5 reasons you should invest in your brand during a tough economy
We’ve talked to a number of small business owners in the past year about the health of their businesses. Most report that business is good but they’re worried about a tough economy. By most standard economic measurements, the economy is improving and strong. However, those measurements don’t really account for an overall sentiment among consumers that the economy is struggling.
“business hasn’t slowed but we think it would be wise to increase marketing for recognition.”
Given the uncertainty, many businesses are reluctant to invest in branding and marketing. One small business owner told us that while business hadn’t slowed down, they thought it would be wise to increase marketing to maintain recognition in the market. They’re not wrong. However, they were given pause when talking with many of their business owner peers whose response to the “tough economy” was to dial back expenditures on marketing and brand. While we realize we are undoubtedly going to be perceived as biased when we say this, continuing, if not increasing, marketing efforts during a tough economy is a strategic decision.
Here are four reasons we advocate to invest in marketing and branding during a tough economy.
shrinking marketing shrinks your exposure
We don’t have to tell you that one of the cornerstones of successful business is marketing. If customers don’t know who you are, can’t relate to you, and can’t find you, how will they buy from you? While it’s a natural response to want to hunker down when the going gets tough, doing so with your branding and marketing budget is a recipe for getting lost in the the crowd.
turn a downturn into a branding upturn
We had a client who was navigating challenges with regulation, an unwelcoming environment near their physical space due to issues outside their control, and a negatively impacted customer experience. Their first inclination was to be laser-focused on the issues at hand while de-prioritizing everything else for later. However, they saw an opportunity in the chaos. The branding had been inherited when they purchased the business many years before — visually it didn’t look aligned to what they envisioned for going forward; while there had been messaging architecture established previously they had not adhered to it and their content was inconsistent at best; the vision and purpose of the business had evolved. Rather than an acute focus on navigating their current rough seas, they decided to re-brand the business. The result was an holistic approach to not only solving their immediate challenges but simultaneously transforming their vision for the future.
differentiate by design — the experience of delight
Your brand is only as strong as the experience of your brand. You can say whatever you want about who you are but if how your customers or employees experience you is incongruent with that, you erode trust. And trust is foundational to any good relationship, including the one between a business and its customers (and employees). We’re willing to bet you have a host of processes setup for your business that get the job done — allowing a customer to pay for your product, shipping product, addressing customer inquiries, onboarding new employees, providing existing employees feedback on their performance, and so on. No judgment here but we think there’s a missed opportunity in these transactions. Most businesses have processes that get the job done but few have designed them with emotional intelligence, psychology, and creativity in mind. Investing in intentionally designed branded experiences, even (maybe especially) the most mundane of them, offers you an opportunity to set yourself delightfully apart.
get re-acquainted with your customer
We humans have a penchant for certainty. The neuroscience illustrates our love of certainty as a function of efficiency. It’s understandable then that one might be inclined to think they “know” their customer and focus their energy and efforts on other areas. Customers evolve as we do over time. What may have been true of them several years ago may no longer be the case. Customer personas are not stagnant and should be revisited regularly to ensure they are accurate to support marketing efforts and positioning of products, especially in a changing environment.
marketing is applied psychology
We like to say marketing is a big science experiment. You have a hypothesis, you run an experiment to test your hypothesis, you record the results. Marketing is never done because the hypothesis changes based on the last results recorded. Marketing is ultimately a persuasion effort based on what we know about the humans who purchase our products and services. What worked during a strong economy may or may not work in a tough one. As customer sentiments shift, there’s an opportunity to change our approach. Ultimately, marketing is about understanding what makes people (specifically the people who buy from your business) tick, and meeting them where they are to display that your product meets a need they have.
We get it; when things feel uncertain it’s understandable that business owners would look at where to trim costs. Strategically we think it makes more sense to find efficiencies in processes as a means of cost-cutting rather than scaling back branding and marketing efforts. A strong brand builds emotional resonance with your customers, creating loyalty and advocacy for years to come, tough economy or not.
