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Marketing – What Recession?

During this volatile time in the economy, with home prices slashed, foreclosure rates edging higher, and stocks hitting all-time lows, there are inevitably two views or ways of looking at the situation. Depending on your own situation, as well as your view on the state of the economy, stock prices heading lower is an indicator to sell. For others, certain stocks now seem like a bargain, and so they are on a buying spree, as they believe stocks can only head higher. The same goes with marketing.

To understand why you should sometimes go against the tide, think about the benefits of doing the opposite of what your competition is doing–or planning on doing. Say you’re selling widgets (yes, I’m going to use widgets here), and because of recession fears and all of the good things a recession brings (yes, sarcasm), all of a sudden everyone that sells widgets cuts their budgets because of recession fears and projections based on those fears. Should you do the same? The answer to that question depends on a lot of factors. But what if you don’t cut your budget, and what if you don’t follow your competitors into tight-wad-ness?

The thing about a recession is yes, while companies are adjusting their marketing to what they’re seeing and how they’re being affected, certain things are also dropping in terms of cost–such as ad costs and other costs associated with marketing. It’s sort of like the buy low-sell high concept in the stock market (although, obviously, there are some basic differences–all of which I won’t go into here).

Being the kid on the block that’s showing up everywhere during a bad time is not such a bad thing to be. Building your brand and building market share on the cheap is often an effective way to not only boost awareness in those channels but to stimulate activity in other areas, such as online. Marketing is about awareness, and if you’re everywhere (especially if your product or service is viewed more as a commodity than not), then you’ll likely get the prospects either on the fence or indifferent to your product/service.

The great thing about the internet is that it allows smaller companies to compete with larger companies, and during a recession, as larger companies cut back on spending (especially if they’re public companies with shareholders to think about), smaller companies are able to exploit their advantage in terms of flexibility. Start viewing economic cycles not as your time for me-too thinking but as a time for (yes, here comes cliche-ville to brighten up the day) thinking outside of the box. Make some noise when everyone is quiet.

Cause a stir when everything is tranquil. You wait all year to time your marketing so that you get the best ROI–so why not view bad economic times as good marketing times? If you do, you just may make your marketing that much more effective.

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