3 Keys to a Recession-Proof Marketing Strategy

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It's a fresh new year, and we're ready to start strong!

We're heading into a new year with new challenges and opportunities. 

Questions about how to adapt to the changing marketplace are top-of-mind for many executives. Recession and uncertainty can make it difficult to stay focused on the future, but the best leaders know how to seize the moment and keep their organizations moving forward.  

And this episode is all about how to do just that! We're taking a look at three strategies that you can do to recession-proof your business. You don't have to sit back and watch as your competitors grow while you stagnate. In fact, with the right strategies in place, you'll be able to gain market share even during these challenging times. 

So, get ready to learn how you turn today’s challenges into tomorrow's opportunities.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• How to make your business irreplaceable
• How to Identify business opportunities
• Easy ways to reduce your churn rate

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And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com. 

Transcript

Travis Albritton  0:00  
2023 is officially upon us. 2022 is in the rearview mirror. And now we're heading into Q1 of 2023. And the question is, how can you thrive succeed, continue to grow and serve your customers with all the craziness that's going on in the economy. So in this episode, we're going to be digging into three strategies, three things that you can do to recession proof your business in the coming year. Welcome back to the Honest Marketing Podcast for your proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Albritton. 

Travis Albritton  0:37  
And the economy has been pretty funky for the last couple of years, going back to 2020, where we had this huge ecommerce, boom, everyone's stuck at home with refund checks in their pocket is burning holes, and they're spending money on Amazon, info, products, courses, memberships, you can sell anything online in 2020. And then a lot of crazy stuff happened, a lot of shifts happened, that industry has started slowing down, things like the real estate market were taking off like a rocket ship, and then they just fell right off a cliff in 2022. And so a lot has changed, and a lot will continue to change. And the frequency of those changes is constantly increasing. So it's not that you can discover a strategy, and then ride it out for five to seven years. Now it's really trying to identify what are the tactics and strategies that are working this week? And how can we leverage those. So with all that kind of uncertainty, and shifting dynamics, and buying behavior and things like that, it's important to kind of solidify and make your business more resilient, resilient to change, resilient to the whims of buyers and their priorities and what they're thinking about. And also reduce the amount of stress that you have working on your business that if you're running a business that has people has employees, has certain financial metrics and goals you have to hit, it can be stressful when there's a lot of uncertainty out there. And so in this episode, I'm going to dig into three different strategies that you can implement to recession proof your business, so that way, you can ride the wave of craziness and come out stronger. On the other side of this, whether we're going into a recession, or already in a recession. That's for other people to debate. But the general consensus is that the economy, the global economy, the local economy in the United States, is not doing great not doing hot, which can give you the tendency to want to shrink back a little bit and to stop spending money to cut costs where you need to. And there's certainly a time and a place for that, you know, if you're overextended, if you have a lot of overhead that you can't justify, then that's why you're seeing a lot of these tech companies, which have been growth oriented in the past, starting to lay off a lot of workers because they had more people than than they needed. And so you certainly want to, you know, look at your own business and the efficiencies and systems you can build into it to make it more efficient. But beyond that, beyond the cost cutting maneuvers, what can you do to actually position your business for growth during this time. 

