The Upside of a Downturn

When revenue softens and uncertainty creeps in, marketing budgets are often the first to be slashed. It feels logical. In recessions, CFOs often view marketing as the obvious area to cut. That’s a mistake. Killing your marketing budget in a downturn is like throwing your engine overboard to lighten the boat.

You don’t need less marketing when times get tough. You need smarter marketing.

This post is the tactical companion to our framework on intentional marketing. It laid out the mindset. This one gives you the playbook.

To Protect the Engine—Cut Smarter and Reallocate

Cutting marketing budget won’t save your business. It just guarantees you’ll be invisible when the market recovers.

Think of it this way: your competitors are panicking right now. They’re listening to the CFO. They are cutting their marketing budgets. This creates an opportunity for you, but only if you’re still in the game.

Your customers are also worried. They are considering each purchase carefully. But life goes on. They need what they need. Perhaps not as often or as much, but the need remains. Having a presence signals that you are there for them and can be trusted.

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” ~ Jeff Bezos

I’m not recommending that you keep your budgets at pre-recession levels. I recommend being smart about the cuts you make. You should create a triage budget that pulls dollars from low-performance activities and redirects what you can to channels that reach your best customers and actually drive revenue. 

The Three R’s of Recession Survival

Review

Review your plan. Is your SMART Objective still valid in the current economy? Does your strategy (who and why) target the heavy category users who are likely to need what you’re selling? Is the plan (how and when) aligned with your audience and their needs, given the current economic environment?

Reduce

Save money by killing the spray-and-pray tactics. Ignore the vanity metrics. Likes, follower counts, and impressions aren’t going to bring you revenue. Measurement, the third leg in the planning stool, is key here. You need objective data to determine what’s working and what’s not working.

Reallocate

Ask yourself: which efforts are generating results today? Which ones are just making noise? This isn’t the time for brand awareness or channel experiments. This is the time to double down on tactics that deliver.

In the recession marketing playbook, we focus budget on what’s working, so every dollar leads to revenue, not just statistics on a dashboard.

Do More Testing and Measurement, Not Less

“We can’t afford to test right now.”

I hear this constantly, and it’s backwards. Testing isn’t a luxury during downturns. It’s your best bet for survival.

Consumer psychology shifts in uncertain times. “Your customers are also worried.” Your audience is more cautious, more deliberate, more skeptical. The messaging that worked six months ago might fall flat today. You need to know what resonates now, not what worked when everyone was optimistic. Measurement and testing keep you agile. They let you make choices based on data, not hunches.

When we talk about measurement and testing, we like to say, “Test big things.” Here’s what to measure and test:

Messages → the right story keeps prospects moving. Pain points change. When the economy is in the dumps, your prospects aren’t chasing what’s new anymore. Like you, they’re protecting what they have. Does your copy support that shift?

Channels → find the most effective channels in today’s economy. Measure all your channels. Perhaps LinkedIn performs better than Instagram when budgets are tight. You won’t know unless you measure.

Offers → flexibility lowers friction and ensures cash flow. Introduce bundles and payment plans, emphasize guarantees; flexibility matters to your customers when cash is tight.

You’re not looking for perfect. The ideal isn’t the goal. You’re looking for what’s working today.

Double Down on Proven Winners

In an economic downturn, mediocre marketing stops being mediocre; it becomes a liability you can’t afford.

Because you are now focused on measurement, you know what’s working. You have data showing which channels, campaigns, and tactics drive results. Double down on what’s working and drop the rest.

If your email list produces 40% of revenue, lean into it. 

If your retargeting ads convert at 8% while cold traffic sits at 1%, shift dollars accordingly.

This isn’t about being timid. It’s about being ruthless with ROI.

Identify your top three revenue-generating activities. Then ask: What happens if we allocate 70% of our budget there? The answer is usually “we make more money with less waste.”

Put Your Best Customers at the Center

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” ~ Peter Drucker

Not all revenue is created equal. Your top customers, the 20% driving 80% of your revenue, are the ones who will keep you alive during a downturn. And because everyone is on edge, new customers will be harder (more expensive) to acquire. 

Your best customers aren’t just yesterday’s high-value transactions. They’re tomorrow’s transaction. They refer others. They give you grace when things aren’t perfect.

They are your best customers because they are heavy category users. Recession or not, they need what you are selling. You can rely on them, but you should never take them for granted. They know they are good customers.

