The two major recessionary periods faced by B2B Marketers are in the early 2000s dot-com bubble and the 2010s subprime mortgage crisis. But currently, the market is facing an economic downturn by the exogenous health hazard COVID-19.
Recession, the word that precedes its significance, has an enormous ability to shuffle the market deck. Generally, recession requires two-quarters of negative growth in GDP, but this unforeseen pandemic has taken the world by storm, disrupting the global economy in the process.
And as a B2B brand, you should not miss the rebound of the economy when it happens, as it's an opportunity for forward-thinking brands to invest in building awareness, gaining a greater reputation, communicating unique values, and telling stories.
Let's take a look into the five B2B marketing strategies that you can adopt now to come out of this recession just as strong, if not better.
Train your Team - With this stay-at-home and work from home have freed your team from their daily rush-hour commute and given them some extra hours, use this recession time as an opportunity to let go of the deadwood and bring in fresh thinking in your team by encouraging them to learn new things, hone skills. Sit with your sales and marketing teams and rebuild your lead-to-profit cycles with rock-solid marketing strategies that give you a head start when things go back to normal.
Invest in Long-term Marketing Projects - Look at your collected data and go back to the basics during downtime, that is re-evaluating priorities, and focusing on your true North(your long-term customer), which may have been lost because of years of uninterrupted growth. Now, it's a good time to tackle those long-term marketing projects that you have been kept aside due to lack of market analysis, customer research, new processes implementation, or other fundamentals. Invest time in these projects and set your brand up for success when the economy reopens and demand bounces back.
Adjust your Communication - You cannot afford to stand still and keep communicating as if nothing has happened, as often recessions are long and can make buyers a forgetful bunch. It's crucial that you protect your brand image by maintaining trust and minimizing customer frustration and adjust your communication by implementing, contextual offers, updates on service continuation, highlights of inspiring initiatives, and positive news.
Serve your Community - It's a great time to talk to your customers and identify their unique pain points. Engage and serve your community in the best possible ways by conducting surveys about their main business challenges at this moment, reviewing your content strategies, delivery mechanisms, and keeping them within your circle by offering informative content, and solving their respective difficulties with unique solutions.
Shift to Agile Marketing - Invest more time in your USP, build more brand awareness, balance investment across marketing, and create a strategic marketing game plan. Implement Agile marketing within your team to navigate uncertainty better during this crisis as it promotes high responsiveness to change, data-driven decision-making, and cross-functional collaboration.
Implement these strategies into your marketing and make your marketing plan more effective and re-adapt it to respond meaningfully to the current marketplace and reach your customer more efficiently.
Check out our previous article, where we have discussed how COIVD-19 has affected businesses across the globe. - How the COVID-19 Pandemic has affected the Small Scale Industries