One of the lessons learned in leading Creative Energy for 30 years is that clients who maintain or increase their advertising and marketing during a recession grow their market share and long-term sales. As fears of a recession grow, here are a few insights that you should remember.

1. Your Brand’s Share of Voice (SOV) Is Essential to Sales Growth – A quick look at sales of clients who abandon their advertising, at any time, will most likely see a decline in both their market share and their sales. When a recession occurs, many companies steal from their marketing budgets to take cash to their bottom line. Yet, recessionary periods lower media costs, making your SOV cheaper. Maintaining your SOV also benefits from competitors who do go dark and halt their advertising.
   
   Multiple studies of big brands who pause their advertising during a recession show that they lose market share, and they end up spending more to regain their share during the recovery.
   
   
2. Tweak Your Messaging – Buyer priorities shift during a recession, and the one we may experience is driven by supply chain issues that are inflating prices. Take another look at your plan to beef up your sales proposition beyond simply lowering your price.  Tweaking your plan to include messaging that adds value to buyers beyond a cheaper price while maintaining your brand messaging is important.
   
   
3. Be Nimble – We’re helping multiple clients take advantage of failures by their competitors with supply chain problems. Be quick to identify short-term opportunities to steal market share and react quickly. When a competitor comes up short, fill the void by nimbly offering your product and a great alternative. This requires a solid link between your sales and marketing teams and can have a dramatic positive impact on your sales.
   

We’ve found that privately-owned companies are smarter at maintaining their voice to their target customers during a recession than public companies. Those who feel the need to cut their advertising to maintain earnings to shareholders may do so for a few quarters but ultimately fail in long-term earnings.

For smart marketers who seize the opportunity to advertise more during a recession, there is market share growth and profit ahead.