Browse through LinkedIn or any other social channel feed and you’ll see every marketer urging you to “keep advertising” during challenging times.
And they do have a point - studies like the one from Harvard Business Review show that progressive businesses who focused on both prevention and promotion saw post recession revenue and earnings shoot up by over 12%.
Marketing during a downturn may produce only modest immediate benefits, but has been shown to add substantially to sales and profits after the rebound.
Still, this is no time to be wasting any of your marketing dollars. Advertisers are being cautious - a recent IAB survey estimates that digital ad spend is down 33% and traditional media spend is down 39% as a result of COVID-19. There’s an old adage about wasting 50% of advertising money - but not knowing which half. If there was ever a time to stop waste in spend it’s now.