FASTSIGNS has shared some fascinating insight into customer behaviour during a recession – and how businesses can overcome it.
Many business owners across the UK are tightening their purse strings and reducing all ‘unnecessary spending’. But as sign franchise FASTSIGNS explains, cutting out spending in crucial areas such as marketing can leave you at a disadvantage. If competitors choose to keep communicating with customers, both existing and new, you could be forgotten. The franchise explained:
“As competitors pull the plug and stop, if you maintain a presence, with messaging that supports and assists your customers in a challenging time, it’s highly likely they will form an emotional attachment to your brand.”
FASTSIGNS also look at how carefully choosing who to aim marketing at, rather than stopping it altogether, could be a more effective strategy in a recession. Using information from the Harvard Business Review 2009, which was written during the last recession, it explained that customer reaction can be broken down into four categories:
Stopping all spending: Either low-income groups that need to protect their money or high-income groups who risk losing their jobs.
Cautiously optimistic: Reduces spending a little but still willing to pay for luxuries they deem important.
Comfortable: Maintains pre-recession spending but may be choosier about where they buy from.
Live for Today: Not worries about savings as they prioritise experiences more.
FASTSIGNS advises that, by working out which categories your customers fall into, you can create targeted marketing materials that address the needs of each group. It shared how its products can help you do this.
“Reassess your product range and consider how it could cater for each demographic. You can then use signs and visual graphics to communicate your newly packaged product offerings to your customers.
Digital signs can offer numerous messages at any one time, you could provide value-enhanced messaging for each demographic using one of these screens. A-frames or pavement signs are also an efficient, traditional way to do this.”
FASTSIGNS concluded:
“By maintaining your communications through effective use of marketing, you’ll be instilling confidence in your customers, so when they are ready to spend, your business’s name is at the forefront of their mind.”
Sophie Cole, Point Franchise ©
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