Marketing During a Recession

Marketing during a recession can pose a few challenges for your business

Whether your business is already feeling the effects of the current uncertainty in the economy, trying to mitigate the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, or preparing for what more may come – don’t stress!

The team at Big Marlin Group is here to help. In this blog, we want to discuss the importance of continuing to market during a recession, how to adjust for marketing during a recession, and successful strategies for marketing during a recession that your business can implement.

Why is it important to continue marketing efforts during a recession?

It’s important to continue marketing efforts during a recession for various reasons. Firstly, marketing during any time of year, including during a recession will help your business continue to stay relevant. Even though consumers may not have as much discretionary income at their disposal during a recession. It is important to have continued marketing efforts as when they do decide to budget toward products or services that your business may offer, you’ll want to have your business be high in the search results or at least top of mind. Consumers during a recession or economic downturn are seeking stability. With a reduction or lack of marketing, it’s important to consider how consumers would continue to have awareness of your business’s offerings and feel that sense of stability.

We recommend continuing a strong marketing effort during a recession as not only will this allow your business to stay top of mind, but you’ll also stay connected within your target market community. Staying connected and building relationships with your customers increases trust in your product or service. Trust is important during a recession as consumers are unsure of where to spend their hard-earned money and what they may consider a necessity.

How to adjust for marketing during a recession

When marketing during a recession, you may be considering new avenues to save money and adjust your business strategies. A marketing budget is extremely important. If your business decides to cut back on its marketing budget, it poses a risk that your digital presence may become less relevant. SEO is extremely important in the modern marketing age whether in a recession or not. Reducing your budget and marketing efforts will impact your business's SEO score and increase the opportunity for your competitors to be able to capitalize on your lack of presence.

It is recommended that your business maintains marketing spending and even consider increasing advertising during a recession. If your competitors decide to pull back in their marketing efforts, your business will be ahead of the game in increasing your overall market share. A good example of this happened during The Great Depression between the battle of Kellogg and Post Cereal. When the Depression began, Post decided to decrease its marketing efforts and overall spending. On the other hand, Kellogg decided to double its advertising budget, heavily increase their efforts into radio advertising, and centered a lot of attention on its new cereal, Rice Krispies. Even as the economy continued to carry a lot of uncertainty, Kellogg’s was able to increase profits by 30% and become the cereal industry’s most dominant player.

Recessions can create opportunities to fulfill new challenges. If you must cut spending in your marketing spending, begin by thinking about the frequency of advertisements. Specifically for Facebook Ads, you don’t want the frequency rate of your ads to exceed 5. If a customer sees your ad too much, it’s easy to get bored or tired of it, and often leads them away from wanting to act and learn more. The best frequency rate is a 3 or lower, this ensures the most optimum performance from your ads.

On the theme of consistency and maintaining a lower budget, consider using the same formatting for each ad to maintain brand guidelines throughout your feed rather than creating something entirely new each month. Using a template enables you to easily edit a few elements like the main creative picture, tagline, and caption. Using the same template, it’ll save your business time and money when having to create a new monthly or quarterly ad for your business. If you need help with creating a custom template for your business to use for social media posts, Big Marlin Group offers services to do so.

What are some successful strategies for marketing during a recession?

A few successful strategies for marketing during a recession would include targeting your current customers rather than having a big focus on retargeting missed customers or acquiring new customers. Having a loyal following of customers is extremely beneficial, especially during a recession as consumers have so many options as to what they can purchase and where they can save money.

When increasing marketing with your current target market, you’ll likely be able to have a higher sales conversion rate as it's usually much more effective to convert repeat or existing customers rather than trying to recruit a new or missed customer. Recruiting a new customer or retargeting can increase your cost per lead and overall digital marketing budget as a lot more dollars will need to go into your ad spend.

Another successful strategy for marketing during a recession is to ensure consistency. By implementing consistent branding in your marketing efforts, you’ll have a greater chance of getting your message across and having it stick. With consistent and engaging marketing, you’ll be able to create a stronger sense of loyalty as your product can be more clearly received and depicted. Engaging marketing motivates your customer to buy the product even during a recession as they’ll have a familiarity with your branding.

A different strategy to consider when marketing during a recession is the tone of your marketing. Even if the brand identity of your business may be witty, you’ll want to make sure that your message has a bit of sentiment to what is going on in the economy. Customers want to feel like your business cares about their needs and they’re not just another sale. The more your efforts make the customer feel valued and appreciated, the more successful your business could be during a recession.

One successful strategy to increase customer value is by offering promotions and reduced pricing. During a recession, customers are looking for the best deals and savings while still getting the best quality item or services. By offering sale incentives, payment plans, or temporary price reductions, it’s likely you’ll increase your market share against competitors who aren’t offering any type of incentive.

Don’t Stop Marketing During a Recession!

Marketing during a recession will certainly come with its challenges but don’t give up! Get comfortable with being uncomfortable as increasing marketing efforts during a recession could be a huge breakthrough for increasing the market share of your business. You may have to go against what your gut is telling you to do but the potential ROI will make it worth your while.

If you need assistance with marketing your business during a recession or a second set of eyes on your current PPC ads or overall business plan, contact our team at Big Marlin Group to discuss your needs further and we’ll be happy to help.