How can marketers add value during a recession?

Everyone's talking about an inevitable recession. Should we be worried as marketers? Maybe. At least we need to be mindful, pressure on marketers will increase to prove the return on marketing expenditure and the first cost saving a company would look at is reducing the marketing spending even though it is not ideal. As Henry Ford once said, " A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time". So what should we do ? there is no single solution or advice as the decisions are subjective based on the company's strategy, cash positions and the industry they operate. Below I have pointed out some areas that we can focus on. 

“When times are good, you should advertise; when times are bad, you must advertise.” If you are cashed up, buckle up and ride the wave! look at the recession as an opportunity, invest on advertising and capture your audience while your competitors are playing safe. A recession is always temporary and when markets are corrected and ready to boom, your brand will be in the top of customers mind if you utilised the opportunity mindfully.  

"Take care of your clients, they will take care of your business" In a recession whether it's B2C or B2C, the consumption reduces and it will become hard to find new customers or opportunities, so you can't afford to loose any existing customers. So use some extra energy to nurture and retain your existing customers. Maybe upsell if you see an opportunity. 

Inbound marketing: Inbound marketing is a strategy which attracts leads by creating valuable content that provides knowledge or information aligned with our products and that solves customer problems. Blogs, white-papers and social media(Organic) are good examples of inbound marketing. White-papers can be used as a lead magnet and blogs can be used with a Call-to-Action to drive traffic or generate leads.These inbound marketing strategies will generate long-term results while you cut down Ad spending. 

Creative Advertising: Modern marketing is heavily based on performance & direct response marketing where more you spend, more return you can expect. But, creative advertising has that magical power to influence a potential customer to make a purchase or keep your brand in top of the mind without any ad spending. a creative ad doesn't need to be an high budget production, it could be anything, even a viral "meme" or a short video recorded from your phone would do the job. 

User Generated Content (UGC): Be creative and use your Instagram, facebook & TikTok followers create content for you, Best part is it's totally FREE. Just create a viral trend or organise a competition. If UGC is not ideal for your product, creating more social media content to create a better reach would definitely help. 

Targeting: this is not the typical demographic or socio economic targeting we do in marketing, that target audience of ours could be tight with expenditure cuts, therefore slightly pivot your targeting towards high value customers and un-impacted industries, Put more effort on acquiring them as they could create more value for the efforts we put. 

Improve affordability: During a recession the customer affordability decreases for many macro economic reasons, so we could look at improving our customer's affordability. Special discounts, bulk discounts and product bundling are good psychological triggers to increase sales. 

Got more ideas or suggestions? please share in a comment below...