One of the first budgets most businesses cut during a recession is marketing – and that’s a huge mistake.
Marketing is critical to help businesses survive economic downturns. Cutting your budget or pausing your efforts is the last thing you should do.
Let’s get right into the issue here. Businesses around North America are feeling the stress from all sides:
Drastically higher interest rates – Canada is at its highest interest rate since 2001, while the US is at its highest in 16 years
Skyrocketing commercial rent
Declined post-pandemic foot traffic
Increased costs for rent, food, and gas without increased wages or supports
All-time high rates of poor mental health impacting employee attendance, productivity, and creativity
A discouragingly high volume of ‘quiet quitters’
Whether your customers are people or other businesses, they have less money to spend right now. But that doesn’t mean they don’t still need products and services.
They just have to be more careful with their budgets, do more research before buying, and get a lot more reassurance along the path to purchase. A well-marketed company stands to not only survive tough times,
but to earn customers away from competitors.
In this article we’ll break down why it’s smart to invest in marketing during a recession, how it works, and what you can do to adapt your marketing strategy.
Why Does Marketing Matter in a Downturn?
When people are thinking harder about how they spend their money (or if they even should), you have to try harder to win their confidence. That’s just a fact.
But let’s instead look at the benefit to you, the business.
If sales are slowing down, why would you give up on the tactics that help increase awareness and attract potential leads? And consider this: if your competitors are making cuts and slowing down their marketing, why wouldn’t you take advantage and fill that gap?
It’s also important to remember that when it comes to marketing (especially SEO), it’s much harder to regain lost ground than it is to maintain.
“Economic slowdowns don’t last forever. Markets are cyclical,” said our founder, Shawn Johnston, who has been through three such recessions as a business owner. “Investing in your digital marketing will set you up for success when the economy inevitably bounces back.”
“In some ways, a slowdown is an advantage,” he added. “It gives you time to focus on your business, your operations, your process, your marketing, and improve your systems and strategies. That way when things get busy again, you don’t just go back to keeping up. Now you have a stronger underlying strategy to drive you forward.”
How Marketing Drives Growth in a Recession
Here are 10 specific ways marketing strategy combats the impact of recession.
1. Never Stops Selling
Marketing assets have the unique ability to fill in operational gaps created by a recession, like scaled-back business hours or reduced staffing.
Your website, social media, and any digital ads will work for you around the clock. The more of these marketing assets you actively, strategically maintain during a downturn, the better off you’ll be:
- Optimized, up-to-date website
- Active social media channels
- Email list and outreach strategy
- Website FAQs
- Support and/or demo videos (on-site and on social)
- Resources or self-serve support documentation
- PPC ad campaigns
