Five top tips to help you keep marketing during a recession

As we continue to navigate the lingering effects of the recession, it's clear that the challenges are not just a memory but part of our current reality. Our intention isn't to provoke anxiety, but rather to acknowledge that we're navigating these turbulent times together. With this in mind, we've consolidated five strategic tips designed to empower your business in maintaining its marketing stride and preserving forward momentum amid economic uncertainties.

What have we learnt from marketing during previous recessions?

The financial crisis of 2008 saw mass redundancies, business closures and lasting austerity measures in the UK. It’s safe to say it was a terrible time for many businesses and people. Marketing budgets and departments were decimated - in many cases to the detriment of the business. 

There were however some organisations that did well from the recession, for example, much loved Mailchimp rose to the occasion; “how did the brand survive and thrive during a recession? Well, the company was founded during the 2001 crisis and was able to do well because of it. In 2008, the company survived because they changed their entire business model. They became a freemium business, and their revenue soared after that.” We’ll talk more about generosity marketing later. 

So it’s not all doom and gloom, within every financial crisis there is an opportunity to invest in projects and spend time working on activities that you previously didn’t have time for or weren’t able to do because the timing wasn’t right. 

We also live in a different digital world to the 2008 crisis. Many businesses rely solely on their digital shopfront to support them - a crucial element to consider when cutting back marketing.

1 | Do a Marketing performance review 

The best place to start when considering how your marketing will survive a turbulent time is to look at your performance so far. 

We recommend looking at the following:

1. Pipeline and revenue trends
2. Channel performance 
3. Velocity VS conversion rates 
4. Making sure you have a data drive plan 

Once you know where you stand you can make those all important data driven decisions about where to cut or in some cases increase budget based on actual performance. 

2 | How to spend the marketing budget you have

We always recommend using the 80/20 rule when it comes to deciding where to spend:

• 80% of your budget should be spent on channels and activities that you know are working.
• 20% of your budget should be spent on experimentation and test and learn

It might seem counterintuitive to allow 20% of your budget to be spent on experimentation, but with rough times also comes new innovations. New social channels appear, new behaviours develop and your audience might start consuming content in a totally unexpected way. Remember how during the pandemic we were all stuck at home and going to every webinar under the sun all of a sudden? Leave space in your budget for that.

3 | Customer advocacy and customer marketing

You’ll need to work on plans to retain your clients and also potentially expand or cross-sell products into your pre-existing client base. Why? Because keeping and expanding your current ARR is vital to keeping yourselves afloat. 

Running a customer advocacy programme will allow your business to bring your customers closer to your business, build amazing relationships and then in-turn amplify out to the world why using your product is so vital. 

Most people in their working environment have 10-50 vendors they work with for various tech and service solutions. The likelihood of your product being in their top three is slim, unless you’re running an advocacy programme. When the axe comes swinging at their budget you want to workout a way to get yourself into their top three.

We also know that referrals from advocates convert better than anything marketing and sales can do, 55% of people are more likely to buy B2B SaaS based on a referral compared to marketing activities at 34-38% or sales interactions at 22%. 

It’s never too late to run an advocacy programme and begin customer marketing. 

4 | Track your marketing performance

Set yourself some short-term objectives (we recommend using OKRs) and then closely track your marketing performance against them - allowing room to pivot! This will allow your marketing team to remain focused, spend sensibly and also accelerate anything that’s working well. 

5 | Generosity marketing

If your company is having a hard time, imagine how your clients and prospective clients feel? We’re all going through the mill. Now is not the time to lock everything down behind a gate and shove product messaging down their throats. 

Be generous with your marketing efforts, product and time. As we saw with the Mailchimp example earlier, they created a freemium version of their offering to support businesses through a tough time and it paid dividends. 

Here are some top tips for being generous with your marketing:

• Offer useful, meaningful content that can support your audience with their challenges right now. 
• Ask your customers how you can help them right now and create content that speaks to this.
• Co-create content with advocates that showcase their current difficulties and how you can work together to resolve them.
• Create a community for your clients and prospects that offers them a space to ask questions, seek support and is a safe place to gather intel into how other organisations are coping.