‍Key takeaways:

• The IPA’s analysis on who does best in a downturn shows that businesses that either maintain or increase their marketing spend during difficult economic times recover fastest.
• When economic change impacts customer behaviour, it’s business behaviour that needs to pivot - not the budget.
• The right digital marketing strategies can help brands survive and thrive during a downturn.

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Marketing during a downturn

Economic conditions are creating two key dilemmas for brands:

• There are fewer people ready to buy at any given time, leading to a short-term drop in sales and revenue.
• Marketing can often be the first expense pulled, leading to long-term drops in sales and revenue.

It’s a dilemma facing many brands today. 

Do you reduce your marketing and hope sales keep coming? Or, do you increase your marketing budget, hope sales increase, and use that revenue to pay for the marketing? 

Or do you consider a third choice: Focus on what works and use the right digital marketing strategies to make your budget work smarter and harder? 

Those who take advantage of a well-executed digital marketing strategy will undoubtedly thrive. So, what should you do with your digital marketing during a downturn? 

Let’s take a look at the top four digital marketing strategies during a downturn.👇

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Budget-friendly digital marketing strategies during a downturn

Here are four strategies you can implement to maximise your budget during a downturn:

Strategy #1: PPC

If your competitors are feeling the pressure and cutting back on PPC, your space becomes less competitive. There are fewer businesses bidding on ads, bringing the cost per ad auction down. 

Plus, whereas before, a customer might have seen ads for three or four companies about the same product or service and be forced to choose between them. Their choice is simplified when they’re only seeing one or two brands.

And your customer acquisition cost will be cheaper. 

For example, Data gathered by TotalRetail found that the cost-per-click (CPC) of Google Ads dropped dramatically in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Brands responded by reducing their outgoings in the hope of reducing risk and protecting the business.

Only later, and too late for many, did they realise that digital marketing was the solution they’d needed from the beginning.

By the time they resumed campaigns, the space became more competitive than before, as other businesses had continued their digital marketing and increased their market share.

Strategy #2: SEO

The same goes with search engine optimisation. Brands that paused activity or reduced budgets lost search rankings or became dwarfed by their competitors’. 

Instead of pausing SEO activity, a well-thought-out SEO campaign can help you reach new audiences and grow your business. Plus, it can help you improve your website so that it converts more visitors into customers. 

Even better, SEO can help you lower other marketing costs by helping you to get more organic traffic. 

In short, SEO can help you weather the storm during a downturn by helping you keep your business visible online and driving traffic to your website. 

Strategy #3: Content Marketing 

Similarly, content marketing depends on momentum. Pausing content marketing efforts during a downturn leaves you playing catch-up once things start to recover. 

Equally importantly, content shows both current and potential customers that they can trust you to be consistent. 

It maintains your brand visibility while delivering value to your audience, even when they’re not ready to buy. 

Here’s the thing: consumers may not be buying, but they still have needs. That means they still research, learn about pain points, and look for potential solution providers to pursue later when they can make a purchase.

Then, when things improve and buyers are ready to spend again, you can be confident they’ll look to your brand as a top choice.

Strategy #4: Social Media Marketing 

Your presence on social media is critical to maintaining and improving brand awareness. 

While other businesses hunker down and let their brand or product voice disappear from social media, the savvy out there know this is the moment to make your mark. 

Not only that, but to announce to your target audiences that you’re still here, that the downturn hasn’t beaten you, and that you can always be relied on. 

It’s a seriously powerful marketing message to get out there when everything else is so uncertain.

The importance of metrics

Of all aspects of business, few provide more or better metrics than digital marketing. 

While having the ability to analyse every inch of a campaign, website, or social post, can be overwhelming, it provides valuable insight in ways other departments can only dream of.

The fact that digital marketing is so measurable is a huge win for both large and small businesses.

Digital marketing can help businesses figure out the right strategy at the right time for the right business. 

During a downturn, this kind of measurability could prove to be the integral reason why your business not only survives but thrives.

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Wrapping it up

Our single most powerful piece of advice for digital marketing in a downturn? Don’t stop. This might seem selfishly motivated, given our line of work, but the evidence is overwhelming. 

We’re all for taking time to re-evaluate plans and to assess whether the foundations of digital are in place, fit for purpose, and operating efficiently.

In short, the decisions we make about our marketing today influence the future of our businesses and our market share for years to come. 

In essence, the key is to push forward with your marketing. If you don’t, someone else will take up the space you left behind. 

But don’t rely on the digital marketing approach you’ve always done. 

Review what’s changed in your space, how your customers might have changed their buying habits, and then adapt your strategy accordingly. 

Here are a few articles you might find helpful while you review your marketing:

• 8 steps to developing a successful content marketing strategy
• Top 9 SEO best practices for an effective strategy
• How to optimise your PPC campaigns for success
• Top 12 best practices for your paid social media campaigns

If you’re unsure about your digital marketing and how competitors might be reacting, you can always request a free audit and digital marketing review. 

Our team will review your website and identify the best strategy for your business and the optimal approach to secure the sales you need. 

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