It might sound counterintuitive but periods of recession or economic distress provide marketers with a great opportunity to grow market share over the long term.
There is plenty of research to reinforce this idea but still 98% of businesses and marketers succumb to fear and cut on their marketing efforts and spending.
In the masterwork, Marketing in the American Economy, Roland Vaile and Reavis Cox followed the fortunes of 250 firms after the Great Depression. The companies were followed through the recession and then during the ensuing period of growth, Tracking advertising revenues and annual revenue the firms were divided into three groups those that did not believe in advertising, those that cut back advertising during the Depression and those that increased it.
The results demonstrated that companies that increased their ad budgets during the recession grew sales much faster than their rivals – not only during the downturn but also beyond it.
Companies that decreased their advertising spend saw their sales decline both during the recession and then for the following three years. In relative terms, these companies actually underperformed even those that elected to do no advertising at all.
Stephen King, the great advertising thinker observed exactly the same pattern in some of his last work. Working with fellow WPP scholar Alex Biel, King examined the performance of 390 firms listed on the PIMS (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategy) database during recessionary periods. The authors divided their sample into companies that decreased ad spend, increased it by less than 20%, or increased it by more than 20%.
The pattern observed by Vaille and Cox emerged again validating their results and conclusions..
“Cutting advertising spend to increase short-term profits,” the authors conclude, “doesn’t seem to work”.
How to grow market share in a recession
Southern California and renowned marketing professor Gerry Tellis. Worked with his – then undergraduate – son Kethan on a paper for the Journal of Advertising Research.
The father/son duo examined more than 40 empirical studies of the impact of advertising on sales during and after a recession.
These included studies from all over the world and across every significant recession since 1920. It’s a fantastic piece of scholarship and worth quoting when the authors reach one of their main conclusions:
…most firms tend to cut back on advertising during a recession. This behaviour reduces noise and increases the effectiveness of advertising of any single firm that advertises. Thus, the firm that increases advertising in this environment can enjoy higher sales and market share. When the economy expands, all firms tend to increase advertising. At that point, no single firm gains much by that increase. The gains of the firms that maintained or increased advertising during a recession, however, persist. This theory is also the most reasonable explanation for all the empirical effects of GDP on advertising and of advertising on sales, market share and profitability. It is also a simple, but strong, refutation of the theory for cutting back on advertising during a recession.”
From Research on Advertising in a Recession: A Critical Review and Synthesis by Tellis and Tellis
Unfortunately here is what firms are actually doing:
Most estimates suggest advertising investment is likely to be reduced by between 30% and 60% over the rest of 2020 and beyond. Marketing Week’s latest survey suggests that around 90% of marketing budgets have been delayed or are under review.
Credit to here
Digital Marketing Ideas to Consider During the Coronavirus
Connect With Your Customers on Social Media During a Critical Moment
We’re all dealing with the impact the coronavirus outbreak has had on our lives whether you’ve tested positive or not. We’re all taking precautions. We’re locked in our homes and our kids aren’t in school. We can’t visit our friends. We can’t eat at our favorite restaurants or go out to the movies.
This is a time to really show empathy to others and help out where you can. This is a time we all need to be sensitive — and not too salesy or pushy — but it’s a great opportunity for your brand to stand out during a difficult time.
More people are on social media now while stuck at home, scanning for updates and trying to stay connected in a suddenly isolated nation.
Now it is the time for your business to do something charitable and promote your good deeds with social media marketing to help build your brand.
Make Sure Your Business Can Be Found Online
This sounds obvious and in case you haven’t noticed, more people are online right now than in their cars or walking the sidewalks.
We’re all glued to our computers and phones looking for updates within our community. We’re also looking for entertainment and ways to pass the time. For many, that includes shopping online.
Sadly many businesses are lacking in online presence and this is the time to increase yours,
Online Advertising is a Smart Move Right Now
With more people at home in front of their screens, it’s a great opportunity for businesses to use online advertising to connect with their customers and gain a competitive advantage. Also online advertising is becoming cheaper as firms are slashing budgets. That gives your business another opportunity to scoop up that lost market share from others pulling back during this time.
Prepare Your Business For the Bounce-Back Surge
As we noted earlier, the coronavirus outbreak should fade (just as it has in China) after a few months. That’s when normalcy returns and consumers’ spending habits stabilize.
Your marketing campaign should be a long-term strategy and pausing your marketing now could have a detrimental impact on your revenue potential two months from now when the coronavirus starts to become a distant memory.
Unique Circumstances Provide Opportunities for a Special Offer
During this uncertain time period, you have the opportunity to show support for your customer base by offering special discounts that will keep your revenue flowing. Identify your product-market fit and create a special offer.
It’s a great way to engage with your customers and keep a steady stream of revenue that will keep your doors open. You can push out your special offers through online advertising and social media.
Be Prepared to Pivot as a Business and Inform Your Customers
In a fluid situation, your business should also be fluid. This is a time that you should find ways to connect with your customers like never before. It shows empathy and keeps you relevant at a time when your business may have been impacted by people staying at home
As an example, restaurants are shutting down right now because customers aren’t dining in. You should make sure you’re offering free delivery services. Also, let your customers know you’ve increased your sanitary practices and how you’re doing that specifically.
But other businesses should pivot right now, too, as we stay in. Gyms have closed their doors in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but why not offer online workout classes right now? Dentists could offer online consultations. Grocery stores should offer free curbside pickup. All of these opportunities can be boosted with strategic social media campaigns.
Credit to here
You! are in the Media Business
Why Every Organisation Is Now a Media Business – In the current environment more than ever!
