Data proves that increasing your budget during a recession can have a positive impact.

There is no doubt that marketing in a recession will be a challenge, mainly because you have to go against your instincts and standard operating norms. Add to this the changing customer behaviour, and the situation becomes even more chaotic.

During a recession, the best way to grow is to adapt. Likely, your customers' needs will have shifted during a recession, and you will need to follow suit.

Economic downturns and recessions are nothing new, of course. It's worth looking at which marketing approaches helped stave off losses in past downturns when considering how to plan for the next one. During the height of the 'Great Recession', back in 2009, Harvard Business Review published an article on 'How to Market in a Downturn'. As professor John Quelch and researcher Katherine Jocz write in the HBR article, marketing still has a significant role to play in times of economic uncertainty:

During recessions, consumers set stricter priorities and reduce their spending. As sales drop, businesses typically cut costs, lower prices, and postpone new investments. Marketing expenditures in areas from communications to research are often slashed across the board—but such indiscriminate cost cutting is a mistake.

By maintaining your position in a customer's mind, you can give them a feeling of normalcy when other parts of their life might be in turmoil. They will think of you as reliable, particularly if your competition scales back or even halts their own advertising.

In marketing psychology, they call this the 'Mere Exposure Effect', the tendency for customers to prefer your products or services simply because they are familiar with them. So just by being around when others aren't, you strengthen your position now and in the long term.

Brands grow when Share-of-Voice is larger than Share-of-Market. Evidence provided by Les Binet and Peter Field suggests that when Share-of-Voice is larger than Share-of-Market, brands grow. This is particularly true for business banking. Intuitively, this makes sense, particularly in an economic downturn; spending when your competitors are cutting back enables a more significant potential impact of a given campaign.

This is an opinion held by marketing experts Les Binet & Peter Field, who believe that Excess Share of Voice matters now more than ever when looking to achieve marketing effectiveness.

Binet and Field's core principles of B2B growth are to build a strong brand, expand the customer base, maximise mental availability, harness the power of emotion, budget for growth, and balance the budget between brand building and activation. Just like in B2C.

Binet has gone on to say: "Advertising does work in B2B… Share of Voice is a relevant metric. How fast a brand grows to a very large extent depends on its share of voice and in particular whether its share of voice is above or below its market share."

Increasing your Share of Voice and creating a brand for your business will be one of your key drivers for long-term growth and success.

Binet & Field's research shows that the best approach is a 60:40 split between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation.

Another alternative they mention is Share of Search - Share of voice is a crucial metric for setting budgets and predicting growth, but digital media make it impossible to calculate accurately. Understanding your share of search queries is a simple and elegant alternative.

A brand's share of search can help predict its market share levels several months in advance, thus helping marketers to adapt strategies in genuinely impactful ways as necessary.

"What we found is that share of search can predict market share, sometimes up to a year ahead," he said. (For more, read WARC's in-depth report: Les Binet outlines why "share of search" is a powerful, predictive marketing metric.)

In deciding which marketing tactics to employ, tracking how customers are reassessing priorities, reallocating budgets, switching among brands and product categories, and redefining value is critical. It's therefore essential to continue investing in market research. As the recession winds down, consumers will regain buying capacity but possibly will not return to their old purchasing patterns. Market research should explore whether consumers will return to familiar brands and products, stay with substitute products, or welcome innovations.

There's light at the end of the tunnel as economies start the arduous journey toward reopening. Yet as eager as everyone is to get back to "normal" after this pandemic, waves of uncertainty abound, and the future remains unclear. At this moment, it's an excellent time to consider strategies for marketing in an economic downturn that can keep your business growing.

All this research shows that savvy marketers can grow their business and gain market share through periods of economic malaise.

Of course, in order to keep ahead of the competition, you need the right staff to excel and go beyond. We at Beagle Talent have put together a Salary and Benchmarking report for 2022 (with a summer update) You can download it here.