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  • Marketing During A Recession

    Marketing During A Recession
    online marketing during a recession

    Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. The dreaded word that everybody has been tiptoeing around. We’re here to address the importance of marketing during a recession.

    Marketing during a recession can be challenging, as consumers tend to be more cautious about their spending and may be more inclined to save money rather than make purchases. However, there are several strategies that businesses can use to effectively market their products or services during a recession:

    How to Effectively Leverage Marketing During A Recession

    1. Understand your target audience: During a recession, it’s important to understand your target audience’s changing needs, preferences, and behaviors. Conduct market research to learn how your customers’ priorities and spending habits may have shifted in response to the economic climate.
    2. Focus on value: In a recession, consumers are more likely to prioritize value over luxury. Emphasize the value proposition of your products or services, highlighting any cost-saving benefits or features that can help customers stretch their budgets.
    3. Offer promotions and discounts: Providing discounts, promotions, or bundled offers can help incentivize customers to make purchases during tough economic times.
    4. Increase your online presence: With more people spending time online, ramp up your digital marketing efforts. Consider investing in search engine optimization (SEO), paid search, social media marketing, and email marketing to reach your target audience where they are spending their time.
    5. Provide exceptional customer service: Providing exceptional customer service can help build loyalty and keep customers coming back, even during tough economic times.
    6. Partner with other businesses: Consider partnering with other businesses to offer joint promotions or discounts. This can help increase exposure to new audiences and build goodwill among customers.
    7. Be adaptable: Be prepared to adjust your marketing strategies as the economic climate changes. Stay attuned to your customers’ changing needs and preferences, and be ready to pivot your marketing efforts accordingly.

    What Not To Do During A Recession

    During a recession one mistake we’ve seen businesses make is to reduce, or cut back the marketing budget entirely. While it’s understandable that a marketing budget may be the “first thing to go”, it oftentimes has long term negative effects on a business’ performance months down the line. Recessions are temporary.

    In fact, the benefits of sticking to a steady marketing plan and budget during a recession gives your business a head-start when the dreaded recession inevitably ends. As most businesses tend to pull back, reduce, or entirely cut a marketing budget, the market share now belongs to you – and that budget stretches even further than before.

    Here’s what businesses should not do during a recession when it comes to marketing.

    1. Cut marketing budgets entirely: While it may be tempting to cut marketing budgets to save money during a recession, this can be a counterproductive move. By cutting marketing budgets entirely, businesses risk losing their brand awareness and customer relationships.
    2. Abandon their marketing strategy: It’s important for businesses to stay committed to their marketing strategy during a recession, even if it requires some adjustments. Businesses should continue to engage with their target audience and build brand awareness to stay top of mind when customers are ready to make purchases.
    3. Overpromise and underdeliver: During a recession, businesses may feel pressure to overpromise in their marketing messaging to attract customers. However, if a business cannot deliver on its promises, it risks losing customer trust and damaging its brand reputation.
    4. Price gouge: Raising prices during a recession can alienate customers and damage brand loyalty. Instead, businesses should focus on providing value and affordability to their customers.
    5. Neglect customer service: In tough economic times, exceptional customer service is even more important. Neglecting customer service can lead to lost sales and damage to a business’s brand reputation.
    6. Ignore customer feedback: Customer feedback is crucial during a recession, as it can provide valuable insights into how a business can adapt to the changing economic climate. Ignoring customer feedback can result in missed opportunities for growth and innovation.

    How VDM Can Help Your Business With Recession Marketing Strategies

    VDM is built on a foundation of core values, including: accountability, flexibility, and long-term client relationships. Our team works with you to build a stellar marketing strategy designed to withstand a recession, and provide longevity to your business. We use a variety of marketing strategies for businesses during a recession, including:

    Pivoting To An Online Presence

    If your brick and mortar retail shop is beginning to feel the consequences of decreased spending from your customers, there is always an online market and expanded network of purchasers. VDM helps to build standalone e-commerce websites that help supplement your business income by growing an online network of purchasers, providing you with financial stability and ongoing revenue.

    Effectively Leveraging Your Online Marketing Budget To Get The Best ROI

    Building an effective marketing strategy is our job. We work with businesses in a variety of industries and use our years of expertise to build something that works. During a time when your competitors are reducing budgets, this gives us the opportunity to get the best return on investment for your marketing budget.

    Maintain An Effective Online Presence

    When it comes to online marketing, consistency is key. We don’t think short term, we build long term online marketing strategies that help your business succeed and thrive no matter the economic factors. At VDM, we’re the experts in pivoting strategies to remain effective. When you consider the longevity of your business, a recession is simply a blip, and with a team of experts guiding you through, it doesn’t have to be so scary.

