We are in an economic recession, which means that your marketing effectiveness is
more important than ever because your marketing budget is limited. So the question
is, what marketing strategies should you use in this recession? You still need
marketing and the worst thing that you can do right now is to stop marketing and
allow your audience to completely forget about you with all the other stuff that's
going on on their minds. During a recession. It's more important than ever that you
do whatever you can to stay on top of your audience's mind. So you need your
marketing strategy to have two main characteristics, right? Those are, it has to be
marketing budget friendly, and it has to be highly effective. Here's the recession
marketing strategy I recommend for your small business.
This is the Dragon Digital Marketing Podcast. Get ready for the digital marketing
strategies and tactics that attract great customer relationships to your business.
Here's your host, Monique Idemudia.
Hey guys, this is Monique and you're listening to episode number 13 of the Dragon
Digital Marketing Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. In this episode, I want to talk
about marketing effectiveness. We are in an economic recession, which means that
your marketing effectiveness is more important than ever because your marketing
budget is limited. So the question is, what marketing strategy should you use in
this recession? First of all, congratulations for realizing that you still need a
marketing strategy because you still need marketing, and the worst thing that you
can do right now is to stop marketing and allow your audience to completely forget
about you with all the other stuff that's going on on their minds. During a
recession, it's more important than ever that you do whatever you can to stay on top
of your audience's mind. So you need your marketing strategy to have two main
characteristics, right? Those are, it has to be marketing budget friendly, and it
has to be highly effective. For many of you, the first step is to bring your
business online, get a website, be present on social media, start selling online,
get started with email marketing and sending out emails, and so on. If you need help
with any of these first steps, you can go to the show notes of this episode on
dragon-digital-marketing.com. The link is in the description. And then click on the
green button in the top right corner that says "get a free consultation". And then
you can schedule your free consultation and I'll help you to set up the basics for
free. This is my offer during this challenging time, because I know how important it
is to have everything set up correctly and professionally. You don't have any time
to lose right now and you need to get results fast, right? So you want to make sure
that it's done right the first time by a digital marketing specialist. When you got
all the basics set up, here's the recession marketing strategy I recommend for your
small business.
Component number one. Social media marketing. You can post consistently on social
media, which is completely free, right? It's organic social media marketing, and it
helps you to stay in touch and grow your audience. You can share helpful articles
and other resources, you can post helpful and relevant infographics, and be
inspiring and motivating by posting quotes and other useful and relevant content
that shows that your business is human and customer centered. You can also consider
holding social media contests or events. You can go live on Facebook and Instagram
and Twitter and provide value, answer questions, just be there. And of course, you
can also sell through social media and you can do that the inbound way without
having to buy ads. I like to apply the 80-20 rule here, which is 80% of the time you
provide value and only 20% of the time you post self-promotional things like links
to your products or services. So 80% of the content that you share on social media
simply is free advice, free tips, and helpful resources or links to informational
blog posts that are relevant for your audience. Just pure value, right? And then 20%
of your content that you share on social media can be self-promotional. That's the
80-20 rule.
Number two. Content marketing. You can create helpful pieces of content that support
your customers. This is also completely free. There are four main types of content:
text, images, audio and video content. You can create your own text content. You
just need to open your laptop and start typing and writing. And if you feel like you
can't write and it's impossible for you to learn it and become good at it, I want to
challenge you to read the book "Everybody writes" by Ann Handley, because I beg to
differ. Tens of thousands of people learned how to be writers with this actionable
book. So I really recommend that you get it. And I'll leave the link to the book in
the show notes below so you can go and check it out. You can create your own images
using Canva. Canva is a graphics design tool with an easy to use, drag and drop
interface. And with Canva, you can be your own graphic designer. They even got a ton
of templates that you can use for all kinds of graphic designs, so you can just go
ahead and personalize the templates and you're good to go. You can create audio
content by just taking out your smartphone and recording a voice memo, which you can
then turn into a podcast episode or just a sound bite with helpful information.
That's what I'm doing right now. You can also use your phone to make videos. I'm
sure you already have a ton of content, and you also have a lot of knowledge in your
head that you just have to collect and structure. And if you don't have any time to
even just grab that content, I got this content marketing tip for you. Just make a
video in which you record what's going on behind the scenes. Film your office, your
studio, your garage, your salon, whatever it is, and show your audience that you are
a human personal available, relatable, and all about helping people. That is your
biggest advantage over large corporations. They can't do that. They got policies and
whatnot. They're not relatable. They're not personal and human. They may act like
they're customer centered, but their customers are still just numbers, right?
