How to Build a Digital Marketing Strategy During a Recession

Every recession has a few different stages, including the initial drop, the slow climb out of the recession, and the growth that follows the recession. The impact of a recession certainly depends on how big the initial drop is and how long it takes to climb out of a recession. There’s a recession happening right now as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic, and there’s a lot of emotional weight that comes with that recession.

Marketers and business leaders can’t allow themselves to become paralyzed by the global crisis and the pandemic. The actions that marketers and business leaders take now will give their companies the foundation to survive and perhaps even thrive as the economy stabilizes following the recession. Marketers and business leaders need to sort out how they work with their employees and community and how they speak to their customer base during the recession.

Digital marketing during a recession

Here are a few steps you can take to use digital marketing to help reduce a downward economic turn during a recession, from our organic SEO company:

• Don’t cut marketing spending. It might be tempting to cut your marketing spending dramatically in order to conserve resources, but this can create a bigger hole for you to climb out of. You might save money in the short term but you will probably lose money in the long term, and when your competitors are doing better than you post-recession because they didn’t cut marketing spending, you will only need to spend more money to get back to where you were.
• Market like a global citizen. This is the right time to think about your core values as a company and as a business leader. Do you have what it takes to get through this global crisis with true integrity? This is not the right time to figure out how you can profit off of this crisis, because people will remember companies that are simply preying on their insecurity and fear to get ahead. It’s important to market through the lens of trauma and keep in mind that people are looking for things that will help them feel happier, safer, and more secure.
• Keep a close eye on evolving consumer trends. It’s important to keep an eye on the data and trends around how people are spending or not spending money during the global COVID-19 pandemic. We can certainly look at how things played out in previous recessions, but the current crisis is its own unique situation.
• Solidify sales and marketing alignment. It’s crucial to align your sales and marketing teams since your sales team is hearing anxieties in real-time. Marketing teams should be using insights from your sales time into how potential clients are feeling and why they are saying no. We recommend working together to take a consumer-based approach to meet consumer needs and respond to real issues.
• Double down on content marketing. Content marketing and search engine optimization are crucial in the long run, so it’s important to take steps now to improve your content marketing strategy so that your consumer behavior can return to normal following the crisis.