How To Market Your Business In A Recession

Recessions are inevitable. The markets do well, then they dip, these cycles are avoidable but just not something we have gotten good at. So they come and they go, and it is best to stay prepared so your business and livelihood do not suffer.

The good news is there are things you can do in times of prosperity to prepare for the tough times. Think of it like you would any other preparation plan for an economic downturn. When things are going well you want to focus on your savings accounts, retirement accounts, nest eggs, portfolio diversity, and stashing as much reserve cash as possible.

The savvy investor actually loves a recession because it presents opportunities to buy stocks “on-sale”, knowing that when the market corrects itself, their heavily discounted purchase price will return far greater interest.

Warren Buffet once said; “Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.”, and you can certainly learn from this man. He knows the game very well, better than most actually.

So let’s take that same logic and apply it to your business. Afterall the underlying principles of stocks, markets, and investing apply directly to your business.

Search Engine Optimization can take weeks, months or even years to show results depending on how competitive your space is, how old your website is, what your domain authority looks like, and hundreds of other variables.

One this is for sure with SEO, the sooner you invest in it, the sooner you will see results. If a recession hits and you no longer have the budget to spend money on ads, you need to cut expenses across the board in order to stay afloat, and you’re unable to afford those agency fees, you will still maintain your ranking, at least for a little while.

By investing in SEO now, you are ensuring that your company continues to rank well in Google searches for weeks, months, and sometimes years after the SEO work is complete. This will help you ride the wave until the recession is a thing of the past.

Getting people to visit your website can get expensive. So getting and keeping their attention while on your website is critical if you are spending all of that time, effort, energy, and hard-earned money is critical.

The best way to make the most of your money is to do all you can to make sure that once they land on your website, they actually turn into a lead by filling out a contact form, making a call, or providing their information in exchange for something useful.

Some of the best ways to optimize your site for conversions:

1. Add a ChatBot to capture leads in real-time
2. Add an exit-intent pop-up to capture emails from people leaving your site
3. Use a lead magnet that offers valuable content in exchange for an email
4. Establish trust with testimonials
5. Ad a Facebook pixel so you can advertise to those visiting your site
6. Offer a discount or something else of value in exchange for an email

These and other conversion tips can help ensure you get the most out of your marketing efforts. Whatever you do, do not spend money on driving traffic to your website through paid or organic search without first optimizing for conversions. This is critical during a recession or not.

If you are running any ad campaigns during a recession you will want to be sure you are optimizing the Quality Score of the ads. If you are unsure what the Quality Score is Google defines it as: “Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.”

As the definition points out, you can spend less money and actually get better rankings for your ads if you increase the quality score. Here are a few ways to pull that off:

1. Know the factors
2. Target your ad groups
3. Research keywords
4. Write ads that are high quality
5. Work on the landing page
6. Make ad groups small
7. Use negative keywords
8. Expand the text ads
9. Avoid using dynamic keyword insertion

During a recession there is sure to be less competition to bid against, thus your ad spend will be less than normal and if you optimize everything to increase your Quality Score you will certainly get more bang for the buck.

This one should go without saying. Your sales team needs to be ready for a recession by preparing for a lot more “nos” and rejections across the board. If they rely on sales commissions to pay the bills, encourage them to put money away so that when the phone stops ringing they can survive.

Additionally, some training in dealing with rejection and how to find opportunities in unconventional ways may serve them well. Train them on building out a strong network and an even stronger reputation with their existing network. Everything that applies to best practices for sales should be amplified in preparation for and during a recession. Do not forget how important their role is.

Recessions suck, for so many reasons. But just like any intelligent investor, they know that it is during the trying times, one can build great wealth. So stash some cash, build up your funds so that when the next one strikes you and your company are ready to take advantage of the opportunity.