The Role of Marketing in Times of Uncertainty: Insights for Business Survival

By Madeleine Cruickshank , Joe Fitzpatrick , and Anca Ivanov, MBA

Ask any successful business owner out there, and they will tell you that marketing is an investment and should be considered an integral part of a company’s commercialization efforts and a key component of growth and success.?

And yet, whether in times of economic uncertainty or during periodic reviews, marketing budgets may be slashed by senior leadership in an effort to conserve cash and resources. However, making cuts to your marketing efforts without a clear understanding of your customer's journey can set your business on a perilous path that may be challenging to recover from. The most agile companies respond by doubling down on their understanding of the market and how their products can continue to meet customer needs and bring value to users.?

Analyze the data?

Start internally

It's crucial for businesses to focus on what they can control. If your marketing attribution has always been murky, now is the time to rectify it. Without reliable data to guide your decisions, you're exposing your business to unnecessary risks. There's a saying that "luck is just the combination of preparation and opportunity." Solid data not only mitigates risk but also enables you to identify emerging opportunities.?

Understand your audience

Empower your teams to gather and share insights on the impact of economic conditions on their customers' businesses and their lives. A recent poll by Angus Reid showed that “a majority of [Canadian] under 55s say they could not handle a sudden expense of more than $1,000 in the coming month. Consider, then, how this changes the relationship between you and your customers.

• Is your target audience planning on delaying purchases until the recovery phase??
• Is your product or service viewed as essential or as a luxury they can forego??
• How does a change in economic circumstances impact their purchasing behaviour??

Collect as much data and feedback as you can from your customer-facing employees on customer perception of the situation. Mobilize your sales and finance teams to gather insights from your CRM and accounting software.?

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Typical leading indicators of declining client buying power would be:?

• Customers downgrading to a lower product or service plan?
• Longer sales cycle duration
• Higher churn rate
• Lower renewal rate?

Understand your marketing mix with data and internal knowledge

When leadership teams feel uncertain, it often leads to rash decisions made in the vacuum of a boardroom. If you want to understand how to cut back business expenses, how to improve performance, and how to change your business for the better, ask your team. They’re the ones with the best understanding of how your marketing mix works.

Three questions to ask your marketing team when reviewing all marketing investments:

• How does this tactic move our business forward, and how long does it take to see results?
• How do we track the impact of this investment?
• If we stopped investing time, money and resources on this tactic, what would the short, mid and long-term impact be?

Automate data collection

Businesses can leverage automation to gather vital customer feedback, product reviews, and other requests from customers digitally. These insights, combined with your website data, can deliver valuable information about what your customers are buying, what they aren’t, and how their behaviour is shifting over time.?

As larger organizations reduce their online spending and teams are stretched thin, there's an opportunity for agile marketing teams with robust data. They can take advantage of lower cost-per-click (CPC) rates and deliver their message to the right audiences effectively.

Adapt your products and services

When a market changes, so does your product market fit. Review your SWOT analysis to see if any strengths might have become weaknesses, or if changing market conditions are creating new opportunities or threats. Some tend to perceive companies and brands as static monoliths, but the best brands evolve over time while staying true to who they are.

Work with your product and service development teams to understand the core functionality or packaging that customers value.?

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Some data-driven decisions that businesses can consider:

• Reducing a product to the simplest possible form that still brings value and introducing these more value-driven offerings to your more cost-conscious customer segments
• Exploring how products and services are bundled. Unbundling might help more customers experience your service at a lower price point, while bundling frequently bought-together items might increase overall value for you and your customers.
• Putting the customer first by offering loyalty incentives to improve retention and empowering your customer success teams.
• Offering more flexible options. Some customers may pay less for slower service and delivery, while others may want to pay more for an accelerated option. Either way, you have more customers who feel like they've gotten a deal that works for them.

Challenge your positioning

Adaptation is the name of the game, and everything needs to be on the table. A positioning or killer ad campaign that worked in the past won’t continue to work if it doesn’t speak to the needs of your customers now.?

It's essential to adapt your messaging to reflect the concerns and uncertainties your customers share. If you're unsure about what the next 12 months will bring, remember that your customers are likely feeling the same way. How you communicate with your audience should reflect this understanding.

A luxury item becomes a “special treat,” and an under-utilized service or tool becomes a way for your customers to gain more value from their investment and consolidate their expenses. The first brands to change with the times gain the most impact.

Review your distribution channels?

E-commerce and self-serve options can become invaluable tools for businesses looking to increase profits during economic uncertainty. As a much leaner sales channel, e-commerce allows for quicker adjustments to sales and promotions, requires fewer staff to maintain, and needs significantly less physical overhead. With automated marketing tools like email, e-commerce can deliver a personalized customer experience while being a cost-efficient channel to maintain over time.

Prioritize your eCommerce channels

E-commerce has become the preferred shopping channel for consumers during economic downturns because of the convenience and cost savings it provides. With e-commerce, shoppers can easily compare prices and product reviews without the need for in-store visits. Recent findings from Capterra share that consumers are more likely to check e-commerce channels for price discounts and special offers when inflation rises, including brands’ websites and email newsletters, social media, and online marketplaces like Amazon.?

Be sure to keep your digital channels up to date, consider expanding into secondary online marketplaces, and offer a welcome discount for new customers to add them to your email list. Maintaining communication with your customers through eCommerce channels is essential during economic uncertainty.?

Personalize the experience

Data and software tools are making it easier to personalize the customer's online experience, and in economically uncertain times, every effort in delivering a customer-centric experience counts.

Try something new

Look for hidden opportunities in new areas, new industries, and new segments

If there’s one thing to take away from this article, it’s that the companies that embrace change and create agile environments for their teams will be the ones that are able to thrive during turbulent times.?

It’s time to accelerate your 5-year plan and enter a new market segment sooner. Not all markets and segments will react in the same way to economic turbulence; while some sectors of the economy are contracting, others may be expanding. While economic indicators are useful for painting a broad picture of a country or industry, there is a great degree of individual variation.??

The last few years have certainly shown us this. For example, in-restaurant suppliers suffered from intermittent closures while take-out container manufacturers thrived. Reanalyze your target markets; you may find new opportunities and markets that could benefit your business. Call your customers, ask them what they need. Ask them what their last big investment was. Find out how you can provide them with more value.

Conclusion

Whether your business is experiencing turbulent times or is simply doing a regular business review of its strategic orientations, we hope we have given you clear, actionable tips to reevaluate your product, marketing and distribution strategies. Don’t hesitate to drop us a line to brainstorm further.

Madeleine Cruickshank, madeleinecruickshank.com?

Joe Fitzpatrick, adscientist.ca

Anca Ivanov, elastik.ca