The past few years have certainly been challenging for UK businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic saw many pull their belts in and countless were even sadly forced to close. Then came the tragedy of the War in Ukraine and the consequences of leaving the EU starting to become apparent, not to mention an unstable Government. With all these factors it’s no wonder that the economy has been put under extreme pressure with businesses suffering as a result, but marketing in a recession is more important than ever.
The natural business response during economic downturn is to cut their marketing spend. However, there many reasons why this is not advisable. In fact, there are still cost-effective ways to be creative with your marketing spend and activities, so as not to further damage your brand during a recession. By reducing your marketing activity, your brand awareness will reduce, which could negatively impact your market share. It is then of course more difficult to attract new customers and your competitors will end up with a bigger slice of your pie!
With consumers being more cautious when it comes to purchase decisions, reassuring them that your product or service is the right choice is a vital component of marketing in these challenging times. Caution, along with creative thinking is what’s needed! And this is where OnBrand can help.
Read on to learn which marketing strategies will be most effective.
Time to take stock – Review the effectiveness of your current marketing activity
When the going gets tough, it’s a good time to take stock and review your analytics to see what’s been working and what hasn’t. This will give you great insight into where to make further cost savings. Your analytics could include Google analytics for website traffic and stats, social media insights, email marketing data and paid for ad spend. Have a close look at your current activity and spend with a fresh pair of eyes. Being able to understand all the data and ask a whole load of questions will give you much needed insight into how to focus or refocus your strategy and therefore spend!
Some example marketing review questions include;
- where your website traffic comes from (the source and medium) and which results in goal completions
- what paid social advertising was most effective (which specific campaigns and which specific ads) and by what measurement? Engagement, shares, comments, clicks
- what your top conversions paths are
- what your attribution model looks like
Customer (re)-focus – Know your target audience
You may feel that you know your customers, but how often do you review this? To ensure you are continuing to target the right customers and maximising your marketing spend, focus on your customer groups and how best to reach them.
- What are their buying behaviours and have these changed?
- What media do they currently consume and how often?
- Consider demographics and lifestyle, their typical values, interests and opinions.
All of this information is vital when it comes to understanding your customers and which platforms(s) to use to reach them. Also don’t be afraid of asking them outright too. Qualitative and quantitative research through focus groups and written surveys can be a great way to understand consumer behaviour and help you maximise your marketing ROI.
A time for evolution and diversification
Challenging times mean a time to be agile and to adapt to an ever-changing market. Companies who have reassessed their offering will be the ones to thrive. This was certainly the case with our client Adam Nathan, originally an events catering business who reinvented his business through Covid to offer a high-quality, cost-effective home delivery service. Adam increased his online orders and continued to make a profit through these challenging months, and we loved supporting him with his new e-commerce website. You can read the full case study here.
Nurture your leads for customer acquisition
Develop a plan to improve customer acquisition. Nurturing your leads through the buying process is strategic and involves planning and consideration. Four key focus areas to invest in are;
- Optimise the customer journey
- Conversion rate optimisation
- Content marketing
- Content marketing and the sales funnel
As you can see, we have written articles about all these key areas as they are so important.
Have a customer retention plan
Consider what you do to encourage your existing or previous customers to repeat buy from. How you engage and connect with them? Review things like;
- Your follow up process for enquiries by channel that they come in
- How and when do you follow up?
- What information do you provide and in which format? For example, if you send out an email marketing campaign via a platform such as Mailchimp, do you follow up on those interested parties who have clicked on a link and sent them an appropriate follow-up?
- Are you engaging with your customers in a timely manner on your social media platforms? There are many great automated CRM platforms for this such as HubSpot, but sometimes a good old-fashioned personal email or picking up the phone works best. there is an appropriate level of information and / or response at every customer touch-point through the decision-making process. Share the love!
- Are you sending personalised and targeted marketing communications?
Customer service needs to be on-point!
Build relationships over transactions. People buy from people, that’s a fact. And it’s more important than ever to build meaningful emotional connections with your customers. During unsettling times, customers need trust, loyalty, stability, transparency and value for money more than ever before. Customer service and engagement will encourage sales, recommendations and positive reviews.
It’s all in the messaging
In times of uncertainty, familiar brands with a consistent and authentic tone of voice and messaging will be more reassuring and inviting to both current and potential customers. Ensure your content marketing resonates with a wider and more captive audience by avoiding disruptive content and extreme views. Acknowledging that times are hard and that, as a business, you are sensitive to that, will go a long way. Feeling stuck? We can give you a helping hand with framing a tone of voice and strategy.
Now is also a great time to start planning your content calendar for the first Quarter of 2023. Consider a careful balance of sales driven versus softer content. Look at which key awareness days are coming up and celebrate and promote the most appropriate ones. Share fun content including team news and events, another way to get across your culture and brand personality and encourage customers to buy from you. Make sure that this calendar is translated across a range of medias, including social.
Pricing and promotions tactics to drive success
During a period of economic uncertainty, it is natural that customers will be hunting for the best deals and so you need to work hard to stay competitive. But being competitive doesn’t have to mean cutting prices and heavily discounting which can cheapen your brand. Consider targeted price promotions for loyal customers and other promotions such as refer a friend or adding value through give-aways, competitions and charity donations. All of these tactics will give you a better chance of keeping PR activities will be remembered by your audience and could prove to be more beneficial in the long run than simply pure advertising.
A great example of this was the 2008 credit crunch promotion by Marks and Spencer’s for their Dine in for £10 offer.
At the time customers wanted an alternative to an expensive night out and this offer not only still made them feel special, but it also made them feel they were getting value for money. A very strong offer which is still successful and continues to resonate with customers today!
It is the agile businesses who market harder and more creatively in tough times who come of the other side stronger. If you would like to know how to ensure your business is successful in 2023, it’s not too late to make a plan NOW and we would be delighted to help.
Get in touch now and see how OnBrand can support your businesses with its 2023 marketing goals.
Author: Catherine Firmin
Account Director – OnBrand Group
E: [email protected]
T: 03333 220022
