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Businesses try to cut costs whenever they are in a recession. This often leads to the closure of their digital marketing agency.
This is combined with potential clients being more cautious about their finances, and it can be a difficult time for agencies.
This seemingly win-lose situation leads to the question: Is marketing your agency worth it during times of uncertainty and risk?
Yes, it is possible. But you must be careful. Your workload and how you interact with clients will determine the marketing strategy for your agency during recession. It will not matter how many ads you have secured or what new services you offer. Agencies need to be prepared for a recession and keep their clients happy.
This means that you must work with your clients and offer them customized solutions that meet their needs. This also involves looking at what isn’t working. What can you do to reduce your workload? What are your services that you don’t offer clients?
While there are many things you should avoid when marketing in a recession, the essence of the idea is to focus on your clients and let the work speak for itself.
Take a look at the behavior of your clients
Your best marketing tool is your current clients. Your existing clients.
Each company’s response to a recession will be different, so agencies need to respond accordingly. While a meal-prep company might be worried about rising food prices, banks will likely not be.
Understanding the needs of your clients is key to avoiding being caught in a recession or treading water.
Try to imagine yourself as your client and try to understand their goals over the next few months. Learn how they like to communicate. Get leads How they reach new customers. Which new pain points have they discovered? What can you do to help them?
Provide customized solutions to meet the client’s specific needs and address their concerns.
Your meal prep client might start a newsletter on affordable family meals, or a bank client could share budgeting tools with customers via social media. These tactics can be used to address recession concerns and are cost-effective.
You can take your client’s problems and work with them. This will not only keep them happy, but it may also make them feel happy enough to share your amazing work with others.
Recessions are a great time to post case studies online via social media, the company blog, or both, to show potential clients how you have dealt with difficult times. Ask happy clients if they are willing to give a testimonial. Social media can be used to highlight your successes.
It is a great way to promote your success story by focusing on the retention of high-value customers in difficult times. Happy customers are the best kind of customers.
Learn what services don’t deliver results
All businesses make the mistake to try to be everything to everyone. However, that doesn’t mean you agency can’t do it. Recession is the perfect time to discover your unique selling point, be niche-oriented with what you do, do it well.
To find out the real value of your services, take a hard look at them. The following questions should be asked:
- What are your services that don’t do much for clients?
- How many? ConversionsDid you acquire leads in your previous campaigns, but not just leads?
- How much was it per lead?
- Is it worth the extra cost?
- Did the company see a significant benefit?
- Is customer engagement on the rise?
- Did your client receive more positive reviews?
- How can you optimize your next campaign?
You might offer social media scheduling but your clients are either not interested or have an internal person who can do it. Your clients might also prefer email marketing to blogging, according to feedback.
An audit of your services can help you better prepare for the inevitable rebound in the economy.
Take a look at how your workflows are structured. You may be paying more for content creation for clients if it takes too much time. You can streamline the process to reduce edits and get the content out quicker by using the information you shared with clients earlier. This is the perfect time to invest in technology. Anything that will make your agency more efficient, scale faster, and reduce costs, is a win.
When you are trying to market, why do you have to do this? Optimizing your agency will allow you to give your best to your clients. Tired and stressed employees lead to tired and stressed work. Your team will succeed if you give them the space they need. Clients will be more satisfied and likely to refer others to your services.
Paying for advertising can be expensive, but it is not always the right answer.
You can solve some problems by spending money. Marketing in a recession is not the best time to do this.
It’s tempting to spend a lot on TikTok videos or Facebook ads. But resist. It’s possible for your clients to not be coming from Facebook or TikTok. Advertising is only effective if your audience is already using those channels.
Be sure to research your target audience before you start dropping cash.
In times of recession, organic outreach can be your best friend. It is a much better and more cost-effective practice to set up your agency for success organically. This includes SEO. Keyword optimization Meta tags that are precise and strategic.
Customers will only look for services when they really need them as the recession continues. Your website should be clear, organized, and optimized. Customers will find you faster and be more likely to use your services. These are high-quality clients that will result in better conversions and a greater bottom-line impact.
4. Take advantage of it
No matter how prepared or not, recessions are always hard. If you are smart about it, they can force your agency into greater efficiency and effectiveness.
Understanding the best approach to the market is key to success in lean times. This means that your agency should take the time to determine what this looks like.
Understanding your clients’ needs and how you can help them is key to your ability to survive a market downturn.
Additional Resources for Marketing Your Agency
What Brands Are Worth in Marketing Agency Pitches
The Four Benchmarks for an Agency’s Lifecycle – How to Profit from Them