Marketing to Drive Downturn Growth
As the new financial year begins, you may be faced with a slower than usual business pipeline or have concerns about the possible impact of an economic downturn.
If this is the case, your initial reaction may be to cut back on spending, and flatline sales & marketing investment.
But as business leaders share in this Forbes article ‘3 tips for facing scrutiny during economic downturn’, taking a longer-term view and maintaining a healthy level of marketing investment through a recession enables strong businesses to grab market share from weaker competitors and come back fighting.
Jill Willis, Attract & Engage Managing Partner says: “During downturns, business owners and marketers must balance efforts to pare costs and shore up short-term sales against investments in long-term brand. In challenging times, it can be incredibly tempting to focus marketing on discounts and promotions, and its true they may yield some short-term increase in revenue. But always have one-eye towards long-term results and spot competitive brand opportunities that can yield long-term advantages.”
The start of the financial year marks a perfect point for reflection on marketing strategy and investment.
At Attract & Engage we’ve supported B2B and B2C businesses through downturns and periods of intense uncertainty, helping them emerge stronger as a result of considered marketing investment. As businesses large and small once again feel the pinch, our advice is to hold fire on immediate marketing budget cuts to avoid doing more harm than good. First, examine past performance and gain a clear understanding of what’s worked and what hasn’t and consider how currently market conditions are altering your customer’s needs and wants.
Here are #4 tips to help you kick off the financial year on the front foot.
Double down on your website
When faced with uncertain economic times, doubling down on website design can deliver your best marketing tool. Webpages should be optimised for mobile and easy to navigate, with a clear page layout and optimal functionality to help visitors find their way to your products and services – fast.
Consider how you can increase the content you publish, with helpful articles to gain organic traffic from search engines and case studies to demonstrate your expertise. In addition, apply search engine optimisation and take the opportunity to refresh the keywords you include.
Save time with automation tools such as HubSpot Workflows. Once your website and sales process workflows are set up you can automate a huge chunk of sales functions, tracking prospects and moving them along your pipeline.
Future proof your content strategy
The continued rise of social to drive engagement and direct sales means that to be effective, marketing plans need to include highly targeted content. Audit your existing content to make sure it’s aligned with the brand values you want to communicate and the current need of your end user. This may be different in challenging economic times.
Focus on evergreen content, with no ‘sell-by’ date. Repurpose as much as possible, turning white papers into infographics, and static visuals into video.
Add a new marketing channel
Expanding into a new social media marketing channel is an easy and low-cost way to create a new route to market. For example, if you have a presence on LinkedIn and Facebook, you may choose to branch out by adding Instagram or TikTok.
It’s worth noting that your target audience may dominate one social platform that you’re not currently using. What’s more, social media is a great way to keep customers engaged, and it opens up an entry point to valuable sales conversations that customers in a recession may feel less confident about having.
Update your email marketing efforts
During a recent survey carried out among marketers from the UK, it was found that the approximate return for every £1 spent on email marketing stood at £35.41. Email marketing is, without doubt, one of the most cost-effective tactics in the marketing toolkit.
This doesn’t mean you should leave well alone. In challenging times, you can improve the effectiveness of your email marketing by giving it an overall refresh. Define your goals, clean databases, make it easy for users to sign up, optimise for mobile, automate, realign tone of voice, add value and reward loyalty.
Personalisation is an absolute must, as are compelling subject lines to grab the contacts attention, increase engagement and drive action.
Revisiting your marketing strategy is an excellent way to ensure you’re ready to face whatever comes your way.
At Attract & Engage, we’ll help you decide what you should be doing and (more importantly) what you shouldn’t. Get in touch now for smarter growth marketing.
