MBA2186 How to Market During a Recession

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 show business lessons you can count on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn how to market during a recession. The way you implement your marketing strategy, copy assets, messaging needs to be different during a recession. Ben Horowitz says in his book Hard Thing about Hard Things. Every business will go through wartime and peace time. And the same goes with your customers. As we enter this looming recession in the world's economy, the way we message and sell our product needs to change. When the world's in an economic wartime where people are tightening their belts and being a bit more Pennywise, the messaging that's going to attract them to your business, your products, your services will be different. What works during peacetime doesn't work during wartime. And I'll explain in today's lesson how to get into the psyche of your customers during a recession. How to make sure that you're still selling but different values of your products and services to make it a no brainer decision for your customers. We'll also talk about why recessions are the best time to market and get ahead and beat your competition. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Many businesses slow down or even stop all their marketing during a recession. They just say, hey, I don't want to spend money right now on a tie in our budgets and marketing needs to go. I'm here to tell you that that is a mistake. Recessions are some of the best times to market and it's the businesses that utilize recessions that come out of a recession the market leader in their niche. Cheaper to market during recession. There's less competition, there's less noise. You can lock long term deals. When it comes to advertising and marketing, that can serve you even after a recession. But even with all that, you need to make sure you're doing your marketing right. Your messaging is right to your customers during this period of time. Generally, when you're marketing to customers, whether you have a B2B or B2C during a booming economy, marketing to advantages and benefits and even ROI and growth if you're a B2B are usually the avenues that people take when it comes to their marketing, their ads, their messaging, their copy. During a recession, it's all about value. People want a good value. Does this mean you need to change your product? No, it just means you need to show how your product is more valuable, how it's actually a smart idea to buy. Now remember, during a recession, people want to be wise about their money. They want to make smart decisions. They want to feel like they're doing the right thing. They're more conscious of how they're spending. So you need to fulfill that need, make them feel like, hey, this is a good deal and you're getting a lot more than you're paying for. So how do you do that? Well, it's all about showing the value. It's all about showing what your product or service actually does for them in comparison to to the price. So for example, if you have a software tool, maybe your software will help them replace a few of the tools they already have, saving them some money. Maybe you're a service that can actually do the work for less money than they're doing right now. Outsourcing to freelancers or employees. Or maybe your customers are consumers and you could show them how your product lasts longer than the competition. Meaning that you don't need to buy so frequently. You can just buy your product and it'll last much longer. I did this with my clothing line. Our products were not cheap, but they're really good quality. Our dress shirts started at $100 each, but my dress shirts lasted longer and were machine washable so you'd save money on dry cleaning. And I actually had a picture of $100 dress shirt from Macy's being washed 30 times and my dress shirt that I sold in my E commerce store being washed 30 times. And mine looked brand new versus the other dress shirt that I got from Macy's looked like it's ready for the trash. And they say a picture is worth a thousand words. And this showed value. This is how I changed my marketing during a recession to show people, hey, pay $100 now, but you won't have to pay over and over and over. I also focus on products like dress shirts because it was easy for me to show value in that way. Because people use dress shirts all the time. They go to work every day. I knew firsthand because I was an English teacher at the time. I was building this business and I had to wear a dress shirt every day. I because I wore a suit to the university I was working at. So it's a product they're going to have to use versus me trying to push cufflinks or ascots, right? That's a little bit of a luxury item and they're not going to use that every day. And it's hard for me to show value. So sometimes recessions are a time for you to allow certain products to shine by flexing their value in the long term. One of the strategies I highly recommend is getting in front of the fact that it is a recession and people are trying to look for value and just get in front of it and say it in your marketing. So if you're running a deal where people are going to get significant savings if they sign up for a year or two years, say so, say, hey, lock in this incredible price for two years and save X amount of dollars every single month. These are dollars you can use during an economy like this. Boom.

Value.

People buy into that type of marketing because it screams smart purchase. Another tip that I recommend when it comes to your marketing, when you're writing your copy or your sales copy or you're creating your videos or whatever it is, that is to get in front of the emotions. During our session, people start to feel a little bit depressed. They feel like they can't enjoy life as much as they used to. So address that and say, hey, just because times are tight doesn't mean you can't enjoy life or enjoy your work or enjoy whatever your product is about. Treat yourself while getting a great deal. Language like this taps into the actual climate and emotions that are going on. People resonate with it because they can see themselves in that language. And once people start seeing themselves, they're open to hearing what you have to say and agreeing with your solution. Next, market your risk reversal. Risk reversal means your money back, guarantees, your free trials, your refund policy, whatever you do in your business to say, hey, if you don't like it, you can cancel or you can get a refund. This needs to be in the forefront of your marketing. Make sure you emphasize this on your sales pages, in your ads even. Why? Because people take longer to make a buying decision during a recession. They want to make sure they're making the right choice. They're not sure money's tight and they just feel like they can't afford to make a mistake. So if you make it a no brainer and say, hey, there is no way you can make a mistake because if you don't like it, we'll give you your money back. Or you can try before you buy with a trial. Emphasizing these risk reversals that you have in your business shows the customer the risk is all on you. You're taking on the risk. They have no risk. Take your time in a decision during the 30 day money back guarantee period or during your 14 day trial. This releases the pressure valve and allows them to feel like, hey, this is not the end of the world. If I buy this, if it doesn't work out for me, if I don't like it, I can always refund it or cancel. Now of course your job is when they do buy is to win them over and make them feel like, hey, I don't want to cancel, I don't want to refund. This was actually a great buy.