Use your marketing to tell them how much you value them. Send VIP offers. Reach out personally. Create micro-transactions to build trust. Even your transactional emails are an opportunity to support your relationship with your best customers. Each small gesture reinforces the relationship and earns their ongoing support.

“Wait, shouldn’t we focus on acquiring new customers?”

Your recession triage budget needs to be allocated to the things that are working. Retention and customer development are cheaper and a more reliable source of ongoing revenue. This is especially true when consumers are scared. Your best customers already trust you. New prospects? They need convincing. And convincing costs more when they are nervous. This is budget you likely don’t have right now.

Emphasize Owned Channels

When inbound traffic declines—and it will—owned channels become your lifeline.

Email marketing is foundational to relationship marketing and delivers the highest ROI of any channel. Its importance during a downturn cannot be overstated. Personalization is key. Segment your audience so that the message you send to your VIP customers supports who they are, and the message you send to occasional purchasers supports them as well. Use email marketing to nurture relationships over time without burning budget on ads.

Retargeting keeps warm website visitors in your orbit. Younger buyers don’t trust traditional advertising and conduct extensive research before making purchase decisions. When someone visits your website, retarget them with a message that tells them you know what they are looking for. This reminds them and assures them that you value their patronage. And ad retargeting is efficient; it brings them back at a fraction of the cost of cold acquisition. 

Email costs pennies per send. Retargeting ad budgets are a fraction of the cost of cold traffic. Together, these channels stretch every marketing dollar by squeezing more value from the traffic you already have. You’re not chasing new eyeballs. You’re converting the ones you already have.

Adjust for the Generational Shift

Boomers aren’t the growth segment anymore. Millennials and, to a lesser degree, Gen Z dominate purchasing decisions now, and they think different. 

They grew up digital. Pushy tactics repel them. Hype feels hollow. They want transparency, education, and personalization. They want to feel like you get them, not like you’re selling them.

Audit your marketing. Does it still sound like Bro Marketing, or like it was written for the direct-mail era? If your copy leans heavily on urgency tactics and aggressive CTAs, you’re probably alienating the very audience you need to reach.

This is where strategic personalization matters. You’re marketing to people who don’t like being marketed to. That means your approach needs to feel helpful, not transactional.

Show them you understand their problem. Educate them on solutions. Then make it easy to take the next step. That’s the formula.

Refresh Instead of Starting from Scratch

Freshness beats volume in a lean market.

You don’t need to produce new content constantly. You need to make your existing assets relevant again.

Refresh old blog posts with updated stats. Repurpose winning campaigns with new creative. Update ad copy to reflect the current reality. Refreshing content is a smart use of limited resources. And it means your content is visible to AI systems that are increasingly shaping how people discover information.

Remember that generational shift we just discussed? Millennials and Gen Z don’t just Google; they also use platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools for recommendations. These systems favor recent, updated content. When you refresh a blog post from 2022 with new data and insights, you’re not just polishing an old asset; you’re making it discoverable again to the tools your prospects actually use.

Don’t spend on new content. Your audience isn’t bored with your message. They’ve probably forgotten it. Refreshing content saves money, ranks better in AI-driven search tools, and reduces the cost of lead generation.

Build Your Roadmap for the Upswing

Recessions end. Always.

The question isn’t if demand rebounds—it’s who’s ready when it does.

While your competitors retreat, the recession marketing playbook allows you to both survive and it sets you up for future growth.

• Keep collecting customer data
• Focus on your best customers
• Adjust your marketing to support what they need
• Outline two or three big campaigns you’ll roll out post-storm

Don’t be invisible. Don’t cut recklessly. Invest strategically in the customers who value what you’re offering and the channels that work today.

While weakened competitors limp into recovery, you’ll be strong and ready to sprint.

When a Downturn Happens, The Recession Marketing Playbook is Your Engine

The recession marketing playbook is what separates businesses that thrive from those that barely survive. The winners treat marketing as an engine, not an expense.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” ~ Winston Churchill

Cutting marketing budget won’t save you. But it will make you invisible. Strategic reductions and reallocations are how you stay alive when everyone else goes dark.

This playbook isn’t theory. It’s what’s worked for me and my clients through multiple recessions. Review, Reduce, and Reallocate. Test smarter. Focus harder. Nurture better. And when the market turns, and it will, you’ll be the one with momentum.

Let’s map out your triage budget together, so you know where to cut and where to double down. Schedule a strategy session and we’ll map out your path forward.