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.
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.
