Recessions tend to be synonymous with budget cuts. However, your healthcare marketing is one area that you shouldn’t cut. Marketing during recessions affords unique opportunities to keep your business healthy despite the economic upheaval. Then you can come out the other side stronger than when the recession began.
Explore opportunities for marketing during a recession and how these opportunities can benefit your company.
Key Takeaways:
- Sales depend on a solid marketing strategy, even during a recession.
- Recessions afford new opportunities for gaining customers as customers often switch brands during financial uncertainty.
- Use agile marketing techniques and invest in approaches with the greatest return to ensure every dollar is well-spent.
How Does a Recession Affect Marketing?
When times get rough, and budgets get tight, healthcare businesses want to focus all available resources on practices that yield direct financial return while reducing spending significantly in all other areas. Unfortunately, many healthcare businesses don’t see marketing as one of those areas with a high return.
Ironically, sales investments often remain within the budget. However, there are no sales without marketing, as marketing makes up most of the B2B healthcare buyer’s journey. Customers agree with this funnel, as 80% say they don’t want a sales agent to contact them until at least 80% of the way through the sales process.
What’s happening in the first three-quarters of the journey? These are the marketing stages where a business introduces itself to potential clients, turns them into leads, then slowly builds trust and presents its products.
The sales team doesn’t see those leads until the leads have nearly made up their mind to purchase a product. However, when businesses cut marketing, they also cut sales, as the sales team won’t see even a fraction of the leads when sales work with marketing.
Image from SuperOffice
Is Marketing Important During a Recession?
Not only should healthcare businesses avoid cutting resources from the marketing team, but companies should invest MORE into marketing in a recession. Here are five reasons why:
1. Avoid Losing Market Share
Keeping your healthcare marketing practices strong also holds your place in the market, so you don’t lose ground with your audience. This strategy comes down to one idea. You need to spend money to make money. So when you start cutting marketing, you’re also cutting your sales because they’re directly connected.
However, a strong presence will keep your sales steady so your business sails more comfortably through the recession and isn’t hit as hard as those that made extreme budget cuts in marketing. Then, when the recession is over (as all recessions will be one day), your business will not have lost ground, so you can pick up where you were versus having to make up for lost market share and clients.
2. Increase Your Brand Awareness
With so many healthcare businesses cutting back during a recession, those that still stand firm stand out with increased brand awareness. Your ads will be more visible, your content will rank higher, and your brand voice will be more apparent because there isn’t as much competing noise.
3. Stay Ahead of Your Competitors
If your healthcare manufacturing brand grows silent because of budgeting cuts, your competitors might see that as an opportunity to take over your audience. While your business isn’t publishing regular ads and posting on social media, your competition might still be. Therefore, clients who still need your services might switch brands because the competition will seem more appealing and reliable.
However, you can turn the tables by being the healthcare brand that comes in when all the competition grows silent and attracts more of the audience to your company through consistent marketing through the recession.
4. Retain Loyal Customers
Your loyal B2B customers will help keep your business afloat through the recession. Now is not the time to cut back on loyalty programs and incentives because companies rely on loyal customers’ continued support. A crucial 65% of sales come from loyal customers. In addition, acquiring new customers is five times as expensive as retaining loyal customers.
Focusing on customer retention is the best use of marketing funds, as increasing customer retention by just 5% can lead to a 95% increase in profits.
Image from FinancesOnline
5. Find New Customer Opportunities
In a recession, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with new B2B clients, especially when so many competitors are reducing budgets in crucial areas like marketing. Your healthcare marketing team can capitalize on those budget cuts and win over those B2B clients.
In addition, customer behaviors are changing along with needs. As a result, the old way of attracting customers may no longer work.
However, a new marketing strategy will focus on customers’ unique needs and offer a recession-specific marketing message for financially-strapped clients. This updated message will appeal to B2B customers in their current stage of business uncertainty better than your pre-recession value proposition and marketing message. Updating your message will create new opportunities to reach B2B customers you might not have with your old marketing message.
For example, during the financial crisis in 2020, as COVID negatively impacted many customers and businesses, 45% of customers changed their preferences. In addition, 75% of people changed their purchase behaviors.
Statistics show buyers don’t stick with what they’re comfortable with during times of financial difficulty. Instead, those are the times customers often consider other brands. Lower prices and better value are two primary reasons a customer might switch brands during times of uncertainty.
Don’t Market Less–Market Differently
How can you recession-proof your healthcare marketing?
Use these key strategies to ensure your marketing investments carry you through recessions and your business continues to grow in times of financial uncertainty:
- Keep your marketing strategies agile, adjusting to the changing times
- Focus on marketing strategies with a clear ROI
- Track the return of marketing strategies to make sure all investments lead to a return
- Invest in loyal customers to retain their business through the recession
- Focus on building relationships with new customers using strategies like account-based marketing
- Understand changing customer needs, pain points, trends, and buying behaviors
- Find ways to streamline marketing processes using automation and other tools to cut costs
- Monitor the competition to identify new opportunities
- Avoid any drastic changes where you don’t have a guaranteed return
Make Every Marketing Investment Count
Share Moving Media helps marketers make smarter financial investments by offering marketing opportunities connecting them directly to their target audience. By investing in targeted marketing through industry publications, you know your audience sees your message every time, so every dollar is well spent.
Contact us to learn more about our marketing opportunities for healthcare manufacturers.