Is your marketing strategy ready for a recession? When the times are not in your favor, the marketing strategies that used to work previously will start to stumble. So what should you do during the time of recession? Should you still continue with your marketing strategies? If so, how?
This is the question that we are going to answer in this blog. We create a lot of digital marketing campaigns. Try out a lot of strategies. But are those strategies ‘recession-proof’? Here are the 5 rules you need to follow to create an online marketing strategy even during a recession.
#1 Don’t cut out marketing budgets randomly
During a recession, the tendency of business owners is to cut out the marketing budgets. This will be a mistake. Slashing the marketing budgets will only help you safeguard your profit for the short-term. Ultimately the brand will evolve as a weaker brand and attain much less profit.
Maintaining a brand that the consumers recognize is one of the best ways for reducing the risk when the economy takes a hit. In every recession cycle, the companies that offer a strong brand presence come out to be at the top.
If your competitors are cutting budgets, you will see a better and long-term return on your investments. Thus, instead of making a random cut in marketing expenses, look at where you are spending money and what is the return of it.
#2 Build and optimize the landing pages
When the time is tough, it is more important to optimize the return on investments. Whether you are using banners, Google AdWords, email campaigns, sponsorships, a dedicated landing page is the most effective way for turning a click into a prospect. Relevant landing page optimization can double the conversions.
Along with that, sending clicks to the home page and testing your pages can also increase conversions by 48%. Combining these tactics can result in 2.5X more leads for every dollar that you spend. Most of the companies are not using this technique.
Only 44% of the clicks for B2B companies are directed to the home page and not to a specific landing page. 62% of the companies have less than six landing pages. This is why a recession is the best time to focus on these basics.
#3 Analyze the behavior of your target audience during a recession
The trick to successfully marketing and advertising during the recession is to understand consumer psychology. A recession is a trying time for most of the customers. There is an ongoing worry and stress.
Now is the time to tap into the emotional side of your consumers. This will give you an edge to connecting with them. The marketing and ad campaigns that focus on the emotional engagement tend to be more profitable.
This is not the time for creating ad campaigns with an end goal to sell. Remember that people change when the world around them changes. What your target audience used to require two years ago, may not be the same this year.
Find out their motivations and behavior trends during an economic downturn and you can still reap the benefits from the situation.
#4 Track and analyze every minute activity in detail
Digital marketing allows in creating precise and measurable campaigns. Thus, you can create much better and quantifiable results than any traditional marketing campaign. To ensure impeccable tracking, you will need tools like Google Analytics.
Combine the analytics data with your sales data to identify the best performing marketing strategies. This will also help you to cut the expenses without causing a dip in branding or sales. During a recession, it is imperative to know exactly what return every marketing investment is offering and why.
The key is not only to survive, but to ensure a constant growth as well. With ad targeting capabilities gradually shifting towards AI and machine learning, it will be easier to reach audiences. You can create much more meaningful ad campaigns related to your business objective.
#5 Boost conversions by testing, editing and repeating
No one can make their audience change their habits. Instead, the best option is to figure out what works for them and what doesn’t keeping in mind the buyer perspective. You have to do it by modifying your campaigns, pivoting your strategy until you find out what clicks with your audience.
Start by gathering enough data and then test different tweaks to your strategies. Run tests to find out what is the most cost-effective strategy. When you have got the results, repeat the process. What you have to do is refine the recession marketing strategy and distill it to make sure only the best performing campaigns are there.
Remember the brands and business organizations that thrive in recessions are the ones that most adaptive to change. Do not forget your existing customers. The marketing strategies should be focused on your most valuable and loyal customers. Reward their loyalty and they will repay you in the form of recommendations and reviews.
Some additional tips to maintain a stable marketing strategy during a recession
- Make sure you focus on finding more prospects that are ready to buy. When the buying slows down create offers that will appeal to someone who is looking for a solution.
- Align sales and marketing. At present, the prospects start buying after interacting with the online marketing and online channels long before they speak to a sales rep. Thus, make sure to integrate marketing and sales.
- Use lead management to maximize the value of every lead. The prospects are valuable corporate assets that you worked hard to acquire. Thus, in a down economy, you have to do everything possible to maximize value for them.
- Create content around the needs and questions of your customers, Tough economic times cause fear and uncertainty. Thus, you need to have content that can address these variables.
In conclusion, all we can say is economic downturns are bad for every single individual. Times like these will test even the best business organization. There are a lot of variables that are out of hand during economic downturns, the good news is you can customize your own marketing strategies to survive and thrive during a recession.
