Marketing in a Recession: 12 Proven Tactics to Stay Ahead
Content
- Outcomes Comparison: Maintaining vs. Cutting Marketing in Downturns
- Home Buyers by Metropolitan Statistical Area
- Hyper-Focus Your Recession Marketing Plan
- Brookings’ scholarly research educates the public and informs decisionmakers on complex policy challenges.
- Things You Must Do When Your Savings Reach $50,000
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The first step is to review your marketing plan and look at various analytics platforms to learn more about how your customers engage with your content. During lean times there is no room for error, so you have to invest in the channels and marketing initiatives that yield the highest return. The first thing you need to do if you expect a recession to hit or you are in a recession is to take a close look at your current marketing efforts. So, without further ado, let’s dive into eight marketing strategies I think every Marketing Director or small business owner needs to take to protect the financial position of their business once a recession hits.
While times may be challenging, there are still opportunities to market your business and increase sales. Outsourcing digital marketing agencies are a great solution to fill skill and knowledge gaps in your current marketing team. This marketing channel is also an ideal approach to longer buying cycles, which typically occur as buyers take more time to research their options before making a purchase decision. Since remarketing ads only show to people who have come to your website, they are more likely to remember your brand, which can increase the chances that they will engage with your content again.
As you dig through your campaigns, keep your eyes open for patterns around what geographic locations, day of the week, and time of the day have the best engagement and conversions. Targeted marketing is a great way to make your marketing spend go further because you will allocate your marketing budget to only those campaigns that speak directly to your audience. A recession will cause consumer spending to shift, and you can use your existing relationships with your customers to boost profitability and reduce overall marketing costs. For example, you can look at customers who have purchased from you in the past 12 months and reach out to them through an email campaign to schedule regular maintenance appointments. You can reach out to past customers to drum up new business by reminding them about the excellent customer experience they had with you and how your products and services can continue to benefit them.
Outcomes Comparison: Maintaining vs. Cutting Marketing in Downturns
As consumer spending contracts during a recession, consumers tend to take longer to research products and services before spending. Many customers are not as price-sensitive as others, and this group is open to spending more money on a product or service if that solution offers the best value for their dollar. In optimizing each channel, you should also ensure your marketing message positions you as the best value in the market.
- That’s how many consumers say they wouldn’t purchase a product that didn’t have any reviews.
- When Kraft Heinz was getting ready to introduce eight new flavors of salad dressing, the brand first launched three targeted sampling campaigns to seek out authentic feedback and drive awareness through UGC.
- Sampling is an effective way to seek out UGC in order to help other customers discover a new product and feel confident purchasing it.
Home Buyers by Metropolitan Statistical Area
Be sure to consider how a recession will impact your audience and adapt your business messaging to address those customers. Both factors can make your product or service more enticing, and you can use these approaches to improve your position in the market. For example, flexible payment plans give access to a broader audience than traditional one-time payment options.
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Hyper-Focus Your Recession Marketing Plan
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A McKinsey study of 1,100 companies during 2007–09 found that the top fifth “retail resilients” delivered +21% total return to shareholders (TRS), while the rest averaged –4% TRS. The stock market tended to reward companies, especially B2C service firms, that increased advertising during recessions, reflecting investor expectations that these firms would capture future growth. Advertising legend David Ogilvy likewise noted that across six historical recessions, companies that did not cut their ad budgets achieved greater profit increases than those that did. Multiple studies spanning decades have found that firms maintaining or increasing marketing spend during recessions tend to recover faster and even outperform competitors, whereas those that cut back often struggle to regain footing. We examine what happens when companies maintain versus cut marketing/advertising during downturns including the 2007–09 Great Recession, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and other slowdowns. Feel free to contact our team if you want to learn more about how to market your business in a recession.
Brookings’ scholarly research educates the public and informs decisionmakers on complex policy challenges.
Many digitally native brands (e.g., Peloton, online fitness, and food delivery) increased advertising during COVID and grew fast. Procter & Gamble (P&G) maintained and increased marketing spend during COVID, leading to surging revenues in 2020. Historical support includes McDonald’s cutting ads in the 1990–91 recession, while Pizza Hut and Taco Bell increased theirs. A study published in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly concluded that hotel firms that invested in marketing during the 2008 downturn saw better immediate revenue outcomes and longer-run gains.
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This will establish you as a great solution to their lower-cost preferences and help you drive more sales. Consumers tend to reduce spending on different product categories during times of uncertainty, and great copywriting can help you speak to customers looking for more value. The first thing you should do in economic uncertainty is to audit the performance of all channels and reallocate ad spending to channels that yield the highest returns for your business.
One way to maximize your marketing investment is to engage with people who have already visited your website through remarketing ads on Facebook and Google. To bolster your recession marketing strategy, you need to find ways to drive as many conversions as possible at the lowest cost possible. Video content can be challenging to produce and edit, but this type of content can go a long way toward building trust with customers. As we mentioned before, some customers are not as price-sensitive as others, and you can attract this customer segment by recession marketing examples showing that you offer the best value even if you are not the lowest-priced option. Content Marketing is a great recession marketing strategy because the content you create will be an asset for years.
You can adjust various aspects of your email marketing and content marketing strategy to drive more qualified traffic and get those users to convert to your website. We will talk more about these channels later in this article, but the fact is that email marketing and content marketing are your best friends if you want to continue marketing in a recession. As you review these platforms to trim excess fat from your ad spend, you should also look at the performance of channels like email marketing and organic traffic.
