Back in 2019, no one could have foreseen the events of the past few years. It’s safe to say that businesses of all shapes and sizes have faced huge challenges and made significant sacrifices, first with a global pandemic, and now with a cost of living crisis.
With hard hitting energy bills, fluctuating fuel prices and general uncertainty and worry about the months ahead, spending habits for both businesses and consumers are changing.
How the cost of living crisis could affect your marketing
As is always the case when times are tough, many people will be focused on buying essential items and spending more time researching to find cheaper alternatives to products or services.
Many businesses are also counting the pennies and cutting back where necessary. Often, marketing is one of the first budgets to get hit when money gets tight. However, cutting back on promoting a business can have a big negative impact.
When it comes to saving costs as a business, too often it’s marketing that gets the chop first.
But, if your marketing gets turned off, your leads and sales soon dry up. Without continuous marketing activity, your business won’t grow. Your website won’t get the traffic it needs to generate sales and your existing and potential customers may not know your brand even exists.
So, rather than turn the tap off completely, brands need to think about how their customers are interacting and engaging with them and how to tailor their marketing communications and activity accordingly, to ensure that what they do spend delivers the best return on investment. This isn’t just something you need to think about during a cost of living crisis, but a strategy to apply to all your marketing activity, year round.
The importance of digital marketing for businesses
Digital marketing isn’t just about having an online presence. It’s about building trust and loyalty with your target audience to turn them from one-time buyers to returning customers.
It can be stressful and daunting thinking about how to best market your business and products in a cost of living crisis. However, every business is in the same boat and there are still good, affordable and cost-effective opportunities out there for everyone.
Low cost marketing strategies for businesses
Organic social media
It goes without saying that social media has become an extremely popular marketing tool in the past decade, and even more so in the past few years. With the likes of TikTok taking the digital world by storm, organic social media posting is crucial for brands to be seen online. Posting two or three times a week on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Twitter is a low cost way to promote your products or services and connect with your customers on a more personal level.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about enhancing your website with interesting, relevant and engaging content that builds trust, value and authority. The cost of living crisis means more people are taking longer in the research phase of the buyer’s journey. Blog articles and website content that includes relevant keywords to your business will only improve online visibility of your services or products.
Blog content
As we mentioned above, content that’s rich with keywords and key information about your brand, products or services will help improve your position in the search engines. Having a dedicated blog on your website, where you add two to three articles per month, will see website traffic increase significantly.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a great way to target customers with ads who have already been on your website. Without having to pay for a full-blown Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, a smaller remarketing campaign on a lower budget means you can show ads to users you know already have an interest in your business and what you’re offering. It’s also a great way to give customers that extra push from researcher to buyer.
Offers & deals
Sales and offers aren’t just for Black Friday and the January sales. You can put an offer on whenever you want to. During the cost of living crisis, this is exactly what many bargain-hungry customers will be on the lookout for. Whether it’s a percentage discount, a BOGOF promotion or a ‘refer a friend’ deal, if it’s a choice between you or a competitor, customers will almost always choose the business that’s offering some sort of incentive to buy.
Buy Now, Pay Later schemes
With the likes of Klarna and ClearPay appearing as payment options on a growing number of ecommerce websites, ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes are taking the business world by storm. They’re especially valuable during the cost of living crisis. Giving customers the option to pay in monthly instalments shows them you care and value their custom. It also promotes a sense of trust between both parties which, in turn, improves loyalty and the customer relationship.
Loyalty programmes
Customers like to be seen by the brands they buy from, especially if they’re returning customers. Setting up loyalty programmes where users have their own accounts to receive exclusive offers is a great strategy to increase trust and loyalty and improve sales.
Marketing ‘health check’ & competitor research
Competitor research is a great way to find out what other businesses are doing to generate leads and sales. It can help you stay up to date and current with your marketing activities as well as helping you identify what to do, and what not to do. An hour or so out of your week looking at what three or four competitors are doing could give you the ideas you need to further promote your business in the best way.
It’s also worth reviewing all your own activity regularly to ensure you’re staying on brand and engaged with your audience. Take the opportunity to get your house in order by cleansing data lists, tidying up your website to ensure the best user experience (UX), and identifying whether or not you need to refresh your branding to stay in line with your current and future plans.
Taking time to plan your digital marketing strategies will also benefit your business. The clearer the picture you have in your mind of what your goals are and how you want to achieve them, the more likely they’ll be successful.
The QBD G-series programme
More often than not, businesses know they need a new website or a refreshed marketing strategy. But, it’s often put on the back burner due to worries over a large upfront cost that many digital agencies require.
Owning and running a business is a challenge even without a cost of living crisis to deal with. Marketing budgets are tight and businesses need to save costs wherever they can.
Your business needs digital marketing to survive and we understand that this comes with difficult decisions for cost saving while you’re trying to maintain or increase your profits.
To help businesses stay visible and relevant in the digital world, we’ve created the G-Series product that has been designed to give you access to our full range of digital solutions in one simple, affordable monthly package. With a G-Series growth plan, our expert team of creatives, technical experts and growth specialists will deliver the services you need, when you need them, to support your growth.
If you’re interested in a G-Series package, or want to know more about the digital marketing services we provide to businesses, contact us today.