Brand marketing leaders are being forced to think creatively and restructure their marketing budgets, to reach their target audiences- as a result of the sustained decline in consumer spending.
Inflation, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and the looming threat of a recession are just a few of the extraordinary ways that today’s economy is testing brands. Despite the fact that shoppers everywhere are watching their money, brands must keep making an effort to stay top of mind. According to a McGraw Hill study on U.S. Recession, Research on Advertising in a Recession, brands that kept up their advertising saw a 256% increase in sales following the economic downturn, while brands that cut back saw almost no increase in market share and only an 18% increase in sales. It makes sense that only one in ten respondents (11.1%) believed that marketing’s importance had decreased during the pandemic of 2020, whereas nearly two-thirds (62.3%) believed that it had increased.
Having said that, consumers’ decisions about what to prioritize when making purchases in the near future are affected by tighter budgets.
In order to deliver a balanced strategy, brands should be ready to show greater marketing agility as they navigate a turbulent market while also continuing to invest in branding.
Here are some suggestions to keep in mind to support brand campaigns and gauge their success when funds are limited:
Connect with audiences in meaningful ways
In times of economic change, marketers must make an investment in brand-building activities to forge genuine connections with customers. Instead of emphasizing the purchase of a good or service, marketing should focus on creating a genuine connection, whether through a sustainability message, increased brand loyalty, or cause-related messaging.
Additionally, bolder and more inventive strategies that consider the state of the economy today can help brands engage their audiences.
Focus on sincere messaging in creative
GenZenials currently control $5 trillion in consumer spending, and their strategy is to choose and stick with brands based on their mission. This could include a company’s dedication to sustainability, philanthropic endeavors, and everything in between.
Finding a genuine, authentic middle ground that respects customers and allows the business to concentrate on its core competencies is the key. Brands can find out what matters most to their key demographics and convey the most appropriate, authentic brand messaging by using tools like surveys and audience segmentation, addressing qualified, recent audiences with custom questions.
Also Read: Customer Relationship Management Challenges in B2B Marketing
Play the long game with consumers
While keeping marketing initiatives flexible is essential, it’s also crucial to avoid crossing the point where they start to be reliant on performance. It is important to understand the big picture of what drives brand outcomes because it can change with the economy and consumer habits.
Branding effectiveness will occasionally have a performance lens. For instance, rather than focusing only on consumers who are currently in the market, an automotive brand should cultivate brand loyalty among consumers who are considering buying a vehicle within the next year.
Keep up with the latest technological advancements
As artificial intelligence (AI) develops further, it gives businesses new opportunities to customize advertising content, verify presumptions, and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing promotions. The AI program of a company is essential for adapting to shifting consumer behavior.
Customers have a strong incentive to reduce or even eliminate their commute time, which may change the types of advertising content they connect with and may also change how much time they spend online. These kinds of subtleties in the consumer behavior can be detected by AI algorithms and taken into account when determining the best ways for a brand to connect with its target audiences.
AI enables brands to optimize media delivery in real-time and to produce measurable, incremental improvements in terms of sales and other marketing objectives. To keep trust and move engagement and attention levels to the appropriate levels, effective media mix modeling is required.
Also Read: Building an Effective Marketing Strategy in an Economic Downturn
Execute an effective measurement strategy
Consider strategies that expand the measurement footprint and enable flexibility when assessing the method for determining the impact of a marketing program. When viewing things through this lens, brands might think about eschewing conventional panel-based measurement techniques.
It’s crucial to weigh the audience measurement criteria against the outcomes criteria when doing this. Scalable brand lift survey data can be collected using native non-panel-based and open web surveys. This can simultaneously improve quality while lowering the price and threshold required for measurement techniques. However, a heavily modeled or hybrid approach to reach and frequency may still be the best way to address demographic assignment and duplication.
When the economy is struggling, branding is essential, and brand owners must continue to be relevant in the eyes and minds of consumers. Brands should implement strategic marketing initiatives around maintaining awareness and consideration with the right audiences while sustaining their brand sentiment more long-term, as the economy continues to go through ups and downs.
When the time comes, keeping up these upper funnel efforts will assist in moving customers down the funnel. In today’s shifting economic conditions, experimenting with the use of AI to better understand the target audiences and carry out campaigns, along with utilizing the most recent advancements in measurement methodology to achieve greater precision, can significantly increase the options for how to approach customers with lower spending budgets. Keep in mind that outcomes could confirm or refute previously held beliefs, which would ultimately affect performance expectations and budgetary allocations.
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