Recession-Proof Marketing: Five Tips For Your Business To Ride The Tsunami Caused By The COVID-19 Crisis

Businesses are bracing for impact: some will get wiped out, some will have the surf of their lifetime. Like riding a wave, it all comes down to how you catch it- or in this case, how it catches you.

“We’re safe. It won’t happen to us.” When I first heard about the coronavirus, I was pretty sure it would stay confined to some remote areas. I was sure it would never impact me or anyone I know directly.

But then the wave rose, which led to people starting to ransack supermarkets for toilet paper. Life started to feel like an episode of Black Mirror gone terribly, terribly wrong.

This crisis is a monster wave. No one could ever see it coming. And it will cost the world economy approximately three trillion dollars.

Businesses are bracing for impact: some will get wiped out, some will have the surf of their lifetime. Like riding a wave, it all comes down to how you catch it- or in this case, how it catches you.

WINNERS AND LOSERS: A DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH

Many companies like Airbnb, Uber, and Whatsapp started during an economic downturn. As such, everyone is wondering who will come out strong out of this one?

The intuitive answer is “e-commerce.” Or “All you need to do is to go online.” However, it’s not that obvious, unfortunately.

According to ProfitWell, business-to-consumer (B2C) and direct-to-consumer (DTC) enterprises are being massively hit. After all, being online doesn’t necessarily solve an underlying problem: people are clinging to cash, as no one really knows how long it will last.

Let’s take a look at business-to-business. In the last 24 months, especially software-as-a-service (Saas) businesses, exploded. Today, that exponential growth has flattened out.

Uber suggest gives us an interesting perspective per industry (conversions = sales):

These stats make it clear that being in e-commerce doesn’t guarantee success. During a crisis, people tend to stick to basic needs like food, health, pharma, and media (entertainment and news).

But stay with me. Things get more interesting when we look at traffic growth. Traffic growth gives us a clear sense of where eyeballs are going. In modern marketing, attention (a.k.a eyeballs) is the real currency. And the eyeballs all go to websites in financial advice, entertainment, and news.

Read more: entrepreneur