Let’s face it; no one likes recessions because there are fewer sales, and overall business takes a downturn. The typical response for most businesses is to reduce marketing, but this negatively impacts your brand image in the long run. The brands that keep marketing gain the trust of their customers, and these are the brands they run to when they have gained their buying power back.
Why Should You Keep Marketing In A Downturn?
Most of us are shocked to hear that boosting marketing during a downturn might result in expansion. You know, businesses that continue to market themselves during a downturn stay in consumers’ minds, so when consumers have money to spend again, they naturally gravitate toward these brands.
Additionally, when you maintain your marketing initiatives despite a recession, you are sending a message to your audience of strength, leadership, and strategic thinking—all qualities that customers are seeking out in these turbulent times. Your clients and prospects will be drawn to whatever level of steadiness you can offer, even if you are not at your best.
On the other side, cutting back on marketing during a recession will lessen your online and offline presence, giving plenty of room for rivals to exploit and fill in the holes. Keeping your team productive during times of recession is a necessity, and in this article, we’ll discuss the strategies for keeping your business productive through these difficult times.
Marketing Strategies to Opt-for During Recession Time
1. Market to Existing Customers
A recession is not necessarily when you should work harder but smarter. And your existing customers are a goldmine because you get to spend lesser than you would have spent trying to bring in new clients.
Also, try to give your existing customers exclusive discounts and send them appreciative emails for staying with you through the seasons. And whether you see it or not, it goes a long way to make them feel like a part of something, making them return to do business with you.
2. Be Consistent With Your Branding
The plan here is to remain consistent with your branding. You do this by maintaining your message and engaging with your audience. You should seek to develop a content strategy, including emails, PR content, blogs, newsletters, and social media content.
3. Keep Your Audience Encouraged
It’s not an easy time for anyone. So, you should be sensitive to the times and keep sending out words of encouragement as much as possible. This step will create an emotional bond between your customers and your brand.
4. Automate Your Audience Segmentation
Small firms may scale their marketing initiatives with the help of marketing automation. However, your rivals already do mass email campaigns. They currently create email lists. How can you then make a statement?
Despite the fact that many marketing automation programs offer this fundamental feature, the majority of your rivals won’t spend the effort segmenting their communications.
Therefore, segmenting your audience is the most effective strategy to raise interaction with an ideal consumer, encourage action, and gain more business. You may more successfully adapt your message and provide them with something they need or want by identifying and focusing on particular groups of people.
5. Use An Automated Lead Follow-Up System
Recessions are when you should be as efficient as possible, and an automated lead follow-up system is your best bet. The whole point of automating your lead follow-up is that it simplifies the process for new customers to find your business.
This way, you reduce your team’s workload through the system’s automatic features such as list building and email collection, email marketing, help desk & CRM support, lead analytics, Data Collection, and Content Marketing. So, your team doesn’t have to source leads manually or over phone calls; rather, leads and data come to you.
6. Automate Expensive and Recurring Tasks
Giving humans intricate jobs and typical procedures to complete increases the likelihood that mistakes will be made, especially if they are under stress. A small error or mistake could trigger a chain of incidents that result in costly human blunders that put the organisation at danger. For tasks that require ongoing follow-ups, a larger team is required.
Additionally, hiring skilled personnel comes at a premium price that no marketer can afford during a recession. However, they also can’t afford to give up on these activities, thus the solution is to use an automated follow-up system to automate these repetitive processes.
Marketing Automation Can Put Back The Business Efficiency During Recession Times
Businesses can increase their sales and marketing efficiency with the use of marketing automation. Businesses can lower operational costs and free up staff to concentrate on making more sales by automating marketing chores that would otherwise be done manually.
In turn, this can make them stronger during a market downturn without costing them a fortune. Additionally, organisations may continue to interact with their customers even when their funds are limited by automating duties like follow-ups, lead nurturing, customer experience, and outreach.
Do you want to start using an automated lead follow-up system for your business? For a brief walkthrough, speak with our team or make an appointment. At FlowUp, we’ll use marketing automation to your advantage so that your audience can take action at scale despite being oversaturated.