With all the red flags in the market, the economy is ready to undergo the recession period soon. Even if the prediction is not gonna come true any time sooner, you should always prepare your business for the worse. The good time doesn’t last long and you have to face challenges at some point in time. That’s the reason we have come to this blog. Today, we are going to discuss the best online marketing strategies for business during the recession period.
How The Recession Affect Businesses?
When it comes to defining the recession many economists consider as negative growth in the GDP. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession is the time when you can witness a “significant decline in the economic activities spread across the world, that last more than a few months”. Here both definitions are true and indicate the same; loss of production, loss of jobs, and the slump in the consumer spending.
The recession has a very bad habit- it comes as a storm and washes off small unprepared businesses from the face of the earth. Don’t believe so? Well, the records show that more than 400000 small businesses either went bankrupt or permanently shut down last time when the recession hit the market. The point is to make sure you don’t suffer from the same faith, you need to prepare the market strategy for the next recession. Now, this might be your first time you are learning how to keep your business afloat so, to help you out we have come up with the most successful recession marketing strategies and divided them into basic rules to follow:
The first rule: Don’t cut down your budget on a personal whim: When the recession hit the ground, there is basically one place that business owners are so tempted to cut- the “budget” of the marketing campaign. Although many think that it is the fastest way to protect their money, they neglect the fact it will just push them one step closer to the destruction. Slashing down your marketing budget might save your money for short term but in the absence of marketing your brand will get weaker and eventually crumble down to pieces when it will become too much to handle.
Managing your brand reputation boost the trust factor that is very crucial during the recession and that’s why you have seen that only the businesses with strong brand power have stood all the odds including the recession. So, rather than irrationally cutting down your budget, you must see where else you are investing your money and what returns you are receiving from them.
Second rule: Perform in-depth research on your target audience: There is one thing you should learn about your customers “they change as the world around them changes. The things they need in one decade may not be the same they need in the next one”. As they are the primary source of income you can protect your business by conducting research to find out the personal interest, behavior, and motivation during the recession.
Let’s take some help from the Harvard experts to understand the nature of the different audience. According to their research, the market audience falls into four major categories:
Slam-on-the-Brakes Consumers: those who fall into this category cut down all of their expenses during the recession. These are the people who have to face the worst blow of all.
Pained-But-Patient Consumers: Such people are more optimistic about their future but less confident about the recovery in the near term. These include the majority of the households that are unharmed from unemployment that rises during the recession.
Comfortably Well-Off Consumers: these are the people who are confident about their financial position in the economy. The only difference the recession make in their lives is they get more selective about their purchases.
Live-for-Today Consumers: as you can already figure out from the title itself, these are the people that carry their days as usual and most of them are not concern about the saving. How this group responds to the recession is by postponing the big purchases for the future.
Find out in which category your audience falls and then acquire the professional internet marketing services accordingly. The key ingredient of effective marketing during the recession is emotional engagement. Researches have shown that marketing campaigns that focus upon emotional engagement are more successful than those that exhibit rotational messages.
Third rule: Analyze and everything: During the recession what you need to do to increase your chances of survival and growth is to analyze your investments and returns you are receiving on them. Digital mode of marketing has become one of the low cost but high return marketing investment your organization can make. As AI-based advertisement has made things easier than before, you will need to spend less time reaching your potential customers.
Fourth rule: concentrate on the existing customers: No matter in which industry you are serving, your existing clients are your most valuable asset during the recession period. Make sure you are focusing on most valuable customers while preparing the best online marketing strategies for business. If needed, bend over the drop to make them happy and loyal to your brand because in a hard time no one but your existing customers will help your business out.
In the end, if you listen to the Digital Marketing Service Provider Company and follow the above rules, then you would be prepared for the next recession than most businesses. However, if you have any questions in mind regarding the entire recession marketing process, then you can consult with the support team available at ProICT.