How to grow during a downturn: marketing strategy for lean startups

Chris Walker?from Refine Labs said it best:

Here’s a summary of how Chris says it’s going to play out:

• Phase 1. Pump the brakes hard in survival mode. Companies try to lower burn and extend the runway. [We are here now].
• Phase 2. The realization that the show must go on.?Start to formulate a plan for how to win in this new climate.
• Phase 3. Strategy revamp.?Under the pressure of the situation, companies are forced to make strategic decisions that they should’ve made anyway.
• Phase 4. Accelerated innovation. Forced to be tight on strategy and execution, companies end up where they were going.

I’ll cover recommendations for Phase 3.

Where we are now is not looking good

The?Techcrunch article?summarizing?YC’s message to founders?says everyone should plan for the worst.?David Sacks?of?Craft Ventures?made their?meeting with founders available on YouTube?and the predictions are sobering.

Lean marketing tactics during a downturn

So how should you spend the little time and money you have on marketing? Trim sales and marketing spend that’s not immediately measurable with near-term ROI. Obviously, there will be differences across industries and companies, but a few examples that come to mind:

Avoid?boondoggles?and activities that give emotional ROI but not revenue ROI. Hosting a splashy live event for your next product launch or sending everyone to Dreamforce might be energizing and fun, but it’s possible the feeling of success is more vanity than driving actual revenue. That Sales Kick-Off in Vegas might need to wait.

I asked a few GTM experts in sales and marketing how they are pivoting their strategy. Here’s what?Alexandra Cote,?Jennifer Kutz, and?Russ Thau?had to say:

1. Vision in bull markets, operators in bears

Strong operators and tight capital allocation are critical. Grandiose visions and big ideas sputter if they don’t have the teeth to execute well. Big valuations mean nothing if you can’t grow with reasonable burn multiples (Exhibit A:?Fast)

Sponsoring a booth at a conference and having lots of great convos but no tracking system to follow up with leads wastes money and time in a good economy. Now there’s no room for it. Every marketing activity must be tightly executed to ensure you squeeze every conversion you can.

2. Reality is your friend — start, stop, continue

Get real about which marketing tactics are working and which aren’t. If you don’t have solid tracking and analytics in place, fix that now.

Pause and take time to question everything. Host an audit session to analyze what you should start, stop, and continue doing. What made sense last quarter might not now. It’s ok to review and redirect. If your team understands the “why”, they will be able to solve the “what” and “how”. Avoid “snacking” — activities that are urgent but not important. Might feel good to check things off your list, but now you need to ruthlessly focus on impact.

3. Get a strong handle on SaaS metrics and marketing analytics

SaaS Metrics?like Cash burn, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Churn, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) are all important to understanding how your marketing efforts are performing. The devil is in the details, and having strong business and operating fundamentals is key.

4. Make sure your existing customers are thrilled with your product

It’s cheaper to keep a customer than find new ones.

Double down on new customer onboarding and feature education. Ensure customer support is providing fast, friendly, and reliable help.

Spend more time with your existing customers. Dig into potential content creation, co-marketing, and cross-promotion with current customers who are already your champions.

5. Pivot campaigns from expensive and splashy to authentic and “grassroots”

Inject authenticity into your campaigns to make your brand feel more human. Spend more time on positioning, messaging, and storytelling. Spend less time on fancy animations.

An authentic product demo from the founder in a Loom video can be just as effective (if not more!) than expensive animated illustrations. Just make sure the problem, solution, and differentiation are clearly articulated.

Bobby Pinero, co-founder of?Equals?has a great product demo:

6. Invest in low cash activities with long-term ROI

Brand building through blog posts, thought leadership on social, and giving talks aren’t cash-intensive activities. If you can afford to invest the time, these tactics will make an impact now and have a long-tail ROI by improving SEO, brand recognition, and trust.

Pour some coffee and turn on a focus playlist and host a short content creation hackathon. You might be surprised who the dark horse content creators are on your team.

Note: Be sure that any content you do create gets ample distribution. Publishing a blog post and posting about it once on social isn’t enough. Make sure you’re slicing that content up and sharing often.

7. Empower employees to be a voice for your company on social media

People are more likely to engage with other people, not brands. Help your team improve their social profiles, give them a content inspiration calendar, help them write copy, and provide them with branded?Figma?or?Canva?templates to make their own visuals.

8. Revisit?foundational strategies like positioning & messaging

Revisit?foundational strategies like?positioning & messaging?is sometimes an afterthought at companies when they're focused on quick growth and ad spending. When things are "quieter" it's a good time to regroup, and refocus on these foundational things like your positioning, messaging, and product story.

9. Cleanup website performance and SEO

Get the most out of every website visitor by doing a website audit. Have you optimized your site for performance? Are there low-hanging opportunities to improve your SEO with better keywords in your website copy? Use?Hubspot’s free website grader?and?Ahrefs free SEO tool?to see if there are obvious areas you can improve.

10. Test your website messaging and sign up flow

Ask friends in your network to navigate your website while you watch or use?Wynter?to see how your target audience reacts to your messaging. I guarantee you can improve your messaging and therefore conversions.

11. Review your marketing processes and automate everything you can

Are you doing manual work frequently for your marketing operations? Check out?Zapier?or explore integrations with your existing?tech stack?that you might not have bothered to look into before.

12. Make your team feel supported, but share the realities with them

People don’t do their best work if morale is down or they fear layoffs. Help everyone understand that market conditions are tough right now, and it’s more important than ever to stay focused on the right work. Set clear milestones and incentives, then reward accordingly. Caring for your team as humans will build trust and inspire loyalty.

13. Be innovative, and if you can afford it, be aggressive

During the last downturn cycle in early 2020 when COVID hit and a bunch of Olivine clients I thought would close backed out, I had a lot of time on my hands. I took the opportunity to build?The Founder’s Marketing Playbook?and advise for?Momentum. Both are doing well — proof that good things can still happen in a recession.

When your competitors are taking their foot off the gas with layoffs, decreased ad spend, and a slowing content engine, it’s a great time to be aggressive. Hire top talent that was recently laid off and bid on keywords that are now cheaper. Just like buying real estate and stocks at a discount while everyone else is licking their wounds, you can make big strides during a recession if you have the strategy and the willpower to weather the storm.

Resource for early-stage founders and marketers:?Access top marketing leaders, strategies, and frameworks at a fraction of the cost of an agency of full-time hire with?The Founder’s Marketing Playbook.

Thanks for reading!