5 Suggestions for Recession Marketing

"Can a recession reshape marketing habits?"

"Recession-Busting Marketing"

"Focusing Your Marketing Spend In An Economic Downturn"

"Recession marketing: be brave or be gone"

"Social Media to Weather Recession"

There's a proliferation of articles, blogs, webinars, podcasts, etc. about what to do about marketing during the recession. As one of the headlines above implies, there's more of an imperative now than ever to find more effective and efficient marketing habits. But most of the recession marketing recommendations I've seen are ones that can and should be implemented at any time. Now the business and the jobs are really on the line.


So I'll throw in 5 solid suggestions. They can be used at any time but perhaps they will be especially helpful now:


1. Evaluate New Customer vs. Existing Customer spend mix

Most companies spend multiples more on customer acquisition vs. retention, typically 5-10x more. Many lose money on customer aquisition. And for most, existing customer revenue is multiples larger than that of new customers.

It's likely in this environment, gaining new customers has become even more difficult and more expensive. And it's likely that you can build existing customer revenues by spending more, or at least spending more smartly.

Look carefully at your new customer vs. existing customer spending and ROI metrics over the past few years and look for places to reduce spending and other places to increase it.

Exception: Some companies may be the gorilla in their industry and have cash reserves. For them, this could be the time to sweep up market share on the customer acquisition side.

2. Focus on Measurable Activities

Unless you are one of the few very large companies that can truly benefit from pure "brand marketing", all your marketing can and should have some measurable direct response mechanism. It may not be for a purchase but it can be for some call to action. Don't ignore email because "it is free". That too should be measured, not to save money but to save your customers from receiving unwanted communications.

If you can measure it, you can make a data driven decision if it's worth it. If you measure it you can also test it, the next recommendation.

3. Test Everything

A marketer should constantly be testing and should test everything possible including content, headlines, offers, pricing, and timing. I can't say this strongly enough and continue to be astounded how little marketers do test. Web testing is more prevalent because the tools are unusually easy to use, e.g. Google Analytics. But A/B testing can be applied to almost any marketing activity and new tools are now available to apply multivariate testing.

4. Find your "true" best customers

Many marketers look to their "heavy user" customers (top buying quartiles or tertiles)as their best customers. Others segment by recency and view the most recent buyers as best customers. I'd suggest that you look for the customers that have the highest propensity to buy and who wouldn't have bought without being touched. These are probably mid tier customers and your best way to find them is via testing and by using more sophisticated segmentation techniques like predictive analytics and uplift modeling.

5. Find customers in danger of leaving

Too many marketers accept churn rates or don't market to customers on the way out until it is too late. Look carefully at your customer lifetime models and your churn rates and the reasons for churn. Can you develop an ongoing marketing strategy that attacks those whose behavior indicates that they are in the early stage of dropping off? It's likely that reviving these customers will cost far less than a new customer acquisition.