Businesses try to cut costs in any way they can during a recession. Unfortunately, this often leads to businesses cutting loose their digital marketing agencies.
Coupled with the fact that potential clients are tightening their purse strings, it can be a rough ride for any agency.
It seems like a lose-lose situation. Is it worthwhile to market your agency in times of uncertainty and unrest?
Yes, but be smart. Your workload and how you interact with your clients will determine your agency’s marketing strategy during a downturn. Your ads or the new services that you offer will become less important. Agencies need to focus on keeping their high-quality clients when a recession strikes.
This means offering clients personalized solutions to meet their specific needs. This also involves analyzing what’s not working. What can you cut back on? What services are you offering that doesn’t really provide much value for your customers?
When marketing in a recession, there are many things to avoid, but the main idea is to focus on your client and let your work do the talking.
Take a look at the way your clients behave
What is your best marketing tool? What is your best marketing tool?
Each company will respond differently to a downturn, and agencies must adapt their response accordingly. While a meal preparation company might be worried about rising food prices, banks are unlikely to be.
Understanding the needs of your clients can mean the difference between drowning and treading on water during a recession.
Understand your client’s goals and put yourself in their shoes. It is important to understand how your clients prefer to generate leads and reach new customers. What are the new pain points they’re discovering?
Provide personalized solutions to fit your client’s concerns and address them.
Your meal preparation client could create a newsletter on affordable family meals, or your banking client could provide budgeting tools to customers via social networks. These tactics are cost-effective and can help clients address recession concerns.
You should take your clients’ specific concerns and work with them. This will not only keep them happy, but they may also be happy enough to tell others about your excellent work.
It’s also a great time to post case studies on the internet, via social media, or your company blog. This will show potential clients what you do to get through difficult times. You can ask your satisfied clients if they are willing to provide a testimonial. Use social media to showcase your successes.
Focusing on retaining high-value clients is a great way to promote success in difficult times. Happy customers are the best way to create a successful business.
Discover what services don’t deliver results.
All businesses make the mistake of trying too hard to please everyone. Your agency doesn’t have to. In a recession, it’s important to focus on your niche, find out what makes you unique, and make sure that you deliver.
Ask yourself the following questions: You should ask yourself these questions:
- What are the services you provide that don’t do much for your client?
- How many conversions, not just leads, did you manage to acquire during previous campaigns?
- How much did it cost to lead a person?
- Do the costs justify the conversion rate?
- A marked benefit was there to the company.
- Does customer engagement increase?
- Did your client receive more positive reviews?
- What could you do to improve the next campaign?
You might offer social media scheduling to your clients, but they either already have a person in-house or aren’t interested. Your clients may have told you that they prefer email marketing to blogging.
You can prepare better for the inevitable economic rebound by conducting an audit to determine what is working and what is not.
Examine your workflows. You may be paying more than necessary for the time it takes to create content for your clients. Consider streamlining your process to reduce edits and produce content faster. Use the information you collected with clients. This is the perfect time to invest in technology. Anything that will make your agency more effective and scale faster, whether or not there’s a recession, is a good investment.
Why would you do this when trying to market your business? You can allow your staff to focus their best efforts on retaining high-quality customers by optimizing your agency. Employees who are stressed and exhausted produce tired and stressful work. Allow your team to thrive, and your clients will be happier. They may even spread the word.
Paying for advertising can be expensive and not always the best solution
Money can solve some problems. Marketing in a downturn is not the best time to use this approach.
Resist the temptation to spend money on a flashy TikTok ad or a sexy TikTok clip. It’s possible that you’re not getting your customers from Facebook or TikTok. Advertising is only effective if your target audience already uses the channel.
Use this information to find your audience before you spend money.
During a recession, organic outreach is the best way to reach out. This is a much better (and cheaper) way to set your agency up for organic success. This means SEO, including keyword optimization as well as accurate and strategic Meta tags.
Customers will only consider services when they are in dire need. If your website is organized, clear, and optimized, people will find you more quickly and are, therefore, more likely to use your services. These are the types of clients who will result in better conversions and a higher bottom line.
Take the best out of it.
No matter how well you prepare for them, recessions will always be difficult. If you are smart, they can force your agency into becoming more efficient and effective.
To thrive in lean times, you need to understand the best way to approach the market. Your agency should take the time to determine this.