5 reasons to increase your marketing & branding budget in a recession

You wouldn’t shut off utilities to save money; why stop bringing in money?

As America heads into a recession, stories abound about companies cutting budgets and operations. Historically, many businesses will reduce or eliminate their marketing budgets in a misguided effort to save money and stay afloat.

What they won’t realize is that they are also cutting themselves off from the lifeblood of sales and profits. This will exacerbate the negative effects of a recession and restrict growth potential when the recession ends.

The goal of marketing and branding is to be imprinted upon your target markets’ brains so that they will enter your sales funnel. Movie theaters have mastered this through a surround-sound strategy which includes high-quality speakers all around the theater which immerse you in the music, dialogue and background of any film. Viewers become consciously and subconsciously absorbed because of the precise way all of the elements are weaved together.

5 reasons to increase your marketing and branding budget

It’s impossible to imprint a brand on the minds of target markets if they don’t know that you exist. That’s why marketing and branding should be a 24/7/365 investment in good times and bad, in slow seasons and busy ones.

Here are five reasons we recently examined to double down on marketing and investing in a recession:

• There are tremendous opportunities for growth because the competition is pulling back while you drive forward.
• Advertising is cheaper because there are fewer companies paying for the same number of ad slots.
• People have short memories. Staying in front of current clients will ensure that you keep more of them during and after the recession.
• You can reach new markets more cheaply. When the economy rebounds, you’ll be remembered for being in front of them when nobody else was.
• Increase distance between you and the competition, because they are pulling back and you are pushing forward.

It’s tough to determine the best way to allocate scarce resources to marketing and branding during a recession. That’s why you must be prepared ahead of time. As one entrepreneur told us:

“Recessions will come and go; and you may not know they’re coming. Focus on your core market, be careful with debt, and position your business to be greedy when others are fearful.”