Marketing Strategy is More Important than Ever when Times are Tough
It feels like wherever you look at the moment, there’s doom and gloom. On top of the doom and gloom we’ve already gone through over the past couple of years. It’s easy to get bogged down and feel overwhelmed, because frankly, it’s everywhere and the way we live our lives now means it’s difficult to switch off. And when you’re a business owner, you can’t afford to switch off either – you need to stay alert and agile to the changes that are happening, so you can be reactive.
The cost-of-living crisis in the UK is being felt in every sector and area of society – everyone’s feeling the squeeze. Inevitably this means that people’s buying habits and behaviours will change. People are already being especially wary about where they’re going to spend their money.
It’s worth taking lessons learnt from the pandemic in turbulent economic times, as businesses had to cut down and change what they offered to their customers.
So instead of standing still and cutting your marketing budget, which is what tends to happen when slimming business costs, let’s see what you can do to future proof your business in the testing economic times to come.
Double Down
Instead of prioritising finding new customers, doubling down and trying to focus on the customers that already engage with your business and boosting loyalty can be a much better use of your marketing budget and time. Lifecycle marketing is about tapping into key relationship stages of a customer’s journey with your business. It’s all about providing even better value, rewarding loyalty and basically doing as much as possible to learn about your customers, what makes them tick and being able to use this data smartly.
Customers that feel special and important to your brand will be more likely to return the favour and you can do this through lots of different ways i.e discounts, special content, exclusivity, freebies. It is much harder to attract new customers than it is to retain the ones that you already have, so don’t neglect them and reward them for loyalty in trying times.
Be There
In difficult times, customers don’t want to feel the hard-sell either. Focus on providing content or useful tips that aren’t directly related to selling or your products. Customers can appreciate it when you’re being genuinely helpful, especially if it’s content or ways to deliver value and provide genuine good in their lives. Keep showing up for your audience and make tweaks your marketing for brand awareness too.
Budget Wisely
In hard economic times, every penny that you spend on your marketing budget is important, so focusing on the ROI for every marketing move is important. Follow your data and metrics and assess what’s working best for your business and where you can find most of your customers – where are thy online? Email marketing still tends to offer one of the best ROI.
Outsourcing can also be a really good use of your time and spend, as doing everything and doing it well can be tough.
For more advice, info or help with your own marketing output, get in touch with us at DOWO and we’ll give you a hand.