Recession-proof your marketing

Planning for a downturn? Thoughts on how to market your way through the coming months…

Slowdown…downturn…difficult trading conditions…a weak market…the end of the economic super boom…recession. Whichever way you spin it, many businesses expect the coming months to be tough.

So, what are you going to do about it? We urge you not to listen to the harbingers of doom. Instead, take control of your business and start thinking about how you can be more competitive, make the best use of your budgets and plan for the tough times ahead. Your marketing budget could be your best weapon in this particular battle.

We’ve listed some ideas below that might just help you recession-proof your marketing…

Prepare a marketing budget. Unfortunately, financial controllers often consider any marketing spend to be non-essential expenditure when considering ways to cut costs. The best way to convince your finance team that your marketing activity is critical to the business is to use his or her language. Proving that you have a well thought out budget and have looked for ways to control costs might help you to defend your corner.
Retain and grow customers. We all know that winning new customers costs a lot more than keeping your existing customers. If your current customers know and trust you, think about how you can achieve growth by getting them to spend more with you. It might be as simple as picking up the phone and thanking them for their custom. It’s good to talk.
Share marketing costs. Do your customers need products or services from other companies? Perhaps you can share the cost of your marketing campaign by joining forces, using co-opted marketing funds from partners who provide complementary products and services.
Audit your marketing activity. Consider how much of your current marketing activity is measurable. If you are going to cut back, collect information so that you can make a rational decision. Can you save money by reviewing certain suppliers and maintaining quality?
Outsource vs. insource. Don’t assume that doing your marketing in-house instead of using an agency is cheaper. It will probably just shift the cost. If the activity is not a core competence for your business it will probably cost you more to do it in-house. There are only three reasons to outsource anything: it should be better, faster and cheaper than doing it yourself.
Go back to basics. A sure way to waste money is to not set campaign objectives or prepare a proper brief. If your messages aren’t right you can waste a lot of money implementing ineffective campaigns.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. What has worked before? If you’ve developed content, themes or creative work for a campaign – how can you get more out of it, make it work harder for you? Will your print campaigns translate to online media? At the same time, don’t think that you must do what you’ve always done. Look at the real cost per lead from that last event you exhibited at – is there a more cost-effective way?
Negotiate. If something is working well for you, but budgets are really tight, don’t just cut it dead. Meet your agency and explore ways of reducing the cost without killing the project.
Look at alternative ways to market. If you haven’t tried online promotion, email or “pay per click”, now may be the right time to try it. But take some good advice otherwise, you may find you are wasting your money by promoting yourself under an unwise choice of terms.
And lastly, talk to a good agency (like MAXX!) who can work with you to maximize what can be achieved within your budget. Advice is often free and people outside your business can often see things in a different light from those who work within an organization day in day out.

Catherine Jenkins
Business Development Director, MAXX Design Limited

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