Recession-Proof Your Marketing Plan

by John Ellett

Unless you've been in the Australian Outback over the past few months, you've heard that the U.S. economy may be heading towards a recession. As the prudent marketing leader you are, you must prepare for the tough times ahead.

During a recession, marketing executives take two approaches. The first is the "duck and cover" approach: The CFO is headed your way because yours is the largest "discretionary" budget. You close your blinds and hope she doesn't see you. You sweat listening to voicemails from sales leaders about their quotas. You feel as if there is no way for you to win, and there are days when you wish you could just crawl under a rock and hide.

The alternative (and career-enhancing) approach is to "plan and prosper." In this approach you recognize that the recession will require a change to the status quo, and you step up to lead your company with a disciplined and thoughtful plan of action. By taking the five steps outlined below you can unify your organization, improve your advantage against "duck and cover" competitors and emerge at the end of the recession in a more prosperous position. These are my recommendations:

1. Refocus your organization on the things that make a difference. Identify which customer segments and product lines are (or could be) making you money. Align the entire organization on the same set of priorities. This is not the time for sales, marketing and operations to have different opinions on what needs to be done. End the "pet" projects that have little proven value. Pick a few things to focus on and do them well.
2. Refine your value proposition to what is important to customers at this time. Make sure that you know what they are thinking about now, not during last year's research project. Are business customers now more concerned about cutting costs and deferring investments than preparing for growth? Are consumers conserving cash due to economic uncertainty and looking for ways to maintain their normal activities in more cost-effective ways? Make sure your "whole product" offering addresses these concerns and adjust your offering appropriately. Link the benefits of your offering to your customers' concerns. Be willing to test iterations to find what resonates best with your focused target.
3. Remind your best customers that you love them. It takes a lot more money to acquire new ones, and that's money you'll have less of during a recession. How are you evaluating who your best customers are? How can you gauge their satisfaction and respond accordingly? Are you communicating with them in a way that strengthens your relationship or are you just exploiting them with the latest promotion? How can you get them to be your vocal advocates? (After all, potential customers trust your current customers' opinions more that they do yours.)
4. Reallocate your media dollars to activities that can have the most immediate impact. Hopefully you have a feedback system in place that will give you actionable information. If not, make this a priority. Have you been slow to embrace the digital world? Social media? Get on it. Tradition has guided too many media plans and traditional agencies are not about to urge you in a different direction. Now is the time to take advantage of more responsive and measurable digital alternatives. It's going to be hard to defend long-term brand-building efforts in the coming environment. Instead, focus on engaging your customers through the media they access most and reallocate your budget accordingly.
5. Refresh all of your creative work. Make sure it reflects your refined value proposition and creates synergy through consistency. And do not be afraid to be bold; this is not the time to play it safe, which will be the tendency of many executives. You've got to make the most of every marketing activity by being distinctive. Not only will this approach have an impact in the market, but it can energize the people within your organization who want to see that your company has a plan for tough times.

A recession is not the time to recede; it is the time to lead. Anticipate the challenges ahead and develop a comprehensive plan of attack. Don't wait on the CFO or avoid the sales team. Embrace the challenge. Plan and prosper!