When times are tough for a business - such as a recession - there is a natural urge to cut business expenses. And one of the areas where a business is most likely to cut costs is in its online presence, especially its website and digital marketing. Some businesses will stop investing in their website or pause marketing campaigns that direct people to their website.

We’re here to explain why this is a mistake. There might be areas where you can cut costs during a recession, but your website shouldn’t be one of them. In fact, your website can be what keeps your balance sheet healthy. And here’s why…

Consumers become more diligent

Consumer behaviours change during a recession. Inflation discourages consumers from making purchases and they become more careful about how they spend their money. Every purchase is considered and the purchases they do make are scrutinised at a higher level. As part of their diligence, the consumer is even more likely to research your business and its products and services. This will involve online checks, and of course, a visit to your website.

If you’ve stopped your website altogether or have abandoned any updates, it may not be performing as well as it should be. Moreover, the consumer could lose confidence in your offerings due to the current state of the website. This can cause the consumer to look elsewhere so they don’t waste money.

You need to work harder for business

During a recession, you’ll undoubtedly need to work harder for business. Not only for the reasons explained above, but also because there are simply fewer leads out there. Some consumers will simply decide they will hold off buying the products or services you’re offering until a later date.

So, it doesn’t make sense to scale down your online presence when the opportunity to secure new clients is smaller. This would be comparable to increasing your prices after consumers shunned your offerings because they were already too expensive. It just doesn’t make business sense to cast a smaller net when there are fewer fish to catch.

Marketing diversification yields results

Tough times also require a diverse marketing strategy. It’s problematic to rely on one form of marketing to keep your sales funnel active at any time but especially during a recession. The best way to diversify is to invest in an organic type of marketing and a paid marketing strategy. In a perfect world, you will already have been doing this before times got tough, which allows you to generate organic leads and complement these with paid leads.

The two best marketing strategies to diversify with for most businesses will be Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google Ads. Learn more about these below.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation refers to services that improve your website pages’ ranking on relevant search engine result pages (SERPs). When an internet user searches a term using Google, it brings up a page of results. Getting to the top of these results organically is possible through long-term SEO investment, which offers some serious ROI.

SEO is a type of organic marketing because you invest to naturally increase your position and generate more leads. It requires long-term investment to achieve long-term results, and it isn’t as vulnerable as paid strategies.

Google Ads

On the other hand, Google Ads is a type of paid marketing. It allows you to pay to feature at the top of the most relevant SERPs so you attract leads quickly. Although you don’t pay to be part of the top results, you do pay every time a user clicks on your ad, which is why it’s also known as Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing.

Google Ads offers short-term solutions when you need them. And it has other benefits, such as allowing you to zone in on certain users based on demographics and location, and it works around a monthly budget set by you.

Recap…

Don’t abandon your website when times are tough. It’s a mistake to slash investment in your online presence during a recession, especially when consumers become more diligent and there are fewer of them around. Instead, try to cut costs elsewhere if required while diversifying your marketing strategy between an organic method (SEO) and a paid strategy (Google Ads).

WEBPRO Knows

During the 2008 recession, research showed that brand visibility increased 3.5 times among businesses that simply maintained their marketing budget.