When there is blood on the streets, buy, buy, buy. That includes digital marketing.
An economic downturn is by default a season where you should be ready to come up with as many innovative ideas for survival within your space. Traditional approaches to marketing will most times lose their efficiency in seasons where the natural market conditions are altered negatively causing buying power and purchase behaviors to become greatly unpredictable… hence, the need to test new strategies, new channels, new ideas, new platforms or new tools in order to find an edge in the harsh climate.
Major benefits of investing into digital marketing during a economic downturn
Better price and Cost-effectiveness
There’s a saying: Buy when there is blood in the streets. Even though this directly applies to buying assets and financial commodities, it also applies to marketing prices. The cost of social media ads usually enters a decline during a downturn due to less competition… since it’s a bidding system, less competition means lower bidding price. So, you might want to consider buying when there’s currently blood on the marketing streets.
Reclaiming Market share before the next bubble
Businesses that that survives the recession are the businesses that will eventually ride the bubble market. In the past 100 years, studies show that during recessions, companies that do not reduce their marketing budgets actually get more sales during and after the market rebounds. So, economic declines are actually windows of opportunity to take over most of the seats available… before the party resumes.
Tips to finding a competitive advantage for your brand’s marketing in the current climate we are in
Your competitive edge is hidden in your brand’s DNA… you don’t necessarily have to create the advantage, you only have to discover it.
The marketing advantage that would stand you out and is most likely there already… it can be easily found in the peculiarity of your brand or business.For instance, a design agency would find it easier to focus and create more info-graphics and social media creatives at scale than a law-firm would do… here lies the real reason why you need to know your internal strengths so you can use them as a leverage in your marketing.
Do some Marketing SWOT analysis: You need to take a few step backwards and check the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that the new economic climate brought into your marketing arena.
This kind of analysis will help you:
- get a better understanding of which marketing channels to focus on
- address weaknesses in your ads or marketing assets
- see threats to your campaigns before they impact your bottom line
- leverage the assets and strengths you already have
- improves long-term goal setting for your marketing
Don’t just copy any brand blindly…. competitive marketing advantage loses potency when you copy another company’s strategy without any synergy with your own strengths.
You don’t need to win across all channels.. you only need to win within your arena.
You don’t have to win in Search Marketing, Social Media, Email Marketing, Viral Marketing all at once… NO! You just need to find a channel whose demands for results aligns best with your marketing capacity and focus the most of your resources there.
