Marketing through the recession

Marketing through the Recession

When times get tough, the pressure to trim costs is intense. Many businesses – large and small – reach for “easy” cuts first, with Marketing a common area of attention.But there are strong reasons to think before cutting Marketing activity in recessionary markets, for both short and medium term benefit.

Greig McCallum, Strategic Managing Partner from integrated marketing agency, Balloon Dog discusses the reasons why marketing activity deserves attention, now more than ever, to put you in an advantageous position over competitors.

Greig McCallum balloon dog
Quick Facts Name: Greig McCallum
Company: Balloon Dog Marketing Agency
Position: Strategic Managing Partner

Clients who maintain spend through a downturn often see their market share increase as weaker competitors pull activity. So you can win new business simply by maintaining - or if you're bullish - growing spend in tough times.

In fact, clients can find they get more for their money when times are tough because media costs become more elastic. Taking advantage of this will give your brand increased exposure - in press, online or even TV - allowing you to step ahead of competitors. We've listed below some tops tips of how to do this:

    Prioritise your most efficient channels.  Look to the channels that work best for your business – direct mail, telesales, web – to help you be really efficient. Track your ROI – your return on investment of marketing spend – to direct funds to the most efficient channels.  Maximise online opportunities  Investing in Search Engine Optimisation (the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" search results) can bring rapid results and is easily trackable to sales.  But before you spend on SEO, make sure your site is working well, ensuring there are sales opportunities at every stage. For larger firms, don’t stop tracking how effective your brand is because you’ve stopped spending. This is precisely when you DO need to know what’s happening otherwise you could miss a problem by the time the smoke has cleared. Exploit new opportunities.  Customer behaviour changes in recession but not always in the way we expect. Yes people are trimming non-essentials, but brands such as Hermes traditionally do well in recession.  This ‘selective affluence’ is prevalent in this recession.  So think about how your business might benefit from changes in customer behaviour: test, learn and adapt to these new conditions. Leverage your existing customer base.  Member get Member (MGM) campaigns can be incredibly powerful, combining personal recommendation with tangible reward. Online communities help magnify this so encourage happy customers to blog or talk about you.
  • If you do cut, try to cut fat not muscle.  Making short term savings at the expense of long term investment can be a false economy.  Items such as long-term sponsorship can be fatally damaged by knee-jerk behaviours. 
  • Finally, prudent but consistent spending in tough times usually keeps you front of mind with your consumers.  So when the upturn comes you are in good shape to prevail whilst others play catch-up. 

Of course spend itself is no guarantee of success – the quality of message, how it is delivered, the service and the product is always vital. But thinking strategically about your marketing spend in tough times usually helps develop an approach that pays dividends: lessons learned in adversity are rarely forgotten and can deliver tenfold when the economic dawn breaks.