Maximizing ROI from your marketing budget in a recession

Joe Ducarreaux: Hello, and welcome to this essential B2B coffee time Torque, brought to you by Lead Forensics. I am your host, Joe Ducarreaux. Are you struggling to make the most of your marketing budget during a recession? To discuss tactics on maximizing ROI from your marketing budget during your recession. I'm joined by Claire Daniels, CEO of award-winning marketing agency, Trio Media. How are you doing today, Claire?

Claire Daniels: I'm great. Thanks Joe. How are you?

Joe Ducarreaux: Yes, very well, thank you- all the better for chatting to you about tactics for during a recession. In a recession, marketing is normally the first department that can get affected, but in your opinion, what should people still be aiming to achieve even though budgets are tight?

Claire Daniels: I may be the anti-person here on, on the topic because I really believe marketing should be something that you lean into during a recession. And it shouldn't be the case that it's the first thing where budgets get cut because we've seen it in examples time and time again. during the financial recession, 2007, 2008, during more recent financial difficulties during Covid.

Actually, the people that continue and keep going and they lean into the marketing and they invest are the ones that come out fighting and on top when things improve. Whereas, divesting and taking you money out of marketing, it's a sure-fire way to go. You are less likely to survive and to attain market share during a recession.

So the first thing I would definitely say is just consider not taking the easy route. And pulling everything out of marketing. I understand it can be hard and actually, my experience, so I was client-side strategic marketing for 10 years before coming agency side. So, I've worked on both sides of it.

My experience from the client side of marketing is actually, you maybe spend a lot, you have high budgets, but you may struggle in measuring where the results are coming from for all the budget that's being spent. So, the biggest piece of advice I could give is to really get to know your numbers, get to know the data on what is delivering a return for you into view market budget and efforts.

Because ultimately, if you can still generate a return, why would you stop? So, if you can still see you're getting a return on ad spend, you're getting an ROI, your conversion rate is good, there is literally, with those metrics, there's no argument for stopping. If you're just looking at vanishing metrics like traffic or leads coming in, but you're not actually seeing are we making money off the investment that we're putting in? Then yes, it could be very easy to just think we'll stop and we'll pull away, because maybe the number of leads is drop dropping. If you're still getting a return on your spend, if you've cut back, you spend, you need to be fair to yourself on that.

You're gonna get less leads. But actually is the return's still good? So, the biggest tip I guess from this is keeping on top of the data and the results, so you can measure what is working for your business, because I'm guessing there's gonna be, B2B, potentially some B2C marketers listening to this as well.
And ultimately, there's not gonna be a one size fits all approach. Some people may need to lean more into social media, some into more events, like what, whatever their business model is. So, it's not to me to say this is the one kind of channel you should invest in or move away from, but actually, what works for your business.
And as long as that's still working, there's no reason to stop.

Joe Ducarreaux: So that, so just touching on the online presence, part of your answer there, most companies, will have some sort of online presence already, but what sort of things could, can you be doing to improve your organic online presence?

Claire Daniels: What I would say is consistency. So again, in terms of the type of content you put out is gonna vary massively, from industry to industry.
If we look at the social media, you definitely do need to be leaning into video content regardless of what you do. Whether you are going down a TikTok route or LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or another platform, based on. Where your target audience is spending time and what it is that you do.

It's not for me to say it's that particular channel. It's gonna work for everyone, but whatever it is that works for you, again, taking the data, which channel generates the best return engagement for you? Where are your audience spending the most time and lean into showing up there consistently?

I think one of the key things really, and that I want to get into in this. Piece is ultimately around a recession. The main thing that we need to look at is your messaging, because do you need to change the way you are positioning yourself to your target audience to be more accepting and acknowledge?

The recession. Do you need to think could we do more sales? Could we do more things that are price friendly to people? Can we lean into something where we're not so much acknowledging as if everyone's got loads of income to be spending at the moment? So it's really about, for any business, always, it's about understanding who your target audience is.

Is your target audience likely to suffer during the recession or not? Cause some people won't. And then if they are, how should you talk to them differently to how you would normally talk based on the fact they have got less money to spend? So, aside from a work at Trio, I'm a trustee. A charity.

So obviously one of our big concerns is in a cost of living crisis, are people going to reduce the money that they donate to charities? We've had conversations about changing our messaging to lean into it. Like we, we've still got a job to do. We've still got to get donations. So how do we acknowledge that and address it and actually target the people who will not be affected by the cost of living crisis?

The people that are affected, who can't afford to pay the energy bills, or to have the heating on at night. We can't even speak to those people. There's no point trying to speak to those people, but there's loads of other people out there who have money still. So, let's go after those people.

So, it is about really just honing in on the people that can keep spending during a recession and how to position yourself to them. So, in terms of that piece around, showing up and your online presence, and whether it's on social or across search or anything like that, it's about creating relative content and showing up and being appropriate for your audience.

Joe Ducarreaux: So, consistency and almost Yeah. Tone almost. It's almost sensitivity, isn't it? I suppose when, yeah, when times are really tough. It's important to make sure that you are not, coming across in a way that you you don't want to.

