Is your brand ready for recession?

This week saw confirmation that the UK is in recession, which is expected to be protracted. Coming hot on the heels of the pandemic, it can feel like the hurdles are unending, but now is the time for action and to use your brand’s assets and resources to the best effect.

Every situation will be unique, but here are a few pointers to help set a course through the stormy waters.

Maintain a long-term focus

First, a potential positive; if you can maintain your presence, have clear, focused messaging and be responsive to your customer needs, research repeatedly shows that you will gain on competing brands during a recession. You also can get more for your marketing spend because of the effect of competitors reducing their budgets.

It may take some realignment or refinement to remain relevant, but keeping a longer-term view will see you emerge stronger amongst the knee-jerk changes of direction and slashed marketing budgets.

Understand your customers

Before you do anything, understand your customers and any changing needs. If you grasp their challenges and the opportunities to address them, the more you have the potential to respond effectively and continue to do business with them.

Before you do anything, understand your customers and any changing needs.

Meeting customers’ requirements might require creativity when reconfiguring products and services to ease budget pressures or spending commitments. You may also need to focus your marketing efforts on core or necessity offerings.

Sharpen up your message and identity

To battle through the competitive landscape, you need to ensure that your messaging is crystal clear and that customers understand two things:

• Everything that you can offer them – a surprisingly common situation, especially with B2B brands, is that customers will engage with your brand for a small percentage of what you offer and maybe need to learn the full extent of what you can provide.
• Why they should buy from you, be consistent and persistent.

Again, consistency is critical when it comes to your brand identity, but importantly, this shouldn’t choke creativity. Just because everything looks the same doesn’t necessarily make it engaging or the best way to present your brand.

This may involve rebranding, it may involve repositioning your brand or it maybe just a case of some subtle tweaks to improve the clarity of your message.

Drop us a line if you want to chat about how to make sure your brand thrives over the coming turbulence.