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All right, let me wrap up with some fancy little strategies you can implement during a recession to market better offer a break or release for those who are struggling. Listen, recessions are hard on a lot of people, a lot of businesses. This is your chance to build great goodwill with Your customers, people will not forget it. Let me give you some examples at Webinar Ninja, our software company, a lot of our businesses that struggled during COVID reached out to us and we gave them a temporary discount during the COVID period. During those two years, once we got out of the whole situation and things started to go back to normal, we reached back to them and said, hey, you've been on this planned discount for so long. How are things going now? Is it okay if we go back to the original pricing? The appreciation level that our customers had for this small, subtle move was enormous. They were like, this is amazing. Thanks so much for helping out during a difficult time. So if a customer comes to you and says, hey, I need to cancel or I can't afford this right now because of the recession, give them some sort of discount, some sort of temporary relief that you can afford to keep the customer in your good graces. Another option that we implemented was pausing their account so they could pay $5 a month just to pause their account, to save all their information and all their data. And we'll do all that so that when they're ready and they can come back, they can reactivate it so they can save a bit of money by pausing. And our customers are really thankful about this feature. They tell people they spread the word. It's like viral marketing. And they don't go shopping around. They always come back to us because they appreciate the fact that we're thinking about them. Great time to build goodwill and to show your customers that you actually care about them. Next, if you have to raise prices during a recession, don't raise them for your current customers just yet. Give them what's called a grandfathering discount or grandfathered discount. What does this mean? So say, for example, you have to raise prices. All new customers that sign up will pay those new prices. But existing customers, you can give them a grandfather discount, meaning they can be on the same price they're on right now for a period of time, for the next year, for the next six months, for the next 18 months. This is up to you. And then after that grace period, they'll pay the new pricing. People will appreciate even just some leeway, some period of time. And then when it's time to raise prices, let's say you gave them six months. You say, hey, okay, the six months is up. We're going to raise prices now. They're going to be like, fair enough. Okay, you told me six months ago this was going to happen. It's happening. You're nice enough to give me that discount. Now, some people will complain, some people will say that's not fair. But most people will be appreciative. This is just the nature of doing business. Now, some companies just straight up grandfather all their customers, giving them the old pricing until they cancel. This is another option if your business can't afford it. Now, even this is a sales exercise. It's also a marketing exercise. It's showing your values. It's showing what you think of your customers and understanding the climate they're in. Last is one of the best strategies we've implemented. Really works, especially during a recession. Add some compare pages to your website. You have competitors and your customers are going to shop around and compare you to competitors. They're going to Google your business versus your competitor's name. Now, if you create some pages with some content, comparing yourself to your competitors. So say, for example, you have five major competitors. You create a page for each of them and say your company versus company X. And that page details how you are better, right? How you compare. And it's gotta be fair, right? It can't be like a hit piece, right? You want to say what your advantages are and even maybe highlight some of their advantages to show that you're being unbiased in some way. But the point here is that you will show up in search results. People will find these articles or these pages on your website and see how you compare. Or they'll go to your website and they'll see the compare menu item and they'll click on it and they'll see how you compare. And you help them make a decision. You help them see you're more valuable, that you're a better choice. People are more selective and they shop around and they spend more time researching during a recession. Make it easy for them to make the decision to choose you. Add some compare pages to your website. There you have it, guys. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. If you're on Apple podcasts, just pop us a rating and review right in the app. You can also give us a review on Spotify a star review when you follow us. Thank you in advance for showing us love and supporting the show. It makes a huge difference. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This is not the last recession your business is going to go through, okay? History repeats itself. This is just the nature of the world. Every 10 to 15 years, the cycle of the economy repeats itself. Remember the global financial Crisis in the 2000s? Remember the housing crash about 10 years ago? So it's important for us to learn these lessons and to have them in our back pocket, because we're going to need them. They're going to happen again and again. And we want to build businesses that last a lifetime, that last generations. So as you implement these strategies, document them so you can have them handy for yourself, for your business, and maybe even share them with other people. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in. Tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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