When marketing should be the last resource to be considered as a non-essential expense, it is being cut off in most organizations because of today’s uncertainty. Almost 70% of companies expect to reduce their marketing budget for the rest of 2020 (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2020). Although, what these companies do not see is that without marketing your organization is sentenced to death. This happens in a moment in history when many firms keep going bankrupt or reducing their operations by almost non-existent, which sorry for the clarification but it is also known as a financial crisis.
“Almost 70% of companies expect to reduce their marketing budget.”
For example, in the case of Spain, which is one of the countries that was the epicenter of the COVID-19 disease a few weeks ago, their GDP is divided into 3 main areas, Agriculture, Industry and finally services, where Tourism represents a 12.3% of the country’s total GDP (INE, 2019). Therefore, assuming tourism will not recover until 1–3 years from now, this means that most companies in the industry will most likely go bankrupt or will fire most of their current employees.
Once said this, in every crisis, there are opportunities that only resilient organizations and individuals will take advantage of. So, this is the part where Marketing can play a great role to keep your company’s awareness high and thrive while your competitors keep getting smaller and complaining instead of taking action.
“in every crisis, there are opportunities”.
It is true in a time of crisis, non-essential expenses must be cut off and even though marketing is not one of them, your customer base could get reduced as well, which means revenue would fall. In that case, expenses must be lower than your revenue and you must save as much money as possible. Although right now you should try to keep and not reduce this expense since it is a non-negotiable one. This means firms must continuously be creating new content, depending on your audience, on Instagram, Facebook but mainly on TikTok because of its high virality. Also, create articles like this one. Do it every day if possible, but do not mention COVID-19, since it can help you at the beginning, but it will not do much good in the near future.
“do not mention COVID-19”
So remember, try very hard to not cut on marketing and keep producing content, since this is the only way you can even take advantage of the situation and get into the big player’s level or even overpass them once the market gets back to normality.
References:
Influencer Marketing Hub. (2020, May 6). Coronavirus (COVID-19) Marketing & Ad Spend Impact: Report Statistics. Retrieved from https://influencermarketinghub.com/coronavirus-marketing-ad-spend-report/
INE. (2019, December 23). Spanish Tourism Satellite Account. Retrieved from https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_C&cid=1254736169169&menu=ultiDatos&idp=1254735576863