    We Can Weather The Storm

    Contact VDM today for a free assessment and audit of your online presence, and ways to optimize so you can take the opportunity to outrank your competition, to market your products or services even in a challenging economic climate. By staying committed to your marketing strategy, providing value to customers, and prioritizing customer service, businesses can weather the economic storm and emerge stronger on the other side.

    Let us help you weather the storm. We’ve got you covered.

  • SEO and Marketing: Why Your Site Needs Search Engine Optimization

    SEO and Marketing: Why Your Site Needs Search Engine Optimization

    Are you wondering if it is worth having a website optimized for your company? Do SEO and marketing really go hand in hand? The answer is yes! But why?

    Search Engine Optimization – What Is It Really For?

    SEO in marketing plays an incredibly important role when it comes to running your business – especially when your business is online-based, or reliant upon a website for traffic and information. Having a website optimized for search engines is one of the most important tools you should use to reach more customers for your company.

    Competing against any other like businesses in any industry is difficult today, both online and offline. It’s important to draw in qualified leads through organic search engine optimization. SEO is the long term strategy for your business to continue drawing leads, and generating ongoing revenue.

    ​Here are benefits that search engine optimization offers. Once you optimize your website for search engines, you can literally put your business on the map.

    1. SEO helps you reach more customers

    The biggest advantage of having an optimized website is the ability to reach more customers.

    Most people today look to the online medium to look for the products or services they need, gather information about the company, and review products before purchase. Having an online presence that people can easily find is very useful. Indeed, it is the key to reaching your target customers and, gradually, to grow your company. This is why SEO and marketing are essential aspects of any business.

    2. Your potential customers are always looking for information on companies like yours
    Since the Internet has become a strong source of information, it is normal for people to want to get to know your company or offer better before coming to you.

    Having said that, SEO optimization becomes very important. A well-optimized website can be found more easily and should offer your potential customers the opportunity to get to know you better, as a business.

    3. Local SEO can put you on the map
    Local SEO can be incredibly effective in increasing the visibility of your company in your city.

    If your target customers are in a specific place – Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna … etc. – they might be very happy to find that your business is right nearby and can meet their needs.

    Think about it. How many times have you searched online for terms such as “ice cream shop near me” or “restaurant open in Victoria” (or in any other city)? Regarding this type of research, it is no longer just about finding a specific place. Now it’s about finding a specific thing, in a specific area and also in a specific period of time.

    Today, people expect search technology to immediately find places in their area where they can get what they need. Having said that, it goes without saying that having a well-optimized online presence can only help.

    4. Search engine optimization pays off
    Every small company that wants to appear among the first results in search engines needs an SEO consultant to make its business visible. And why? Because an SEO expert with experience in the sector could take care of the online presence of your business while you take care of your customers.

    At VDM, we employ full scale SEO strategies to encompass an SEO content strategy, technical SEO, local SEO, and off-page SEO.

    Contact me today for a full scale website audit to learn where to start

    5. A well-optimized online presence leads to better awareness of your brand
    When your potential customers search for a product online, they will rarely click past the first page of a search engine. It’s true! And if your brand needs more visibility, you should highly consider SEO optimization as your first option. People will trust more of your brand if it immediately appears among their searches, or among the first on the engines, creating brand familiarity and awareness.

    ​6. Your business will be easier to find on mobile devices

    Mobile devices make up for the majority of online website traffic, and therefore, non-responsive website design could impede the visibility of your online business.

    The explanation is simple. Google has already announced that they are moving towards a more mobile-focused indexing and from there, SEO has changed. Having a responsive website influences your SEO through positive user behavior signals. This means that NOT having a responsive website affects your SEO in a negative way.

    Over the years, web traffic from mobile devices has continued to increase. And that’s why having an optimized mobile presence is a huge benefit for your business.

    7. Search engine optimization – or the “recipe” to overcome the competition
    Even if you keep postponing your site’s SEO, think about this: your competition won’t do it for sure!

    All companies, large or small, mainly rely on organic research to reach more customers. An advertising campaign can also work wonders, but never underestimate the power of SEO optimization because that is what will ‘push’ you to the top of the long term search engines.

    8. Google prefers SEO-optimized websites
    If your site is full of broken links, typos, missing alt text or title tags, Google will prefer your competitors fully optimized pages, and rank you lower. 

    Let’s get your website fully optimized for SEO today.

    Learn about VDM’s SEO services in Victoria, and get your website ranking.