Travis Albritton  3:02  
So the first thing you can do the first strategy that you can implement to recession proof your business is to become irreplaceable, become irreplaceable. Do not be a luxury that someone can easily cut back from, okay, if your business is not necessary, in the life of your prospect, your customers, your buyers, your members, however you label the people to do business with you, then that means as soon as things get tight, purse strings get tight. And they're looking at housing, food, medical expenses, clothing, the things that are necessary for life. If you are not in that group of necessities for your customers, then you are at risk of being cut not because you're not doing a good job, not because your business isn't great and doing great things. But simply because you are replaceable, you can't you are a luxury that can't be cut back. So how do you do that? How do you become irreplaceable? If you're not, you know, a landlord, or a supermarket, you know, and providing life and sustenance to people. If you're in a B2B space, and you do business with other businesses, and they rely on you for contract work, or whatever it is, how do you become irreplaceable? The number one thing you can do is solve real problems, solve real problems in the lives of your customers. And so if you do this, if you know that you solve real problems, real point, pain points, real hurts in the lives of the people that interact with you in your business, doubled down on that continue to focus on that in your marketing and your messaging when you're interacting with clients and customers continue to revisit and clarify the problems that you solve. Because as long as people have problems and have the means to address those problems and to fix them, they're gonna be looking for those solutions. And so you want your business to be the one that solves those real problems that are not just luxuries that can be replaced, but truly are irreplaceable COGS  in the machine. Each of your clients lives and their, you know, businesses, however you do business, whoever you do business for. So make sure that you're not solving surface level problems that you're not, you know, just saying, hey, well, you have it in blue, why don't you get it in green as well, that's not a real problem. But a real problem could be, you need someone to do X, and you don't have that person. But that's something we do exceptionally well and will do it for you for cheaper than you can hire for. That's a real problem you have solved. And then once you get integrated into that business in whatever way that you normally do, as the expert in what you do, then you become irreplaceable, you become essential, they can't do business, they can't live life, without you in the same way. And so as much as possible, make sure you're positioning your company and your business to solve real problems in the lives of your customers, your clients and your prospects. Because if you do that, then you'll be less likely to hit the chopping block when things get tight. And then the other thing you can do to really become irreplaceable, is focused on customer support and connection. So this goes beyond simply having a chat on your website, it goes beyond having you know, someone who monitors your support inbox. This means going above and beyond to actually have a human connection with people when you interact with them in person, or online. Because if someone is kind of sorting through what expenses to cut, how to trim down how to make their life a little bit easier by cutting out some expenses, and they're considering your company, it's a lot easier to cut you out of their life, if they feel like you don't care about them. If they feel like you're, they're just another number to you. They're just, you know, the last four digits on a credit card. And that's all that they are to you. But if you can go out of your way to display and show that you actually genuinely care about the people that you're serving with your business, that you care about their lives, you care about what's going on in their life, you care if their life is going well or not. And you want to be in a position to help them with the problem that they have that your company is positioned to solve. And you do that in a human way, in a human connectivity way, then that is really gonna go a long way in building that trust and that connection and that loyalty because ultimately when someone becomes loyal to you, and they see you as solving real problems in their life, then you're less likely to be replaced or cut back as things get tight. Okay, so the number one way that you can recession proof your business is to become irreplaceable. Make it so they can't live without you. Not in a codependent way, but in a real sense.

