business Should Follow
Date: March 31, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has caused sudden changes throughout practically all areas of everyday life. Schools and businesses are closed indefinitely. People across the nation are being told to stay in their homes. Restaurants are no longer letting guests dine in. Additionally, COVID-19 has spearheaded an economic recession, which can prove disastrous for businesses across industries.
However, this time of economic uncertainty is no time for your company to ditch its marketing efforts. In fact, now could be the perfect time to increase your marketing. If you implement 9Sail’s 4 tips for marketing in a recession within your business, you’ll be more likely of making it to the other end of this tunnel with your business, and your workforce, still intact.
- Think in the Long Term
- Don’t Let Your Foot Off the Marketing Gas
- Identity New Patterns and Changed Behavior
- Show Your Clients Some Love
Think in the Long Term
We understand that, during an economic downturn, business leaders are required to make many short term solutions and fixes to problems that arise. However, as the business leader, you are still responsible for continually looking at your business from a big picture, long term perspective.
It would be incredibly ill advised to lose sight of your long term business goals when combating the curveballs thrown at your company by the coronavirus. While short term adjustments will, obviously, need to be made, you’ll still need to plan for the overarching future of your business. If you, the business leader, are not, how can you expect continued success as we pull ourselves out of this recession?
Don’t Let Your Foot Off the Marketing Gas
As soon as profits begin dipping, many businesses decide to first cut their marketing budget and advertising spending. Cutting these costs can yield very short term savings for a business, but in the long run, discontinuing your marketing strategy can negatively impact your brand, products, and/or services.
Marketing, but especially search marketing, is not an overnight recipe for success. It takes time to conduct marketing research, come up with an actionable marketing plan, and execute said plan successfully. If you lighten or completely reallocate your marketing budget, you’re likely to notice your brand awareness decreasing, and by the time this recession is over, your business or brand may no longer be on your target audience’s radar.
Additionally, many businesses immediately think to slash their marketing efforts at the beginning of a recession. With this in mind, your business may now see increased results, as the competition is lightening its marketing efforts. If your competitors are no longer marketing, you now have the opportunity to seize a greater return on investment.
Within the business world, every leader wants to project an image of stability, even throughout the most uncertain times. From the perspective of your clients or customers, continued marketing efforts throughout a recession yield a picture of strength and stability. As countless companies axe their marketing budget, you can let your business stand out from the pack by continuing your marketing efforts.
Identify New Patterns and Changed Behavior
Throughout times of economic uncertainty, plans need to be adjusted. A large percentage of people change their daily habits. During this continued COVID-19 pandemic, with many people stuck inside indefinitely, their behaviors are already changing. Because of this, you’ll want to closely monitor your marketing metrics to make note of any new trends so you can capitalize upon them.
If you’re working within the realm of search marketing, this means you should be paying extra attention to any new highly trafficked search queries, top performing pages, keyword ranking, as well as the allocation of your PPC budget. However, this is not only relevant for those within the SEO space.
No matter the specifics of your business, or even your industry, you’ll want to keep an eye on and new trends emerging. Identifying these new patterns in the first step in creating actionable plans to target these emerging trends. By targeting these trends, you’ll be able to see your marketing efforts pay off.
Show Your Clients Some Love
You wouldn’t be in business without your clients or customer base. Understanding their profound importance on your business’s success, you should recognize that these clients have stuck with your throughout the ongoing recession. Since they remained loyal to you, even when times were tough, you should be sure to show immense gratitude towards your remaining client base.
Of course, this time of economic unrest may not be the best moment for you to be throwing discounts to your clients, as your business needs to survive as well, but finding creative ways to show you care and are grateful for their continued business.
In addition to reaching out to them to ensure their safety, this is the time for you to be going out of your way to make your clients happy. Fulfill any and all requests as immediately as possible. You want to show your value to everybody, but especially those who stuck by you through tough times.
Does Your Business Need Help Marketing Your Business Through the Recession?
Even during the best of economic times, marketing is not everyone’s strong suit, and that’s okay. However, if you struggled with marketing during times of prosperity, you should not expect it to become easier now that we’re in a recession. Don’t think you’re alone, because you’re not.
If you’re worried about your business’s survival throughout this recession, the team at 9Sail is here to help. Reach out to us so we can get the conversation going. Whether you want to increase your marketing efforts or implement a new strategy, 9Sail can support and strengthen your efforts. Give us a call today!