In today’s world, the battle for media attention is brutal. Audiences are exposed to a tremendous amount of content and given an unprecedented number of ways to consume it. Almost everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and organisations need to understand how to get their message out in the constant fight for attention.
The average person spends over four hours a day on their device. During these periods of lockdowns this is even more.
According to studies, about half the time (1 hour, 56 minutes) is spent on the top five social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube.
The transition to the new media is happening the following way:
- Radio is transitioning into two things: podcasts (interviews, stories, shows) and music curation platforms, like Spotify.
- TV and video are transitioning into social media (Instagram, Facebook, and even Pinterest) and curated platforms (YouTube, Hulu, Netflix).
- Magazines/Newspapers are transitioning into blogs, both corporate and personal ones.
The shift from print publications and fixed-schedule television programming to online aggregators and on-demand content consumption has changed the game for every organisation.
The only way to build a strong brand is by winning your target audience’s attention. Unfortunately your time-starved prospects only pay attention to things they care about.
People now only care about content that engages and this is why your organisation must now master the art of storytelling. Furthermore organisations should be adept at content creation and distribution.
Becoming a media organization isn’t the same as focusing on content marketing. In a media company, everyone is part of the content creation process. It’s a company-wide effort that should start by involving the leadership as well as all employees.
Organisations that focus on content marketing still often view content creation and distribution as a marketing priority only but in today’s environment, this is an outdated point of view.
It’s about telling your story – Tell a story, start a movement
To spread a message and to build a strong brand the first step is to win the attention of the target audience and then to engage with them.
Every organization is in the content creation and distribution business because stories are at the heart of content and experiences that attract, engage and convert.
Similarly, every organization is now a software organization. Software has penetrated all aspects of our lives and reshaped our expectations. In the same way, every organisation is a media organisation because it’s the only way to be relevant in an attention starved world.
The Art of Organizational Storytelling
Although most organisations are not in the business of writing novels or making movies, every organisation has a founding story.
Organisational stories typically revolve around one of four main characters: the organisation,the target audience, the, market and founders/employees. Every successful story follows the universal storytelling framework that describes the hero’s journey regardless of who the hero is. For example, a video or an article can describe customer-facing challenges and problems and how your organization or product helped to overcome them/what the life of your customer looks like now. The great news is that these stories can surface from anywhere. For a media organisation, all internal or external news is an opportunity to create a story.
Essentially you should be documenting “the life” of your organisation capturing all the important moments. Occurrences inside the organization provide an opportunity to build a compelling story that adds to your narrative.
For example, perhaps your CEO will be speaking at an industry event or you are planning a launch or an event. All of these moments should be captured as stories.
At the same time, by jumping on industry and market news, companies can insert themselves into trending conversations. So, whether companies create inward-focused stories or contribute to discussions and news originating elsewhere, they are building their brands.
That’s why organizations have to insert their senior leaders into important discussions. A brand is tied not only to senior leadership but to every employee.
Every company is a media company and has to operate like one.
Two pillars of success – Content and Distribution
It’s no longer enough to either produce great content or own a distribution channel. Organizations must do both so they can respond quickly to changes in audience preferences.
Build expertise in just one of these areas and you risk losing out to competitors with strong content creation DNA and a powerful distribution channel.
The Platform Era
Companies like Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Youtube are capturing a big share of the digital media market. These companies are platforms for content distribution and it’s another trait of the new media world that we are slowly transitioning in.
We used to live in a media world that was controlled by huge corporations and groups of companies like News Corp. We are now living in a world controlled by platforms.
Even high-quality content needs to be delivered through channels that audiences prefer. Consider the fate of print publications. Print newspapers suffered a sharp decline in readership and ad revenue because they failed to recognize the decade-long shift of audiences from offline to online channels.
While the quality of their content hadn’t necessarily changed, people’s preferences had. Newspapers were late to recognize this.
On the other hand, companies that built their businesses on large distribution channels are investing in content creation. Netflix first started as a distribution platform delivering Hollywood content on demand. However, it’s now aggressively investing in creating its own shows and movies. In fact, Netflix spent close to $7 billion in 2017 producing original content.
Netflix is not the only company to recognize that a powerful distribution channel can be more profitable when coupled with proprietary content. Amazon will spend over $8 billion on content creation by 2022. Apple knows it can’t afford to fall behind. It plans to increase its annual budget for original content to $4 billion by 2022. In the same vein, Google is stepping up spending on YouTube’s original content.
These technology giants have issued a dire warning to the Hollywood industry and traditional cable networks.
It would be wise for all businesses and organisations to take notice.
Partner with BMDM and set up your own podcast
What we provide:-
- Produce the podcast
- Upload to popular podcast apps and channels
- Share on BMDM social media network and website
- Sponsorship Revenue share
What we need:-
- Commitment to produce the podcast for 1 year or duration leading up to conference or event
- Source and interview guests
- Set questions for each guest
- Produce podcast at least 1 week in advance
Process:-
- Decide a name for the podcast or chat
- Approve a logo and other artwork
- Approve the intro and outro jingle
- Host to record interviews with guest via chosen platform
- Host to record standard podcast introduction and closing message
- Host to record pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads
- Host to record standard “interruption notice” before mid-roll ad and the standard notice “to get on with the chat”
- BMDM will assist with generic questions for guests
- Once guest is confirmed, BMDM will email guest with confirm podcast details, questions set by host as well as request guest profile, relevant links, images or profile pic required
- BMDM will edit and publish
Example of a new show produced by BMDM on Spotify
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