Five cost effective marketing tips for during a recession

Recessions unavoidably lead to shifts in demand for products, services and customer spending. Owing to the Coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have had to change how they optimise cash flow and are facing the challenge of what to do with a significantly reduced marketing budget. Tempted to spend it on sales promotions and short-term performance marketing? Don’t be. This may only provide short-term benefits and is very unlikely to stimulate a market that is experiencing feelings of uncertainty about the future.

To remain competitive and ensure a positive future following the recession, you should be revising your marketing strategy, plans and building your brand. Your strategy should position you as a trusted partner through building customer relationships, reducing anxieties and meeting customer needs.

It is recommended that you prioritise new and innovative marketing activities that will provide you with the greatest opportunities, focusing on the channels that will deliver the highest return from the lowest investment. Surviving a recession is all about implementing the most efficient marketing strategy, using as little budget as possible.

With this in mind, here are five tips for marketing your business during a recession.

Tip 1: Use your data to find out what’s working well

Use your data and analytics to establish what’s working well for you. To find out what your customers are looking for and to guide your marketing strategy, the following marketing platforms will enable you to review your performance data so that you can see what’s working well and what’s not working so well:

1.     Google Search Console

2.     Google Analytics

When using your data to establish your steps forward you should make sure that you: 

• formulate your marketing strategy based on the questions your customers ask the most

• understand what channels your customers are using and the types of content that they engage with the most

• invest in the content and the channels that resonate with your customers

• build customer personas

• create unique organic content

Tip 2: Use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to gain a competitive advantage

SEO can successfully position your business ahead of your competitors. Investment in SEO as part of a long-term marketing strategy will help you to be resilient during a recession and it could reduce your advertising costs. This does require ongoing investment.

Outranking your competitors for defined keywords in search will put you ahead of the rest and should have a positive impact on customer awareness and sales during a time when demand is typically low. When utilising SEO to gain a competitive advantage during a recession, you should:

• Find out what keywords your customers are using when searching for your products or services, focusing on long-tail keywords (more specific and usually longer) as these terms are used by people with a higher propensity to buy

• Make sure that every piece of content that you create has a clear goal. You should find out what your customers are searching for and create a relevant and timely content calendar.

• Expand your customer reach as much as possible, distributing your content widely on relevant sites and channels.

Tip 3:  Use e-mail marketing to engage with prospects and customers

E-mail marketing can be a highly cost-effective marketing channel if utilised effectively. You should be continually building lists of prospects and customers, gathering data such as their purchasing behaviour and demographics. You can use this information to understand and communicate with them more effectively via a targeted approach.  You will build customer loyalty and trust through targeted and personalised e-mail campaigns that address customer needs. Delivering relevant and timely content to them using e-mail marketing can significantly increase your sales. Here are some pointers when implementing e-mail marketing:

• Categorise your customers and prospects into groups, based on their enquiries, purchases and demographics

• Automate your e-mail campaigns as much as you can, whilst ensuring that they are personalised, targeted and relevant for your audience

• Have an clear call to action (CTA) in each message which supports your objectives e.g. buy now, arrange call back, book appointment

• Utilise follow-up e-mails for those who haven’t initially taken action from the first – these are called drip campaigns.

Tip 4: Seek customer reviews to positively influence your customers

Positive customer reviews build trust and strengthen your company’s reputation, which is particularly important during a recession. This is because your business is experiencing an environment whereby customer trust and confidence has declined, and not as many people are spending, so they will be reluctant to make the wrong purchasing decision. Positive feedback from other buyers will help to combat this and has the power to influence the purchasing decision.

 In order to build trust with prospective customers, your full team should seek additional customer reviews from former and current customers and partners. These reviews are a powerful tool and should be used in the content you publish and promote, particularly during a recession. To boost your user reviews, you should:

• Get in touch with previous and current customers who haven’t already provided a review, asking them to do so on, for example, Google, Facebook or Trustpilot

• E-mail people requesting that they leave a review for your business (obviously check the review site’s Terms and Conditions first)

• Make sure that you are showcasing your customer reviews on your website, across your social media channels and in your e-mail marketing campaigns.

Tip 5: Utilise content marketing to gain customer confidence and build trust

A key part of your recession marketing strategy should be content marketing as it is a proven tactic for engaging, influencing and educating prospective customers. To advance people along the customer journey, through to a sale, you can utilise different content types. This will vary depending on your business objectives, the industry you operate in and the wants and needs of your customers. Your goal is to formulate content that strengthens confidence and builds trust with your audience. Here’s how you can maximise your content marketing in a recession:

• Use your analytics to find out what questions your customers are asking, what their needs are and use this to develop a relevant content plan.

• To widen your customer reach, share your content across a variety of channels, such as blogs, social media and e-mail marketing.

• Use analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search console to track the performance of your content and to understand what is working well.

• Once you’ve mastered what works well, create additional content that meets your objectives.

• Make sure that you are addressing new concerns that your customers will be feeling in a recession, creating content that answers, explains and appeases these concerns.

 Content marketing can be incredibly effective if researched, planned and executed successfully.

 At a time when marketing budgets, workforces and company expenses are being reduced, you can still use cost effective marketing strategies in order to survive the recession.