People are cautious with their money at the moment. The news is shouting about companies like Made.com going into administration and not fulfilling orders and because of this customers are questioning and researching how they spend their money, so we need customers to trust our businesses and that is where marketing comes in. Brand recognition from marketing activities can give customers confidence in your business and it is an opportunity to demonstrate that you are in a strong and reliable position. Be consistent with your marketing and people will be able to have confidence in your business.
If you pause or reduce your marketing efforts at this time, it can give your business competitors an advantage. They may see your reduced marketing as a weakness and may try to swoop in and take a bigger share of the market, something that can be hard to reverse once the damage has been done.
Targeted Marketing
Now if you are thinking about how to make your marketing budget stretch, it might be time to think about some targetted marketing. A lot of companies will reduce their advertising spend in a recession meaning that there are opportunities there. Build a customer persona, what are they reading, looking at online and what information would they find useful or helpful. Once you know who your customer is you can start being more selective on how you spend any advertising budget that you may have.
Email Marketing
Often overlooked by many small businesses, email marketing can be very effective at generating sales and enquiries to your business. If you don’t have a database of emails then now is definitely the time to start collecting email addresses (in a GDPR compliant way!) However, if you already have a list, no matter how small, use it to advertise your services. Make sure the email has quality content, it is not all about sales and when mentioning products or services focus on the value for money. Like we mentioned above, be targeted with these emails, send smaller batch emails to people with content that is incredibly relevant to their business rather than broad content that people will just delete.
Positive Vibes Only
There is so much doom and gloom in the media. When looking at your marketing, focus on the positives. Make sure that you include positive testimonials on your website and social media to help build trust and where you can back these testimonials up with statistics or case studies that talk about the benefits of your business. This positivity will also give current customers the confidence to recommend you to other businesses or colleagues, and referrals are a great way to get new business.
Social Media
Social Media is one of the most important marketing tools that you have at your disposal. But it needs to be used wisely to get a return on your time. One of the biggest mistakes we see is businesses being on every single platform posting exactly the same content. That is not going to help your marketing strategy, look at where your customers are and priorotise time on those platforms. Look at your analytics and see what types of content work for you and gets the most engagement. You will also need to invest time in becoming an active participant on social media, it is not a quick 5 minute post, you need to interact and engage with businesses and users as well as posting on groups and other pages to fully get the most out of social media.
Learn New Skills
There are many workshops out there (and we should know we deliver lots) that offer free training to businesses. If you are interested to find out about the availability for the workshops that we run email [email protected]. Or have a look on Google for free courses or email your local Council to see if they have any information on grants or courses that may be available to you.
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Now, I have been trying to think of a way to end this article with a positive message that will hopefully motivate you to build your brand and focus on your marketing without getting disheartened by the negativity in the news. Remember that not all industries will be affected by the recession so there are opportunities and there are also opportunities for businesses to show how they offer value for money and support their local communities which will build awareness of your brand. But the final word, I think I will hand it over to Maya Angelou who sums up the attitude I think we should all have when facing the recession…