Whether you think a recession is coming or not, the economy world wide is already suffering. Depending on which definition and country you look at, it’s already here. Especially small to medium businesses are still shaking off the effects of the past 2 years. Now the rising energy prices and inflation are leading to even more goods and services growing in price.
Running a profitable business is already hard enough, and if you attended any type of business related event in the past months you saw plenty of worried faces. If reading the news nowadays makes you nervous, you are not the only one.

There are more recent events that proved the worried entrepreneurs right: Among others, Apple and Tesla announced they are cutting down on hiring new employees. That’s not necessarily proof for a coming recession, but it’s definitely evidence that the economic situation is changing. The prices are growing, so not only are your expenses going up, the majority of your usual customers have less money to spend also. This alone will make some ventures write red numbers.
If these companies’ predictions turn out right, a bunch of businesses are going to have a really tough time. Or go out of business altogether. 
Operating under these conditions is a delicate matter, but this isn’t the first recession and marketers have more tools at their disposal to deal with it than ever. Where’s change, there’s opportunity and the lost market shares will be picked up by somebody. Some will lose, but some will definitely win. And one thing is certain: It’s not random. And the sooner you start preparing, the higher the chance you’re going to be on the winning side. So the challenge is clear, but what are the cost effective and recession proof methods the winners will utilize?

In order to set the foundation for them, we have to stop looking at our problems, and look at our customer’s problems. They’re the ones who bring in the money after all. Your target audience’s wants and needs very likely have already changed in the past months and if they haven’t there’s a big chance they will soon. Checking if your customers wishes still align with your marketing strategy, and readjusting if necessary is the first step to make sure you’re on top of everything in the next year.
If you don’t have a dedicated team doing market research, right now is the perfect time to invest some time and effort there. You can go one step further and see if you can maybe serve a totally new audience with your offering, by adding to your marketing strategy or even expanding your products/services. 

Search Engine Optimization

With your strategy set up properly, one of the most cost effective ways to reach new people is SEO. The cost of performance marketing and ads will more than likely go up, optimizing your visibility on Google won’t. And if it does, it won’t be nearly as much.
Through optimizing the way your website is found technically, you will rank higher in the search results. This is not only important to be found by more people organically – not all SEO is created equal. If the field work is done right, you will be found by people who are looking for a solution to a specific problem or value proposition. This is where the best search engine optimizers seperate themselves from marketing interns: Done properly, an improvement in your search engine ranking almost always leads to greater conversion rates. 
And the best part: Your ranking increasing, directly means your competitors rank will decrease.
Achieving this, by design, takes time. So the emphasis is on start now. One of the factors required for a top ranking in your nieche is up-to-date content. That brings us to the next cost effective and recession-proof marketing method:

Content Marketing 

Content marketing can have many forms, the blog you are reading right now is one of them. You are spending time working in a respective field anyway, so you might as well share your expertise and get the most benefit out of it.  And if your blog is good, you will build a following of people who care about your niche, which can come in very handy. Not only to convince customers, but should you want to expand and hire an expert employee for example.
But the content doesn’t necessarily have to be on your website. It can lead there later. It could be on your YouTube channel, where you publish informational or entertaining videos for example. Or pictures on an image sharing site. The possibilities are endless. Another possibility is of course social media. That’s where a huge part of content is produced, and you have a lot of tools there to reach the audience you want. It’s no coincidence Instagram, Facebook etc. are the fastest growing marketing funnels in the last decade.
Creating content for social media takes a lot of effort though, and whether you do it yourself or have somebody/a whole team do it, optimizing your content strategy is a must to keep it efficient. If you want some tips on how to do that, I recommend reading the next blog coming out on Monday, which will be about content planning and strategy. 
If you want the most cost effective marketing available, not only do you have to consider reach, but also aim for the highest conversion rate possible.

Email Marketing

To my knowledge and experience, Email Marketing remains the highest converting marketing technique. It’s also the hardest to execute. First you have to set up the infrastructure and automation behind it of course. You will also have to pre-produce or at least plan some content for it. And when that is done, you have to convince visitors to hand over their Email adress. No easy task, but you can offer some freebies that benefit your respective audience for example.
Here’s where most people get it wrong: Getting a social media add wrong won’t do that much harm. You audience isn’t invested in it and they can’t do much about it if they didn’t like it anyway. But if they trust you with their Email and you fail to capture their attention, or even worse, annoy them with low quality content – there’s rarely a coming back from that. Not only will they cancel their subscription, the stain on your brand will last forever.
The flipside is of course, if you manage to provide captivating copywriting and they gain value from the Email – the conversion rate will be worth the effort multiple times over.

I’ll end this post with arguably the most important part of achieving a high conversion rate: Your website. I know that’s rich coming from a web dev, but hear me out. 
No matter if you sell physical products locally, run an online store or advertise a service. If your website is where your funnels lead, it’s where all of your (potential) clients go. Duh. It’s where they inform themselves about your business and offering. It’s the center and the endpoint of your marketing at the same time. And it’s also where you lose most of your sales. In a time where consumers have less money available to them, having a website that separates you from your competition and converts the highest amount of sales possible from all your marketing funnels is invaluable. 
It’s also your platform to benefit from SEO, convince your audience to give you their Email and if you do Ecommerce it’s where your clients spend most of their time interacting with your business. In short – it’s not just your opportunity to sell, it’s a necessity to not miss out on sales.

Whether you swim or drown during this coming phase depends on more factors than just your marketing. But utilizing these methods you are going to get through the down-phase of the economy better than those who don’t realise this potential. What’s your plan to get through the struggling economy? Shoot me an Email or a DM, I’d love to hear it.