During a recession, you will be forced to evaluate your marketing channels to find the one that yields the best ROI. The good news is that digital marketing channels have the data and attribution models that you need in order to track, evaluate and adjust budgets based on performance benchmarks. Here are some examples of how you can shift your marketing budget away from strategies that are harder to track to ones that are more measurable.
5 Recession Proof Marketing Strategies
- Invest in SEO for your website to drive free organic traffic
- Build your email capabilities and platform automation to keep a direct line of communication with your customers
- Build your internal marketing muscle by bringing things in-house
- Optimize Google Ads to reduce overspending
- Trim the excess on social media to focus where it matters
1 - Invest in SEO for your website to drive free organic traffic
A well-designed website is an investment that will generate more organic traffic for your brand over time. The best day to launch a website was yesterday. If you already have a website, focus on search engine optimization (SEO) to help it perform well in searches performed by your customers.
During a recession, consumers are less likely to trust a brand they’ve never heard of before. Building or improving your website in the period before a recession will help you build valuable content capital that will compound over time and drive free organic traffic to your website. In addition, establishing an authoritative online presence can help convince nervous consumers that you can be trusted during tough economic times when they are reevaluating spending decisions.
2 - Build your email capabilities and platform automation to keep a direct line of communication with your customers
Email marketing allows you to develop a personal connection with your customers. Grow your list of subscribers and increase brand loyalty by providing personalized communication from your brand in their inboxes. You can automate much of this process, which will help you minimize operating costs and increase efficiency. Choosing the right platform is key to this.
3 - Build your internal marketing muscle by bringing things in-house
Outsourcing your digital marketing can be expensive. During a recession, the goal is to maximize results and minimize unnecessary expenses. By investing in your marketing muscle now, you can benefit from lower marketing costs during a recession.
As a strategic consulting firm, we believe in equipping internal marketing teams with the audits, strategies, and insights they need to execute winning strategies and have maximum control over expenses.
4 - Optimize Google Ads to reduce overspending
Digital advertising is a great way to generate targeted traffic quickly. However, there are some keywords you’ll want to avoid because they won’t generate sales or relevant traffic to your site. By telling Google to not show your ads for negative keywords, you can minimize wasted ad spend and preserve your marketing dollars for the future.
5 - Trim the excess on social media to focus where it matters
Before a recession hits, you want to position your brand to leverage free, organic traffic opportunities. One of those opportunities is social media, specifically platforms like TikTok and Instagram which are increasingly suggesting new content to users to increase engagement.
Although the majority of traffic generated by brands on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is now through paid advertising, there is a lot of opportunity to organically grow your audience if you focus on short-form video content via TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube.
Related Resources
- How to Create Your Recession Marketing Strategy - Free Resource
- Marketing in a Recession - Your Strategic Action Plan
- Digital Marketing Benchmarks & KPIs - How To Compare Your Performance
- Digital Marketing Audit: The Secret Tool Behind Every Great Strategy
- 5 Marketing Predictions for the Looming Recession
