The Tricks to Scale up Your Marketing During a Recession: Lessons from Starbucks and Dell

In the face of a recession, marketing budgets are often the first thing to go. However, this can prove to be a costly mistake. Marketing is vital in any business and it has been shown that cutting back on marketing investments in a recession just means you’re going to take a much longer time getting out of it. The question then becomes how to take your marketing efforts from a small, local business to an international brand with success.

In this great guest post we will explore some successful strategies for marketers looking to scale up their marketing initiatives during a recession. We’ll look at what others like Starbucks and Dell have done and learn how they were able to grow their brands even when times were tough.

Section 1: What is marketing?

At the outset, let’s get one thing clear. Marketing is all about getting people to want your product, whether that is a product in the physical world, the same product in the digital world or both. That is the crux of what marketing is and is supposed to be about. For this reason, it is crucial to not confuse marketing with selling or advertising. Marketers are more interested in using their influence to get people to want their products or services. That sounds simple, but the more you think about it, the more difficult it becomes to measure and the more you start to realize how difficult it is to scale your marketing initiatives during a recession.

Why marketing during a recession?

The economic downturn of the past few years has clearly been challenging for businesses and for marketers. In the U.S. alone, the economy has added over 500,000 new jobless. If you’ve ever had a business, you know that recession can make for difficult times. You need to re-think some things, but can you afford not to?

We’ll be discussing why the recession is a great time for companies to make their marketing investments, how to cut the price, and how to take your marketing efforts from a local business to a globally recognized brand.

How to cut the price

You might be wondering how to cut back on marketing. The answer is quite simply – you need to look at your marketing expenditure holistically. You don’t need a budget for each marketing channel.

Marketing in tough times

When a recession occurs, many businesses that rely on aggressive advertising campaigns to reach consumers become desperate for attention. Unfortunately, a recession means less discretionary cash, not more. Many companies respond by reducing their marketing budgets. This is a big mistake.

Businesses are not supposed to react to crises; they should be proactive. The recession is not an opportunity to catch up on marketing expenditures; it is an opportunity to scale up.

Customers are often looking for alternatives to products that have become boring. Instead of engaging in a bidding war over “last year’s offering,” such as cars, smart phones, or beer, the salesperson can try to entice customers with a unique “best of the new year” product or service.

Lessons from Starbucks and Dell

We all know how Starbucks tackled the recession. They slashed prices on their hot drinks and the rise in sales proved that it worked, raising them to become the leading brand among hot coffee brands.

There’s a lot of evidence that this was a key factor in helping Starbucks recover. Let’s look at one of the ways that Starbucks had successful growth during this period. They set themselves the task of recruiting the best talent. As we all know, it can be tough for anyone during a recession but if you can be as flexible as possible when it comes to recruiting, you’ll increase your chances of success.

They also increased marketing spend. The more money you have to spend, the more you can create more buzz for your brand and attract new customers.

Conclusion

Marketing plays a vital role in every business. It can help to drive sales and product awareness, increase word-of-mouth and help to increase trust and brand loyalty. At Dell, marketing was a significant driver for our brand’s global success.

Like many other brands that have taken a hit, the very first thing we did was look at our entire marketing strategy. We then adjusted our marketing programs accordingly. This includes traditional advertising and marketing collateral, to our paid media strategies and site traffic strategies.

In the face of a recession, there are many things that you can do to scale up your marketing. At Dell, we are constantly looking at how we can better serve our customers and leverage technology to drive growth for our brand.