If money weren’t an option for your target audience, marketing would be much simpler. All you would have to do is persuade your target audience that they want and/or need the product or service. But in a recession, marketers also have to convince their target audience that the product or service is worth the cost involved. This can be much harder, because customers have a smaller limit with which to spend. Marketers, too, have limited funds and have to be more careful with the promotional choices they make.

The economy has been straddling the line between recession and not for the past few years, and experts seem to believe a 2023 recession is imminent. This means marketers may need to use a different approach in order to pitch their products. Here are a few tips for marketing in a recession.

Market To Existing Customers

It is much easier to market to your existing customers than it is to gain new customers — especially in terms of cost. You can send them personalized promotional emails, offer discounts, or set up a customer loyalty program to encourage repeat purchases. Marketing to your existing customers and continuing to provide great service can also help to spread the word about your brand to new customers through word of mouth marketing.

Look At Customer Spending Trends

In the midst of a recession, customers are much more selective about where they spend their money. They have to be, since there’s less of it to spend. But you can still get a sense of how customers are spending their money by doing some research into customer spending trends. This will help you to know which products you should focus on and which products might be less appealing in the current market. 

Be Ready To Adjust Your Plans

A recession can be difficult to predict. How long will it last, how much will it affect your budget, and how will it affect your customers? Even when you make a plan that seems sensible for a recession, you may find that it doesn’t work as well as you expected. It’s important to stay flexible during a recession. Be ready to adjust your plans when they no longer serve you. This is no time to waste money on a marketing campaign that isn’t working. 

Review Your Marketing Performance

As stated above, you don’t want to waste money on something that isn’t serving your brand. The ideal marketing campaigns for a recession are those with the greatest ROI. This is a good time to look at your marketing performance. If you see that something is costing you more money than you would like, cut it out or find a way to save money on that particular marketing campaign. Focus your efforts on the marketing that leads to the best results, rather than wasting time and money on what doesn’t.

Use Educational Content Marketing

Customers will want to be much more informed about their purchase choices during a recession. Create blog posts, tutorials, or other informative types of content marketing geared towards education. Understand the customer’s needs and challenges, and then offer the best suggestion for a solution. This will help customers make an informed decision and help you guide the right customers to the right product.

Find Your Unique Selling Position

What sets your brand apart from all of the competition? What makes your product stand out? This original feature is called your Unique Selling Position (USP). When customers are more selective about their purchases, knowing and promoting your USP will make sure your product gets their attention. It will also mean that the selective customers who want to find exactly what you’re offering are more able to do so.

Focus on Lead Conversion

It’s easy to get traffic to your website. If you shout about your brand enough, skillfully enough, in enough places, someone will look at your website. But in a recession, more than ever, you need to focus on getting leads — people who actually want to follow up for more information about your business. More than that, you need to focus on turning those leads into customers. 

Lead conversion is the process by which those who have asked to be added to your email list, given a follow on social media, or otherwise followed up with your business make their first purchase and become a customer. Take time to use personalized marketing or offer incentives to first time customers in order to give your leads the final push they need.