Strategies to Recession-Proof Your Business

Quotes

• “When our business started six years ago we haven’t been through any type of downturn and so we would hypothesize that the only way our business is going to get hurt is if the whole world would shut down with a war or something. Then of course in March, the whole world decided to shut down.” -Erik“ A lot of our customers are hyper-affected and so the onus becomes on us. The other part of it is, the mix of e-commerce business to brick and mortar went from 13% market share to 30% so now we are experiencing the uptick of that where every company now realize that they need the gravitas and step it up.” -Erik“In a recession, people are suspending money. The money value goes down but consumer spending doesn’t necessarily fall off that much so people tend to overreact. What we found out in our study is a lot of companies cut their marketing and their sales and they go after where the new business is and that is like the last place you want to cut.” -Erik“I have seen a lot of companies skyrocket through this because all of their competitors stopped marketing and they grabbed all the market share they could because the cost of advertising in the past three months dropped 30%. If you double down with 30% more efficiency and double the market potential because consumer spending went online, we saw a lot of companies triple in the last couple of months.” -Erik“Pulling back in a recession and playing scared is the first thing you shouldn’t do. Pulling back on your advertising if you are a cruise line right now makes sense but if you are not directly affected by what’s happening like if you are a mortgage broker in a housing crisis, might not make sense to be doubling down on marketing. But if you are only affected because the global economy is slowing, it doesn’t make sense to pull back because you are still a business to be had and it’s going to be you or your competitor.” -Erik“I think there is a lot of uncertainty when the shelter in place happened. There were lots of layoffs, people are uncertain about how important those dollars are going to be and now we are starting to see the spending increase.” -Ben “I think it was Warren Buffet that said, never waste a good crisis. When everybody was panicking, don’t panic with them. When people had so much uncertainty because of quarantine and the layoffs, that’s the time to figure out what your aggressive strategyis because everyone is out of your way.” -Erik “There is a philosophy change here where you have to stay aggressive, try to be prudent where you can but don’t be overly conservative.” -Ben “Some of the advice that we gave when we did our crisis marketing week was, if you’re going to be budget-constrained, you have to do what you do better. Focus on converting your customers, improve your conversion rate, build your foundation, and produce content.” -Ben “If you are a digital business, you should be talking about how to navigate the new digital world. For marketing technology, this is a home run. We are having fun focusing on MarTech and they are all crushing it. How you do that is thought-leadership your content, nurturing your existing audience, being a beacon of light in a time of darkness is really important.” -Erik“If you can be one of those people that encourages people to come out when they should and get some to calm down a little bit as a B2B company that is a massive point to be. We talked about building a community. If you can aggregate that community around you, you’re going to have a lot more sustainable revenue.” -Erik“We threw a giant quarantine conference on April 7th and we had 4200 people who signed up and attend. It was a massive success, we had Daymond John speak and it was huge on all about how to navigate these times for business.” -Erik“It has calmed down right now but for a while, it was webinar after webinar after webinar and I thought that it’s not the way to go with it. I think we just need to provide entertainment and happiness to people. I don’t remember what we did first but when we signed up a magician, I put it out with a bunch of entrepreneur friends. So it was a kid-friendly magic show and we had tons of peoplesign up and attend because you have to remember, this is a good marketing lesson to know what are your customers going through right now.” -Erik“People think B2B is all about signing a business, it’s not because you are still selling to an individual. These individuals are at their home with their kids, trying to figure out what to do with them. So to create some value for our potential customers and existing customers that includes our family, that’s huge.” -Erik“There’s a balance on your balance sheet. Don’t be too aggressive or not aggressive enough during a good time.” -Erik “Operating with efficiency and making sure you don’t get overbloated and spending on stupid stuff, that is really important to keep a leash on. The reason I am beginning tokeep some balance sheet money, obviously it helps you weather storms but even more so, it allows you to make more calculated, data-driven decisions versus knee-jerk impulse decisions which could be really bad.” -Erik