Kevin Indig on marketing lessons from 2007-2009 recession

Thanks for sharing, Marc! Much appreciated :).

Here's an extract I thought was particularly good:

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What separated successful businesses and marketers from the rest?

First, as budgets were slashed by 60% across the board, Marketers had to learn to do more with less (source). That means identifying and doubling down on what works. Specifically, a paper that looked at companies in Hungary found the following strategies to be effective:

Sharing marketing resources with other teams

• Re-evaluation of the strategy
• Integrating sales & marketing functions
• Finding new expertise and techniques
• Strengthening key account teams

Second, discounts and offers. Online wine clubs grew and worked with heavy discounts to lure people in. A Cornell study that looked at almost 500 hotels found out that winning chains spend more on Marketing than those that lost. Winning hotel chains used loyalty programs, promotions and advertising to a greater extend.

Third, new avenues. Facebook reached significant size during the Great Recession and became an attractive advertising platform. Alcohol brands leveraged Facebook more for online advertising and saw good success.

Newspapers saw a -19% decline in revenue as a result of less ad spend during the Great Recession. The Seattle Times even saw -40% fewer ad placements (source). What happened? Businesses spent less money on ads because they had lower revenue and shifted more advertising to platforms like Facebook and Google because performance is easier and more accurate to measure.
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