So, to go back to your earlier point, you did mention a couple of sort of KPIs and that sort of things.

What sort of KPIs and goals should people look to adjust or put in place when experiencing budgeting constraints? Would you say?

Claire Daniels: So definitely it needs to be looking around return, so actually, I think marketers should be measuring this all the time, and actually too frequently they're not, so a lot of people may know their overall budget and the overall revenue, but they're not looking at how each pot of budget spend in certain areas are then resulting in what amount of revenue. So, it's about just really nailing down on that. So, definitely return on ad spend if you're doing any advertising, what do you get out for what you spend, and is that profitable for you? Because if it is, and that continues to work during a recession, why, literally, why would you stop?
Like what is the reason to you have data to show you can still make money. So, unless your business doesn't want to make money, why would you stop doing that?

With anything else, obviously the return on investment, I would say, the areas we might see slip are the places that don't bring as much of a direct return.
So, if you're doing. PR, for example, could be one of those in terms of it's great for brand awareness and building shareholder value and all these things in terms of getting your brand out there in a positive light, but it's very difficult to measure. Specific sales and a financial return from PR. And PR is usually an expensive investment.

So that is one of those areas that obviously if you can't track it and you are not able to demonstrate a return, those could be some of the areas that are likely to slip.

However, I would challenge if that was the case anyway, and you knew you couldn't track it and you knew you weren't getting a return, why were you doing it?
Or if you were doing it and you felt as much as the value isn't financial, are you still seeing that value in other ways? Cause that is the reason for doing something PR. For me, working and running a digital agency, a lot of digital marketing that we do is very trackable and measurable so we can put a financial return on everything that we do.

For anyone who's investing in social media, whether that's just the content creation or they're doing any advertising you can see how many clicks to your website you've had from the social post. You can see how many conversions you've had from social. If you can't see, it's possible you're just not looking in the right places.
So not everyone knows how to go find this data, but it's there. Go look for the data in terms of the traffics that the traffic sources that are driving the conversions on your website. That is the place you convert people, whether it be via a form or if it's an e-commerce checkout.

But look at those channels that are driving those sales. Then look at what you spend. To put into those channels each month, and is the return greater than what you spend? Is it profitable for your business? If you're not sure, go and ask those questions, because. Actually, what you probably can't see straight up as a marketer is the profit margins.

So you know how much money is coming from it. But actually, if decisions are getting made by your CFO or FD in terms of profitability, just go and ask those questions and find out so you can clue yourself up on what's really working for the business. Beyond just we know generated 300 leads from doing this activity. Okay, but what did those 300 leads result in for the business?

Joe Ducarreaux: Are there any tools or software that you use to keep track, any tools or software that you use to help you succeed and make sure that, everything's in alignment?

Claire Daniels: Yeah, look, I think everyone in marketing is gonna use Google Analytics, and I know it's an obvious one, but actually everything I'm talking about, although all that data is available in Google Analytics, so it's definitely worth paying attention to it. So going on there, being able to look at.
Where your traffic has come from, where your conversions have come from, what's working on your website, what's not is invaluable. We then work with piece of software called Agency Analytics that ties in analytics from all the different data sources we use, and that's what we use to provide the monthly reports to our clients.

So that pulls the data not only from Google Analytics, but from search console, from light. From Semrush, SE Rankings from Meta TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Trustpilot Shopify, WooCommerce, like you name it, everything can pull through into there. And that gives a bit of an insight. Tools we use. A lot of our time is spent on SemRush.

We do a lot of SEO work for clients. We also use a tool called SpyFu, which allows us to look at organic and paid. Search like content and strategies for any business, so we can look at it for our clients, but also for their competitors as well. So yeah, but I totally agree. Obviously, you need to have what's right in your stack, and we regularly do reviews and I'll challenge and question people on.

Are we using this? Are we getting the most out of it? Otherwise I'm not paying for it. Because yeah, those are the areas that can sometimes run away with you in marketing in terms of your marketing budget. You sign up for all these things and then you know, the money gets tight and you start going through your bank statements and going hang on, we're spending this much there.

Are we using it? I asked that question of my team, literally the day we came back over New Years. Cause I've been looking at everything and I was like, is everything that we're spending money on. Getting used and adding value to the business. I'll spend more if it is, if you need more.

I'm not necessarily making cuts, but also I'm not spending money on something that we don't need

Joe Ducarreaux: And that sort of, I guess the frequency of those checks will increase, I imagine in the, in the coming months. I'm sure.

Claire Daniels: Yeah. And that's the thing. It's just about being savvy and knowing your data.

And I always say to the team, and it's some of mines, we're discussing it today, but negotiate from a position of power. If anyone ever comes to us about anything, we straight away go back with the data. We show them the results. They've got and stuff like that, if anyone's ever not sure of the value they're getting that should be the way we all approach it in terms of we should know our data, we should know our stats on what we're doing so that actually marketing directors, CMOs, anyone like that, or anyone in charge of marketing, if you're getting pressure from other members of the board who are coming to you and saying actually we need to cut back.

