7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession

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“But, we have to cut something.” You may be feeling as though marketing is the easiest line item in your budget report to slash. We get it. As we’ve worked through this recession, Green Apple has made cuts of our own to ensure that we’re financially strong enough to serve our customers. We’re right there with you. However, cutting your marketing budget can hurt your business long-term, even when it might help it slightly in the immediate future. 

To ensure that your business can continue serving its customers, you must consider a few key points. Here are seven reasons to reconsider reducing your marketing budget in a recession.

1. What if your competitors don’t?

You may consider cutting your marketing budget, but if your competitors don’t, where does that leave you? When you reduce your marketing budget, you decrease how and how often your customers see you—allowing your competitor to move in.

2. Your marketing team can help your customers support you.

The return on investment for your marketing strategy is still valid during a recession. While things are “normal,” your strategy is to drive sales and build relationships; however, during a recession, you are more focused on the relationship-building side of things and can keep your customers invested in your success. They love you as much as you love them, and they don’t want to see your business struggle. Your marketing team can help you show the right amount of vulnerability and transparency, while still sending the message that you are here to help.

3. Your marketing team protects you.

Clients often think about marketing as advertising, but it’s so much more. Your marketing team is telling your brand’s story, and that story must be shaped to align with the social climate—so as to not be insensitive or offensive. Using COVID-19 as an example, companies needed to quickly shift their messaging strategies to be sensitive and empathetic. Having a team on your side that can help shift and shape your message allows you to support your audience, while keeping your brand top of mind.

4. You don’t want your customers to feel abandoned.

Your marketing strategy strengthens your relationship with your audience. A reduction in your budget can leave your customers wondering where you went—or worse, if your business is in jeopardy of shutting down.

You will, of course, be there for your audience in a different way during a recession. Your messaging will focus on how you’re taking care of customers as the tides change. Marketing can tell your audience what you’re doing to keep their best interests in mind, strengthening their trust in your brand.

5. It may be time to launch that new product.

You have less competition during a recession, as other companies are focusing on staying afloat. They aren’t putting their time and effort into launching new products or growing their business. If you are in the position to, and you have ideas ready to launch, work with your marketing team to put your new product out into the world.

6. You will not bounce back as easily.

If you reduce your marketing efforts, it leaves you in a difficult position when you’re ready to bounce back. You’ve spent a great deal of time and money growing your brand’s reach. Rather than scaling back, discuss a strategy with your marketing team to find ways to keep your reach consistent. Once the economy is on an upswing, you will appreciate not having lost months—or years—of progress.

7. It can take you off course to meet your goals.

Even amid a recession, you still want to move forward. Your marketing team can help you keep your goals in mind and find new strategies to meet them. Don’t underestimate a marketing team’s versatility and the potential to keep your business growing, even when the economy is less than ideal. 

Talk Strategy Before You Make Cuts

Before you decide on your budget, discuss all the options with your marketing team. They can likely work with you to achieve your goals, even with necessary budget accommodations. Your relationship with your marketing team should be transparent—they want to see you succeed, too, and will do everything they can to make that happen. 

Ready for a marketing team with your best interests at heart? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

3 Strategies to Take Your Trade Show Marketing to the Next Level

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Marketers have a love-hate relationship with conferences and trade shows. On one hand, conferences and trade shows are a lot of work. There are logistical challenges that seem to happen at every single event. Determining the ROI of having a booth in the exhibit hall or advertising in the event guide can seem impossible. Despite the challenges, having a presence at trade shows and conferences is still one of the best ways to connect with your target accounts’ key decision-makers. According to a recent study, 82% of trade show attendees are directly involved in their teams’ purchasing decisions. The question becomes…how do you maximize the opportunity of each trade show or event to generate some truly meaningful traction for your sales and marketing efforts? 3 Strategies to Take Your Trade Show Marketing to the Next Level Here are three strategies and mentalities to consider as you prepare for the trade shows or conferences you’re attending this year:
  1. Promote an experience, not your product or service. The best way to stand out in a noisy exhibit hall is to create an experience that makes people want to stop and spend time at your booth. Creating an experience that surprises or delights attendees enables you to make much more of an emotional impact than selling them a product ever would. These experiences also make for a great word-of-mouth marketing opportunity since visitors will be more likely to tell other attendees to stop by.
  2. Treat everyone as if they’re already a customer. Your brand will make hundreds of new first impressions during a trade show or conference. One of the best ways to make sure it’s a positive one is to consider every person you meet as someone who’s already a customer of yours. This mindset will transform the way you interact with attendees and help create impressions that lead to connection. You never know when a seemingly unqualified prospect could get a new job and turn into a coveted lead. And, you’ll never get the chance to make another first impression with them.
  3. Find creative ways to grab the attention of companies in attendance. If you know a particular company or decision-maker will be at the trade show, consider how you can create intrigue with them. Whether it’s reaching out to them beforehand to stop by the booth to pick up an exclusive gift or grabbing their attention by mentioning how your service can help their specific brand, there are a lot of creative ways you can design your booth to attract specific target accounts in attendance.
If you’re looking to take your trade show or conference marketing strategies to the next level, we hope these ideas can spark some creative ideas.

