Rethinking your Digital Marketing Strategies During a Recession
 

Ahead of the long winter months, animals, by nature, have stocked up on whatever food they can get to avoid the scarcity that comes with the seasons. We attempt do the same during a recession. 

While hoarding necessities is one of the most common consumer reactions to a recession, it is also typical for most to hold off on purchases. 

This changes the way demand and supply interact with one another. However, on the digital market, people tend to react differently. 

This is what most businesses fail to recognize. Retail has been changing at an unprecedented speed in the last few years. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, the sector was undergoing a massive restructuring, and people do seem to be spending less on the high street.

In 2019 alone, there were more than 9,000 physical store closures in the UK, along with some 85,000 job losses. Despite this, online sales continued to grow, reaching 21% of total sales in 2019 – a figure that is expected to rise to over 50% by 2024.

Though digitalization may be new to some businesses, a brand must understand that the online market is separate from their physical outlets. 

Even without an economic downturn consumer behaviour on online platforms and their reaction towards digital marketing is different from that of traditional marketing methods. 

The reach is significantly wider, and you can expand or decrease traffic to your pages by simply putting content out. That said, how to reframe your digital marketing strategies during a recession?

 

Recognize the Difference

The first step to changing your digital marketing strategies during a recession is to recognize the difference in financial capabilities and the effect an economic downturn has on their spending habits. 

Rather than pursuing your regular customer profile portfolio, it’s best to identify how it shifts during a recession as this will determine how your content will be reframed. 

Focus on a Cost-Effective Offense

While research has shown that brands that invested more on their digital marketing strategies during a recession saw better ROI and rose above their competition in the long run, this does not necessarily imply that you too must spend all your marketing budget towards creating social media and digital marketing content during a recession. 

Take Dollar Shave Club $4,500 (£3,600) launch video as an example. Though not solely responsible for the company’s success, it still played a significant role. Within 48 hours of its debut, the video encouraged 12,000 people to sign up and it’s been viewed over 26 million times since then. 

Again, your digital marketing efforts don’t have to be costly, but they must be consistent and relevant. The key to keeping your current revenue and possibly expanding is to stay in the game. 

This brings us to why it is encouraged for businesses and brands to boost their digital marketing efforts during a recession. While it isn’t exactly guaranteed that you’ll earn more than when not in a recession - especially if your competitors think of doing the same - continually creating marketing content will keep your brand on viewers’ minds. 

Time to Get Creative

One of the biggest mistakes a business could make is to cut back costs and effort towards digital marketing materials. An even bigger mistake is to not take the opportunity to try out something new. 

Digital marketing is an already cost-effective method of promoting one’s brand. During a recession the demographics of your digital marketing changes as does your consumer profile. This makes it a great time to adjust your brand identity and explore targeting new demographics. 

You can even play on the current trend of more people working-from-home (WFH) like Apple did in this viral campaign.

What ever your strategy - video should be a part of it. Video continues to be used by an overwhelming majority of businesses, and has been trending in this direction for a number of years.

91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2023.

Knowing this, we’re including a lot more video production into our marketing mix this year. We’re also helping our clients focus a lot more on the customer journey on their company websites, so as to ensure they are optimised for the shifting consumer patterns. Don’t forget to apply these insights to your social media presence too.

Before you go!

We have a wealth of experience working with purpose driven and ethical brands. Check out the ‘Our Work‘ page on our website for more on the digital marketing campaigns we’ve created for our clients.

If you’re already set on working with us send us an email using our contact us page or drop us a line.