7 Strategies for B2B Marketing during a Recession CRM
Posted by Glen Mund on Fri, Aug 01, 2008 @ 03:01 PM
by Jon Miller, http://blog.marketo.com
Should B2B marketers change their strategies during a recession? Does a recession always mean marketers have to work even harder to find ways to do more with less? Can a recession create opportunity for smart marketers to grow and thrive? These are some of the topics I recently explored on a panel at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle.
Are we in a recession?
First off, let me explain I do not think we're in a recession in the US - yet. A recession requires two quarters of negative growth in GDP, and Q4 last year saw 0.6% growth while preliminary numbers for Q1 this year were 0.9% growth (Bureau of Economic Statistics).
So we may not yet be in a recession, but times are growing increasingly difficult for consumers. The subprime mess is real, exorbitant energy and food costs are cutting into discretionary spending, and the weakening dollar is importing inflation to our economy. According to How I Spent My Stimulus, the $152 billion stimulus package is going primarily to reduce consumer debt or to pay for higher gas and food costs, i.e. it is not going to stimulate incremental spending.
What this means is that we are in the worst possible non-recession. Prior downturns avoided becoming a (global) recession because of the resilient American consumer. This time, it looks like we won't have that saving grace - meaning things may still get worse before they get better.
What does this mean for B2B marketing and advertising?
Fewer consumers means less demand; less demand means that efforts to stimulate demand (i.e. marketing) are less effective overall. Put simply, when people buy less, advertisers spend less. According to research firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, US advertising dropped 9% in the 2001 recession while Internet advertising fell a whopping 27%. I should point out that this slowdown applies to business-to-business marketers as well because of second- and higher-order effects, i.e. as consumer spending drops, the businesses that sell to those consumers reduce their spending as well.
To read the complete article, click here: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2008/06/7-strategies-fo.html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiua%2FfLqzsmxzEJ8n46ussWJ6PrK5ZsjsFF5atVA%3D%3D
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