You've got the evidence and data to say actually what you're spending in this department. is delivering you, a six times return, whatever it may be, the then gives them, not much of a leg to stand on at all. So it is just about getting really clued up on the stats that are gonna work in your business to guarantee that you actually can continue spending in the right areas.

Joe Ducarreaux: I uh, wanted change tack ever so slightly. Now, Claire, so I, I saw the other day you were posting about. AI and specifically ChatGPT? Yeah. What do you think the financial implications of AI will be in the future in terms of marketing?

Claire Daniels: Look, I don't think it's gonna be free for much longer, ChatGPT, which is created by OpenAI, which what I was posting about on LinkedIn. So, we've started having to double around with it because as a digital agency, like we need to stay on the forefront of technology. We can't shy away from AI just because we all think it might replace our jobs.

We have to lean into it and see what support it can give us. But yeah, currently that is free. The knowledge and skill that tool has got. Like it's insane that it can be used for free right now, but I think it's to drive adoption and I think very quickly people will start paying for it. I was having a conversation with a tech expert that I know on LinkedIn and don't quote me on this cause I dunno where he got his figures from, but he said that it's costing something like 3 million a month to run ChatGPT on AWS.

So, there's no chance that can continue for free for much longer, so I actually think it's gonna start being chargeable. So, I'd probably encourage people to start seeing how they could get value and benefit from it whilst it's free to then learn whether this is something that's worth investing for them in the future.
In my opinion, I definitely see AI working alongside marketers. It's not gonna replace anyone's job. I really don't think. It has the grounds for that, but actually it's gonna make us all a lot more efficient if we can embrace it in the right ways. For example, I was on a Google meet earlier that I wanted to record, and now you can transcribe the recordings on a Google Meet so I could transcribe a meeting.

I could then put the transcription Chat GPT and ask it to summarize the key points from the meeting. Straight away. That then gives me my follow up for the meeting or whatever it may be. Or if we were recording this and transcribing this right now, you could then get a summary of it to put out.
This is just making our jobs far more efficient. So, I don't think it should replace the human touch of being able to create content that appeals to different target audiences. This tool can't speak as a 20 something woman. If that's your target audience, you need to speak in her tone of voice versus you need to speak the tone of voice of a 30 year old male or for another campaign.

It is not gonna be able to get to that. Maybe it will one day, so I could be speaking out term there, but I don't think it's there yet. But yeah, I think it's definitely something that will work alongside us and the recession could slow its adoption, it does start charging and people aren't ready to invest in new technology.
They want other people to do, test it out first, wait for it to take up more mass market adoption, then maybe more marketers will start getting involved in it. But yeah, I would definitely recommend giving it a go cuz we're already seeing advantages to us in our business.

Joe Ducarreaux: It is very encouraging as the more webinars and podcasts I do under the essential B2B banner. The key message that I keep receiving again and again is people buy from people. So it's really encouraging to think that you don't think that the AI could take that human element out yet, so we'll all be in a job, so that will be nice.

Claire Daniels: Yeah, exactly. Look there, there's no way. Don't get me wrong, I think absolutely there'll be a version of this where an avatar could come on and have a conversation with you and completely do this podcast and probably give you even better advice than what I've given.

But it's not real and none of us want that. Like we don't want to be engaging with robots. It is quite a fun trend at the moment and people are getting the AI versions. Submitting a picture and getting the AI versions of themselves created. Cause it's a bit of fun. Soon as you step over the line and go, okay, that's now the version of you and people aren't interested in the real you, they're gonna interface with the AI version of you Instead, everyone's gonna 'em out at that, I think cause we're just not ready for it yet.

Yeah it's going to help and support us, but it's definitely, you need a human. at every stage of the work that, that we do as marketers, from dealing with people and talking to people, to the content you create, to the ideas you have, it's not gonna be able to think of ideas.

If someone comes to you with a business and a new campaign and says, tell me what I should do it's not gonna have that yet . Yeah. Yeah. I don't quote me on anything. Cause bloody hell, I'm not an AI expert and the technology is probably far beyond what we're even dabbling into right now.
But that's just my opinion on, where I think we are today.

Joe Ducarreaux: Let's come back in five years time, Claire, and then we'll see if you can detect if I am actually a robot or if I am my authentic self. Amazing. Claire, this has been a really fascinating conversation. I've really enjoyed speaking to you again. Thank you. If I could push you for one top tip for everybody watching this about maximizing your return investment during a recession what would that one tip.

Claire Daniels: Get to know your data. Because like I said, there is no one size fits all. So you've gotta figure out what works for your business.
And actually, from my experience, not enough people do know what's going on to the level of we know this is resulting in that. So, get to know your data. Know it inside out and when someone comes knocking and asks you to reduce your budget, slap them across the face with. Actually, this is working fine and we'll keep our budget please and actually if you give us more, we can sail our way out of the recession because we know what we're doing is working.

Joe Ducarreaux: Fantastic. Claire, thank you so much for joining me.

Claire Daniels: Thank you.