Companies are facing rising costs and with a recession on the horizon in many countries, businesses need a shift in marketing strategy to secure success. Learn more about what you can do as a marketer in times like these in our ebook.
As companies worldwide turn to technology to help them streamline processes and meet sky-rocketing customer expectations despite tighter budgets and less staff, we have created an ebook exploring why choosing the right technology is essential at a time like this, and the (often overlooked or misunderstood) top considerations for choosing a recession-proof solution.
How to market during a recession: learning from the past
For many, this is not our first rodeo. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was caused by a mortgage crisis that collapsed the US housing market and created ripples through Europe for years, with some countries defaulting on their national debt and requiring bail-outs from the European Union.
The 1990-1991 recession saw the reduction of active companies by 15%, Finnish unemployment up to nearly 20%, civil disturbances in the United Kingdom, and the growth of discount stores in the United States and beyond.
The one good thing we did get from these past experiences, however, is hindsight. While it might feel counterintuitive to invest more money at a time of economic downturn, it’s what the smart companies are doing.
Besides which… in the past, customer experience amounted to a friendly smile and a warm handshake. Today, customer expectations are heading ever-skywards and showing no sign of stopping. Customers expect that their experience with your brand is not just consistent across whichever touchpoints they choose to connect with it through, but that each interaction is personalized to their likes and interests and where they are in the buyer journey. Just because everything else is slowing down, doesn’t mean their expectations will. In fact, now that customers have less money to spend, companies will have to fight harder for their hard-earned cash than ever before.
What marketing teams should do in a recession?
So how should teams be marketing in a recession and where should they be placing their focus?
- Firstly, it’s time to change the label on marketing from a “cost” to a “critical component within the pipeline”. A budget cut to marketing, especially at a time like this, can have serious repercussions that ultimately result in the decline of business health. Marketing is what will get you through; give it chance.
- Remember that it is up to 25 times cheaper to retain existing customers than attract new ones, and that a 5% increase in customer retention can produce more than a 25% increase in profit.
- If hard times are forcing you to make cuts to staff, then it’s time to empower your customers to self-serve as much as possible. Ensure they have the tools and resources to allow them to solve their own problems.
- Ensure your marketing team is self-sufficient, without the need for help from the IT or development teams. Low-code/no-code tools that enable the execution of sophisticated processes through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface will empower your team to react to your customers faster and better.
- Make sure you’re meeting your customer where they are by engaging them on all digital channels. You’ll need your technology stack to allow easy integrations, enable content reuse, and for all tools to be accessible from inside one system to ensure a 360° view of who your customer is.
- It’s all about delivering the multiexperience. Ensure you’re able to turn all those juicy customer insights you’re collecting into personalized experiences across all channels and devices and that you can do so in an efficient and effective way.
- Your customer’s environment will be changing fast—increasing prices, less job security, and colder homes will all impact the way they behave as your customer. So, now’s a good time to leverage A/B testing to ensure you’re meeting customer sentiment and iterating with market fluctuations.
- There has never been a better time to embrace MarTech. Invest in technology that will help you not only save time and money (like marketing automation and streamlined content workflows), but also to do more with less (like low-code/no-code tools and artificial intelligence (AI) that helps you to analyze customer insights deeper and respond faster than ever before).
Marketing success in a recession
If we learned anything from the last two years, it has been how essential new technologies are for business survival and growth in times of uncertainty. With the right technology, companies are able to roll with the punches, pivot to meet changing demand, and create win-wins in the bleakest circumstances.
All too often, however, we at Kentico see companies focusing on the wrong things when selecting software. Rather than taking a step back to assess their current situation, skills, budget, and capabilities, they dive head-first into a solution whose vendor promises them the moon.
Ebook: 5 ways to recession-proof your marketing
Finding the right technology is imperative–the right solution for where you’re at in your digital transformation, your level of digital maturity, and along your path to your digital experience delivery goals.
That’s why we’ve created the ebook: 5 ways to recession-proof your marketing. In it, we explore the current challenges companies around the world are facing and how making the right technology selection during a recession can tip the balance in your favor.
We look at:
- How recession may hit businesses
- Why the online customer experience is so crucial at times like these
- Why choosing the right digital experience technology is critical
We’ll also give you our top five considerations for choosing a budget-friendly recession-proof solution, including:
- Ensuring ROI from your technology
- Understanding digital maturity and scalability
- The need for self-sufficiency tools
- The opportunity in artificial intelligence (AI)
- Why vendor matters and why our customers choose us
If you’re looking to up your game to meet rising customer expectations at a time when customer wallets are tight, then download our ebook to learn the most important (and often overlooked or misunderstood) considerations for choosing which future-proof technology to invest in to ensure success no matter what comes your way.