Why You Should Invest In Digital Marketing to Grow During a Recession (When Your Competitors Aren’t!)
Introduction
A lot of disruptive events happening in the global scene have raised fears about a looming economic crisis.
Alarming predictions about a global economic recession has prompted businesses to brace for impact. And as a result, a lot of businesses are trimming their budgets and scaling back on operations.
Generally, traditional advertising sectors are most affected by a recession or economic downturn. This is as a result of brands dumping advertising mediums with lower impact in reaching new potential customers.
They simply cannot afford such luxury and would rather receive greater value for their money by investing solely and heavily in digital marketing, known for its wider scale, high impact and impressive return on investment (ROI).
Leveraging this priceless resource tool before your competitors is crucial as standing out from the rest of the crowd is the only way to dominate and lead the pack. This is most especially important during an economic decline when the struggle for available consumers becomes intense.
The most effective way to get ahead of your competitors is to adopt and ace a process way before they get onboard. Online Marketing is ever-growing and proven to be capable of yielding actual results.
In this article, we are going through the reasons why digital marketing should be your preferred tactic particularly during this period of economic decline.
1. Enhance your brand presence
At a time when other brands will be cutting back on their visibility to save costs, you need to step up your game by boosting your brand’s presence.
Brand visibility is critical during an economic downturn when consumer spending drops, leading to a reduction in sales.
This means that there will be fewer people who are actually ready to spend, and you need to be in a position to capture and win them over with your product or service offering.
Digital marketing enables you to accomplish this feat by generating sufficient brand level exposure to deliver sales-ready actions.
It is a common habit among businesses to cut back on their marketing efforts as a means of saving costs particularly during a decline in economic activity.
But this should not be the case, as cutting your marketing budget means cutting off valuable connections with an audience, you need to weather the financial storm.
Investing in digital marketing to enhance your brand’s presence gives you an opportunity to secure and maintain a significant lead over your competitors who may not be making the same moves.
Businesses with little or no market presence during a recession are those that will be most affected by the economic contraction.
2. Cut cost on marketing and advertising
An economic recession always puts both customers and businesses in panic mode.
As a business owner, your focus will primarily be on how to cut costs and reduce excess spending.
Most times your marketing solutions typically suffer due to this budget costs. But this does not have to be the case, you still need to promote your products and services.
The smart move would be to switch to new marketing solutions that are most importantly effective, inexpensive and guaranteed to yield high ROI. Digital marketing is one of such cost-effective solutions.
As a matter of fact, unlike traditional marketing and advertising mediums, an digital marketing strategy requires more of your time than money.
Additionally, most digital marketing techniques produce results on a regular basis because of their cost-effective, engaging and creative approach.
Digital marketing allows you to employ a cost-effective marketing campaign to accomplish your sales expectations for less than half the price.
The savings with online marketing are endless. Consider the enormous opportunities social media provides.
Nowadays, a lot of brands are entering into business partnerships and collaborations with top tier or micro-influencers to promote their products or services. Partnering with social media influencers is a cost-effective way to drive engagement, generate awareness and sales.
This is the power of digital marketing. It provides you with a variety of low investment high yield channels to utilize and influence purchase behavior even during a recession.
3. Measure your marketing efforts
During an economic decline, you want to ensure that you are receiving substantial returns on all your investments, especially marketing.
Very few aspects of your business can provide you with detailed metrics like digital marketing.
While performing an in-depth analysis of all your campaigns can be, overwhelming, it provides you with valuable insights other marketing solutions can not.
Digital Marketing also makes the measurement of lifetime customer value (LCV) much easier than traditional marketing mediums. This allows for the prediction of a customer’s value during the economic decline and beyond.
The data from this can inform you of when to alter your strategy and concentrate on the cost of getting new customers.
This way you can continually modify and improve your marketing techniques to meet budget and business goals.
Marketing during an economic recession is more than just about making a sale. It also involves leveraging metrics to build a solid relationship with consumers.
A relatable brand identity and voice fosters customer loyalty. Having a loyal customer base provides you with an audience ready to engage your brand once they are able to, even during the tough times.
High-quality metrics also informs you of how to retain customers using the right marketing tactics like remarketing (using incentives and irresistible offers).
Digital marketing can help businesses figure out the right strategy at the right time for the right business. During a recession, this kind of measurability could prove to be the integral reason why your business not only survives but thrives in a downturn.
The measurability digital marketing offers if used properly can significantly strengthen your business’s ability to not only survive but thrive in an economic downturn and beyond.
4. Maintain the Lead
The business world is ruthless. It is a never-ending competition to acquire more customers and increase sales.
The more customers you have, the higher your market share and chances of steady revenue generation.
It is either you conquer or get conquered, there is no in-between. And during an economic recession, this standard does not in any way change.
If you do not outperform, outspend or outmatched your competitors, you are at serious risk of losing your market share.
It is a common practice in the business community for enterprises to cut back spending on marketing and advertising during an economic decline. However, this tactic only provides a short term fix with long term consequences.
When everyone stops marketing due to a downturn, it is time for you to develop creative and innovative new ways to get word of your product and services out there.
Employing a digital marketing approach is an effective way to accomplish this goal.
Marketing via digital channels when others have halted their advertising efforts is critical in that:
• your message is more likely to be noticed due to fewer advertisements in the market.
• your message is more likely to be remembered when other brands start advertising again.
The various digital marketing platforms are a gateway to endless possibilities. Your ability to leverage the situation is a golden opportunity to take and maintain the lead ahead of your competitors, with little or no digital marketing strategy.
5. The Internet will keep on growing
As of January 2020, there were almost 4.54 billion active internet users representing 59% of the global population.
The current figures are a significant increase from the 4.39 billion active internet users In 2019.
These intriguing figures convey a simple message. The internet is an ever-increasing sphere with no indications of slowing down anytime soon even in an economic downturn.
The internet plays a crucial role in the daily lives of millions, who continually depend on it for the latest information, products, services and everything in between.
This makes it an incredible platform to spread information on a broad scale. Currently, it outranks other media channels and its reach is expected to increase over time.
However, to harness the enormous power of the internet you need an effective strategy to generate adequate brand exposure.
Digital marketing is a means through which you can increase your brand’s visibility in a sphere where the bulk of your potential customers reside.
The beauty of online marketing is that you have complete control over your user’s experience and can tactically influence their purchase behavior.
One thing is clear: the internet is like nothing else, if someone wants to search for information on your product or service.
One thing is clear: regardless of the economic situation, the internet never dies and you need to leverage its rich resources or lose out.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that a recession always comes with challenges as an economic decline affects both individuals and businesses. However, you can minimize the impact by investing in digital marketing to make sales, generate revenue, and stimulate growth during the downturn and beyond.
Digital marketing is a fantastic way for different kinds of businesses, both small, medium and large to refine their brand messaging and target a new pool of potential customers across the globe.
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