Leverage the advantages of being a small business. And content marketing is so
amazing right now. The times will eventually come back where it is seen as
unprofessional to record yourself with a phone or publish a shaky video. You may be
forced to spend money on high luster productions and designs again in the future. So
take advantage of this time right now. It's full of chances and you'll miss them if
you procrastinate. I've actually made a full podcast episode about content marketing
and I'll leave the link in the show notes. You can go and check that out as well. It
will definitely help you to get inspired to create content.
Number three. Email marketing. You can send regular, content-rich emails to your
leads and customers on your email list. If you don't know what to send, you can
download my email campaign planning calendar template. It gives you ideas for themes
and topics for your emails so you can plan promotions in advance and you'll never
run out of ideas or miss an opportunity for a great email marketing campaign. Email
is used by literally half of the world population. It is used by 4.3 billion people
and for 58% of people, their emails are the first thing that they check every day.
And email marketing also has the highest return on investment. For every dollar that
you invest in email marketing, you can expect an average ROI of $42. That's amazing,
right? So start to strategically send out emails to your audience, build your email
list, do it professionally with a professional email address, and with an email
marketing tool.
Number four. Follow up. You can follow up with prospects who've ghosted you and you
haven't heard back from in a while. You can also check in again with customers you
haven't heard from in a while and make them a compelling offer to win them back.
Just go through your CRM and make yourself aware of all the opportunities you have
at your fingertips and forgot about with everything going on. Sometimes we're so
focused on reaching more people, getting more leads, and acquiring new customers
that we forget about nurturing and delighting our existing ones, and we forget about
all the opportunities and open deals that we already have. If you don't have a CRM
and don't know what it is, here's what it is and how it helps you. A CRM or customer
relationship management system helps you to manage your customer data. It supports
your sales management, delivers actionable insights, integrates with social media,
and makes your team communication easier. It will show you when the last time was
that a contact has been engaged with your business and can also automatically remind
you to follow up. Check out the resources mentioned in the episode show notes on
dragon-digital-marketing.com to learn more.
Number five. Optimize your website. Your website is one of your business's most
important ambassadors and a crucial component of your digital marketing and branding
strategy. If you don't already have a beautifully designed, mobile-friendly and SEO
friendly website, get a free consultation with us. And if you do, you can improve
your website with special regard to load speed, accessibility, SEO, web development
and web design best practices, and usability. Also make it easier for you visitors
to opt in by placing more contact forms on your pages. You can also think about
adding a live chat feature. You can work with what you already have and find ways to
make it better and get the most of it. And you can also add new features. I can help
you with implementing all of those features and some are even free or included in
your small business CRM and marketing automation tool.
Summing up. Here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Recessions tend
to be stressful times for everyone and with so much stress to distract. It's easy
for your small business to get forgotten or lost in the shuffle. That's why it's
important not to stop marketing your small business in the recession. Your recession
marketing strategy has to be especially marketing budget friendly and focus on
marketing effectiveness. And when you reach out to your audience, be sensitive to
the times. Don't be salesy. No matter how desperate you may or may not be right now,
read the room. Money's tight for everyone during a recession. So make sure that you
show the real benefit you offer their lives in this current context. Keep your
messaging relevant and keep your company's brand identity. This is super important
to ensure that they recognize it's you and won't forget about you. There's so many
other people and companies and influencers competing for the attention, and you
really want to make sure that you win the laurels for being helpful and supportive
during this time and get the customer retention and customer loyalty. So you want to
make sure that your brand identity, your colors, and your logo are on everything.
And the five components I recommend for your business marketing strategy in this
recession that are all free or super low costs and help you to stretch your
marketing budget are: Number one, social media marketing. Number two, content
marketing. Number three, email marketing. Number four, follow up and leverage your
CRM. And number five, optimize your website. If you need help with your digital
marketing, check out our agency, Dragon Digital Marketing. We're happy to help you
out and realize all of this for you. That's what I got for you today. Until next
time.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Dragon Digital Marketing Podcast.
You can visit us at dragon-digital-marketing.com for more resources and for more
episodes. Let us know how you like the show and write us a review. We are grateful
when you like, share and subscribe. We appreciate you.