Marketing in a pandemic: don't let the short-termists win

B2B marketer Stephan Wenger recently shared an infographic on the impact of the coronavirus on ad spending in China. The data from emarketer.com showed how digital ad spend in China is being cut from its current levels of 15.2% of total ad spend down to 13%. This comes in the context of total ad spending being slashed by $7.43 billion. 

When it comes to slashing budgets, marketing spend (especially online) is the classic low hanging fruit.

Biting the hand

But brands who take this approach are cutting away at the very mechanism that brings new customers to them and nurtures existing ones. 

Prospects don’t just see one piece of marketing once and think to themselves, “oh great, sign me up!”. They need repeat exposure to your marketing messages before they will act. This exposure can last weeks and months, or even years, but it does result in an audience gathering around your brand, and from within that audience new customers emerging.

The marketing ecosystem

Your marketing efforts aren’t just something you can turn on one week and turn off the next week. Your marketing needs to be consistent and sustained. 

You are essentially creating a delicate ecosystem of buyer intent. Small changes to that ecosystem, like the sudden cutting back of your PPC campaign for example, can have more profound negative affects on your customer base and revenue than you bargained for. 

The battle for the long-term

Your marketing is always an investment in the future stability and growth of your business. Like with all investments they need to be done with a long term mindset. The problem with recessions like we are facing with the impact of the coronavirus on the global economy, is that they encourage short term thinking.

In a battle between short term and long term thinking it’s usually the short-termists who win. But rather than giving in, the long-termists (digital marketers, I’m looking at you) need to push back.

We need to articulate our case that future uncertainties can be turned into opportunities by a greater focus on the very thing that currently faces that budget cutter’s knife: digital marketing.