5 Strategies to Help Your B2B Company Weather a Tough Economy

Original article by Steve Ohanians

As economies around the world brace for a recession, B2B businesses like yours must adjust their strategies to stay competitive. Prospects are carefully considering their budget priorities—especially in the tech sector, which has been hit hard with layoffs and an uncertain business climate. You need to be proactive with your marketing to ensure your company successfully navigates a challenging time.

Economic downturns are inevitable. But you have control over how much they impact your business. Below, we’ve outlined 5 strategies to maintain or even expand your market position for whatever lies ahead.

1. Understand Your Buyer’s Needs are Changing

As organizations look to rein in expenses, your business competes with the same number of companies in your sector for fewer opportunities. It’s no secret that businesses tighten their spending during uncertain economic times. Instead of pursuing new or innovative solutions, they grow selective and more resistant to unproven, experimental approaches to their problems.

Under the threat of a recession, your prospects are likely to focus on investing in tried-and-true strategies that have yielded results in the past. Customers want cost-effective, efficient, and value-driven solutions. Your marketing and your business must reflect that you understand those priorities.

One way to attract more budget-conscious prospects is to reduce the barrier to entry by tweaking your offerings to support a lower initial investment. Beyond shifting your entry-level offerings, you can also be flexible about your terms of service. For example, if your company includes SaaS among its offerings, you can introduce a six-month term rather than a full year to potentially draw new clients resistant to a higher initial investment.

2. Focus on Your Value Proposition

As your prospects adjust their spending priorities toward initiatives that deliver value, your B2B’s digital marketing should follow a similar shift. Your company needs to emphasize how your services will help clients save money, improve efficiency, or solve critical problems.

Emphasizing your B2B company’s value proposition starts with developing a powerful brand platform. Fundamentally, a brand platform provides your company with a springboard to ensure your messaging framework, design, and communications are all in alignment.

WHY B2BS THRIVE WITH A BRAND PLATFORM

At Clear Digital, our brand platform development process is inclusive, comprehensive, and efficient. We work with you to combine your brand’s purpose, your positioning statement, and its unique promise to form the basis of your communications. We also apply your brand attributes and supporting elements of your brand’s story to create a platform that’s authentic and stands out in a crowded marketplace.

A brand platform informed by a well-defined value proposition allows you to make better marketing decisions and create a stable foundation during tough times. As companies in the B2B tech industry face the need to reorganize their resources, the right platform allows you to form a connection that attracts and nurtures your best-fit prospects.

3. Prioritize Retention Among Existing Clients

Retaining the client relationships your company has is more cost-effective than the investment required to acquire new ones. Your team needs to regularly check in with your customers to evaluate how they are doing and working to be empathetic with their needs. Along with frequently gauging their satisfaction level with your services, you can also explore ways to offer additional services to suit their needs.

If you’re looking for a web design agency partner, ask to see their NPS survey results to ensure you’re making the right choice.

For example, if one of your customers plans to spend less with your company to weather the economic uncertainty, you can offer more hours in your service contract to address a need at no additional cost. Along with supporting your retention efforts, your ability to be flexible and responsive will also help your clients emerge from the downturn stronger than before — which is also good for your future relationship.

THE VALUE OF NPS SURVEYS

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys provide a valuable window into how well your company is serving clients. Built on a 1 through 10 scale that measures the likelihood of recommending your services, NPS scores below 9 should be a target for your retention efforts.

At Clear Digital, we like the differentiating factor our NPS surveys provide as a means of measuring our client relationships. If you’re looking for a web design agency partner, ask to see their NPS survey results to ensure you’re making the right choice.

4. Optimize Your Website to Reflect the Climate

Your website serves as the first and most crucial touchpoint between your company and its potential clients. During an economic downturn, you face increased competition for new opportunities. Now is the time to ensure your website is in tip-top shape to build trust among your visitors and generate the conversions your business needs.

If your website no longer reflects your brand identity, represents your current offerings, or supports your needed marketing initiatives, you can’t question whether you need a change. The question comes down to how much of a site update you can afford. Even if a redesign is not possible, optimizing your content and user experience is a cost-effective way to strengthen your marketing and build trust among prospective customers.

Your site should clearly express how prospects will save money, work more efficiently, or gain an ROI from your work. Adding interactive tools such as ROI calculators provide a persuasive illustration of the benefits of your services.

5. Leverage AI in Your Marketing Strategy

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are quickly becoming an invaluable resource for B2B businesses to enhance their marketing. AI software now enables companies like yours to quickly test landing page performance, research market trends, and create personalized user experiences. With tools like ChatGPT handling repetitive tasks, your marketing team is freed to focus on strategic initiatives.

AI’s increased adoption in our industry doesn’t mean jobs are being replaced with robots or that the technology produces flawless results. AI still generates errors, which means your team needs to oversee its work.

That said, investing in these technologies provides valuable insights into your customer and the marketplace. Eventually, understanding how to use AI will be as important part of a marketer’s resume as knowing how to use CRM software.

Navigate a Tough Economy with the Right Partner

Economic downturns are always difficult. But as you examine your marketing priorities in response to a shifting climate, you don’t have to implement these changes alone.

At Clear Digital, we specialize in working with B2B tech companies to strengthen their brand and navigate shifts in the marketplace. If this sounds like the kind of work that will help your organization through a challenging time, we should get started.

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