Travis Albritton  7:25  
Number two is swim for blue ocean swim for blue ocean. Now, what is this, this idea of blue ocean come from? Well, it's a concept. It's a book blue ocean, where it is referencing sharks and where there's chum in the water where there's blood in the water all the sharks congregates. But that means there's lots of blue ocean out there. Where are those sharks are not. And so if you're looking to hunt, if you're looking to find your next meal, then you want to go to the blue ocean where the sharks are not rather than the red ocean where you have to compete with all the other sharks. That's the analogy. How does it relate to business? When everyone starts doing one thing, you want to do something different whenever and start zigging you want to zag. Okay, and so you want to look for those opportunities that other businesses in your space are overlooking, and double down on them. Right? So ask yourself, what are other companies in my industry in my niche cutting back on? And how can I invest there. So a recent example is Facebook Ads. So Apple put out this big update, where they weren't gonna allow Facebook to track their users across the internet only within the app. And that really hurts for a very short period of time. Facebook's advertising model, and businesses jumped ship to Google and other places where they could track attribution a little bit more clearly. But the people that stuck around and made up for those, you know, businesses that were fleeing, started to see better performance from their ads, because there was less people doing it, there was less competition for those eyeballs. So they're getting cheaper impressions, cheaper click through rates. And so they saw an opportunity to double down on Facebook Ads as other businesses were running away from it, and saw the benefits of doing that. And so look at your industry, look at what other businesses are doing. And ask yourself, what are people running away from? What are people cutting back from what are businesses stopping? And then how can I double down in those areas to make up for that, because if it's a strategy that has worked in the past, there's a reason for it. And it's a strategy that will continue to work in the future. The number one reason why businesses cut back on certain kinds of marketing is who they can't track attribution to sales, which is a very short time window timeframe way of tracking your marketing until we had direct advertising, direct response advertising. None of it was attributable. You buy a billboard and then you say okay, people came in to buy stuff at my store wasn't because of the billboard was. It is because I sponsored the bus stop. Was it something else? Who knows? Right? But that is what people did. That's how you would attribute stuff so as the other businesses in your space start to cut back, stop experimenting, just focus on a couple of marketing strategies that are moving the needle for them right now. That's the opportunity for you to double down and to start experimenting, because it opens up those valuable opportunities to launch new initiatives, right, to try different things, to dive more into brand lift to social media, to content marketing, writing blogs, launching a podcast, the things that other businesses see as luxury, luxury expenses, as experiments that aren't proven. Those strategies become more valuable, the fewer businesses that are doing it. And so if in a great economy where everything's going, and it's flowing milk, and honey, and every business in your niche has a podcast, but now things are starting to get a little bit tighter, and 80% of them stop publishing. Well guess what, all those listeners that go somewhere, all those listeners are still looking for that information. And so if you can be in a position to invest in that kind of an initiative, while others have stopped, that can help you leapfrog the competition. And it's with what Warren Buffett says regarding investing, right? You want to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. You want to zig when they zag, swim for blue ocean, new opportunities where there isn't as much competition, because you'll get more bang for your buck. And you'll be able to really watch forward and get more traction in his opportunities than you would have. Otherwise, just make sure you don't bet the farm as you do it, right, if it's a new initiative is if it's an experimental kind of marketing. Just make sure you hedge your bet, diversify your traffic, all the best practices, but you definitely want to look for those kind of opportunities. 