Why Empathy is More Important Than Ever for Marketers

The rate at which technology has evolved over the past few years has impacted every industry — especially marketing. Today, businesses are trying to find ways to leverage technology to reach more customers. Marketing automation, search engine optimization, business intelligence, chatbots, and voice search have become important topics for many marketers. However, in a world where information is a commodity, you need to be more than a source of facts and figures. This is why it is more important than ever for marketers to understand, embrace, and incorporate empathy. 3 Ways to Gain & Incorporate Empathy Into Your Marketing The good news is that empathy is something that can be learned. Here are three exercises you can use to cultivate your empathetic skills and incorporate them into the ways they engage with potential customers:
  1. Get face-to-face with the prospective client. Most marketing teams don’t get a lot of face time with current or potential customers, but their entire job is to create messaging and campaigns that resonate with these people. Taking time to actually sit down with a potential customer can be extremely valuable for marketers. It helps them understand what a “typical day” looks like for them. It provides insights into what really motivates them to make decisions, rather than guessing. Face-to-face conversations allow for the fullest interaction, and the closer you can get to one, the more effective you’ll be.
  1. Don’t be afraid to find out why you didn’t win the business. When it comes to knowing why a prospect didn’t buy from you, most marketers have to rely on insights from the sales team. However, salespeople don’t always get the real reason. Being a little further removed from the sales process often provides an opportunity to gain valuable insights. This is a valuable way marketing can play an active role in truly understanding the real reasons and motivations of why a prospective client didn’t buy from you.
  1. Consider what their real problem is. Here’s the difference between great companies and good companies: Great companies solve the real problems facing the customer. Think about Chick-fil-A versus a typical fast food restaurant. One provides a transactional experience, the other does everything they can to go above and beyond to make life easier and more enjoyable for the customer. Chick-fil-A understands that they’re doing more than providing people lunch. The real problem they are solving is making the act of eating more enjoyable and a less stressful part of life—and everything they do is centered around this objective.
By taking the time to gain and incorporate empathy into your marketing efforts, you’ll be much more skillful at creating messaging that resonates with your audience. Once you can understand their emotional motivations, you’ll be able to market more effectively and efficiently.

4 Ways to Measure Inbound Marketing Beyond Leads

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Measuring your results is important in every area of marketing. However, it can be difficult to know how to calculate the ROI of tactics such as inbound marketing when you’re used to managing traditional marketing campaigns.   The good news is that you can measure your effectiveness at any given point throughout the campaign or at its conclusion by tracking various metrics along the way. You also have the ability to monitor, measure, and manage almost every aspect of your campaign, including landing pages, emails, blog posts, social messages, keywords, pay-per-click advertising, and other sources that are contributing traffic to your campaign. Ultimately, the success of an inbound marketing campaign is based on the number of leads that were generated, but it’s good to know what metrics influence that final number. 4 Ways to Measure Inbound Marketing Beyond Leads When evaluating your inbound marketing campaign, here are just a few questions that should be asked to see how your promotion channels did overall in the campaign:
  • Which emails did the best at bringing people into the campaign? 

  • What blog topics led to the greatest number of conversions? 

  • How did PPC compare to Social? 

  • Overall, what channels are most effective in this campaign? 

Inbound campaigns are an impressive feat once you have all channels firing toward the same end goal. The trick is to keep your campaigns focused and powerful. At the conclusion of your campaign, you can measure your efforts and evaluate everything from your offer to your promotional channels. This will give you an opportunity to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts like never before. A Free Guide to Inbound Marketing If you want to learn more about inbound marketing and how it can help you increase your overall effectiveness for generating leads and closing deals, don’t miss our free resource How to Grow Your Business with Inbound Marketing. It will walk you through everything you need to know from setting goals to measuring ROI and everything in between.