With all signs pointing to a recession in the near future, there is one absolute truth all companies must keep in mind: Marketing during any financial downturn is a must. We’ve covered some of the strategies you can put in place in the past, but stretching marketing budgets and making the most of free or low-cost marketing options like social media and content marketing aren’t the only ways a CMO can prepare for a recession.
When preparing your business for a recession, the overall health of the company is important. You have to make sure the brand remains intact throughout the troubled times so you can emerge on the other side with your customer base and your team intact. Here are some things you’ll need to keep in mind to make sure your company survives.
Your Employer Brand Is Crucial
No one’s saying that layoffs can’t happen during a recession. For a lot of companies, it’s a must to survive. You don’t want your actions during restructuring to harm your band in the eyes of your current or future employees, though.
Companies all over the United States are still reeling from the Great Resignation, during which millions of people voluntarily left their jobs. This left many internal resources suffering, particularly marketing departments. The reasons for resigning are many and varied. Some chose jobs with fewer demands to spend more time with family. Others left jobs that didn’t value their contributions with adequate salaries or benefits.
The Great Resignation is just a preview of what will happen to companies that don’t handle the coming financial crunch with empathy and loyalty. It’s likely your company already struggles to cover the empty spaces left earlier this year. If you refuse to practice empathy when further reducing your workforce to weather the recession, you could end up losing crucial positions as those employees seek employment where they feel valued.
As the CMO, the company’s brand falls under your purview, which means conveying the mission and vision to employees is just as important as making consumers aware. What can you do in your leadership position to help your company retain the talent you’ll need to grow during the coming recession?
Practice Social Listening
There’s no way around it: Customers will be looking for the best possible value. Whether that means more product for lower prices or better quality will depend on individual consumers. By this point, you should know your buyer personas well enough to know whether they’re looking for quantity or quality.
If you don’t know your customers well enough to provide what they need during this time, you run the risk of losing them to your competitors. And it’s not just enough to meet their pricing needs. Customers have shown repeatedly that they’ll switch brands if they feel they get better customer service.
That means you must always be dialed in to your customers’ behaviors and predict the coming shifts as their belts tighten. By practicing social listening, you can make sure you have your buyers’ needs at the forefront of your marketing strategy.
During times of financial distress, brands must ensure they respond to the situation with empathy and authenticity. Humor is always welcome, especially when the general public needs something to laugh about, but it’s important to read the room before launching any campaigns during a recession or other widespread crisis. One misstep—one hint that you don’t actually care about or understand your core audience—and you could lose them for good. Worse, your brand image could suffer the consequences for years.
If you don’t have marketing leadership at the helm to provide guidance during the coming recession, your brand is at risk. A fractional CMO could be exactly what you need to meet your budget without sacrificing the experience a marketing executive brings to the table in times of trouble.
We’re here to help at any time. Reach out to learn how you could get the marketing leadership you need at a fraction of the cost of a full-time marketing executive.