Travis Albritton  11:35  
And then the number three way that you can recession proof your business going into this year, is to focus on reducing churn over growing your customer base. And I'll say that, again, for all the people in the back, focus on churn, not growth. It's so easy to focus on getting new customers, getting new clients, and making that the main focus of your marketing and your sales, right, because you figure, okay, if we grow by X amounts, then our sales will increase our revenue increase, our profit will increase. This is great, growth is always great. But if you have customers walking out the back door, as you're growing, then that's really going to hurt your ability to scale your business. And not only that, it is always always more expensive to get a new customer than to keep the one that you have 10 times out of 10. Because if you can just focus on keeping the customers you have really happy. See, point number one about becoming irreplaceable, then that is going to in the long run, be better for the financial viability of your business. It just is marketing to gain new customers is expensive, relatively speaking. And so if instead, you can develop deeper connections, deeper trust, deeper relationships with the people already doing business with you, that is going to help you push through whatever kind of recession or shaky economy we have coming up. And there's a couple ways you can do this where you can reduce churn. Number one, is if you're getting frequent emails, support request tickets all asking for the same thing, then that should be a red flag that there's an opportunity here, to make a shift to make an adjustment, add something, take something away, that's going to make the lives of your customers and your clients easier. Do that thing. Adding an extra feature internally with your team, that's already on salary is a little bit more cost effective than spinning up a new paid marketing initiative. Okay. Surprise and delight your customers do things that are unexpected. One of the reasons that gambling and social media is so addictive is because of something called intermittent rewards. So when you open up Facebook or Instagram, you don't know what you're gonna see. But every once in a while you see something really interesting, or really eye catching, or just super pertinent to you. And you don't know when that extra reward is going to come. And so it actually makes you want to open the app more, or go back and pull the slot machine again. Because you don't know if the next one is gonna be a jackpot, you don't know if the next thing you see is going to be, you know, amazing. And so by surprising and delighting your customers going out of your way to just do things that are random, you can tap into that same kind of euphoric experience, right? That if you in your marketing, say after three months of doing business with us, we're gonna send you a $10 Starbucks gift card, show our appreciation, and then you do that thing that they were expecting you to do. It's like, okay, that's fine, but it's like the $10 Starbucks gift card. Like it's not like that doesn't mean anything to me. But if completely out of the blue, you say, hey, we just want to thank you for being such a awesome loyal customer client of ours. Here's a $10 Starbucks gift card. Go treat yourself to breakfast on us. Thanks for being a customer that has a much different impact on your customers and your clients when it's unexpected, when it's a surprise, and when it's something just totally out of the blue. That is a thank you do those kinds of things to reduce churn because what that signals to your client and your customers is that this is a company that is actually thinking about, I mean, it isn't just doing things because it makes the money but they're doing things and gifting me as a human, from human to human, and really making my life better, even if it's something as small as a $10 gift card, and then do the unscalable. Do the things that don't scale. I think as marketers, as business owners, we're constantly thinking about systems, how do we build systems? How do we build processes? How do we make things more efficient, so that we can not be a slave to our business, and that's a good thing. But if you can build in a system of doing unscalable things, like one on one zoom calls, or personal emails that aren't templated that aren't newsletters, then that makes a big impression on your clients, that makes a big impression on them. Because now they know you're doing something that you can't do with anybody else that you can't do with somebody else. And so that personal connection feels like you're getting a letter in the mail from a pen pal, like it's real, especially in today's world of automated marketing, where everything is automated, everything's a chatbot. Having an actual human being from a company reach out to you directly, and offer their time. That's huge. That's really valuable in the eyes of your clients and your customers. So there's a couple different ways you can focus on reducing churn. One of them, again, is just, if there's a common gripe, or complaints or opportunity for improvement within your product and service, that you're hanging over and over and over again, do that thing and then tell the customers that complained about it, that you fixed it for them, that's going to go a long way in reducing churn and they're not going to be looking over your shoulder, looking for competitors that may have the feature that they're complaining about. Always do that, though, with the mindset of a long term strategy don't just like respond to every customer support request in that fashion. But the other two, you can absolutely do all the time, which is to surprise and delight, do things that are unexpected, that aren't even related to your product. And just tell your customers that you love and appreciate them. Hopefully you do in the real world as well. And then do the unscalable, do the things that don't scale because that is really going to develop a strong personal connection with your clients. And you can even double dip, call it market research, call it you know, getting to know your customer avatar, whatever you want to call it, but do the things that won't scale beyond you. But make those times special. And be really strategic with how you do it. Pick a handful of clients customers that you want to reach out to, and just say, hey, and just connect with and hear how they're doing and what you can do to serve them better. You might get some good ideas about things you can do and products and services you can develop in the future to continue to serve them. 

Travis Albritton  17:35  
Alright, so to recap, three things that you can do to help prepare your business for a rocky economy. Number one, become irreplaceable in the eyes of your customers. Number two, swim for blue ocean, look for those untapped or underutilized marketing opportunities that you can double down on as your customers run away from them. And then number three, focus on churn rather than growth. Because if you can keep the customers you already have really happy and keep them from leaving you then that is a great foundation to build a business on. Alright, so hopefully, one of those three things really resonate with you is something you can implement right away to help make your business more resilient moving into the new year. And we got a lot of great content coming up in 2023. So thank you so much for listening to the Honest Marketing Podcast. If you have any ideas or thoughts or questions, feel free to reach out. It's just hello@honestpodcasts.com. There's a link in the description below. And I'd be happy to address it, answer it here on the show and interact with you via email. Thanks for watching and or listening. And as always, be honest.