How To Run Growth Marketing During A Recession

It is an exciting time to be a business, the opportunity for expansion online is infinite. This is why I would like to introduce you to two trailblazers, Amra and Elma Beganovich, who started as influencers (amassing 2+ million followers) in 2012 and then set their own path ahead by forming their namesake digital agency Amra & Elma. Amra & Elma works with giants from Nestle to EssilorLuxottica, is highly ranked on Google (sits on tops of 100s of millions of indexed search results) with their spectacular content, and has been profiled by the likes of Financial Times, Bloomberg Television, NASDAQ, HuffPost, Business Insider, and Inc. Now, diving into this fascinating topic – during an economic downturn, why is it an absolutely terrible idea to go dark on social media?

How To Run Growth Marketing During A Recession

Gary Drenik: As consumer behavior changes dramatically during a downturn in the economy, how does a business scale and navigate headwinds of a recession?

How To Run Growth Marketing During A Recession

Amra & Elma: I’d love to share some fascinating data with you about consumer behavior changes. As a result of price increases/inflation, 29.6% of consumers have reported doing more comparative shopping online, and 22.1% have reported doing more shopping online overall according to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey. The latter may follow the logic that shopping online also saves money that otherwise would have been spent on (rising cost of) gas.

How To Run Growth Marketing During A Recession

Now, social media and Google have become equivalent to a storefront window on 5th Ave., i.e. a business’s Instagram grid can either invite (or turn away) customers. Thus, do you have your storefront window in order, tidy, and luring the customer in, or is your storefront window empty, sad looking and outdated?

The way to scale and navigate the headwinds of a recession is to make sure to adapt to this changing world, where most consumers are influenced by social media when making a purchasing decision. In fact, the recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey reports that 28.7% of Gen-Z are influenced by social media before making a purchasing decision for the latest gadgets and electronics!

Astoundingly, the same Prosper Insights & Analytics survey goes on to report that the younger the generation, the more they are influenced by social media. For example, in the same category of electronics, besides 28.7% of Gen-Z respondents saying social media influences their purchasing decision, 23% of Millennials and 16.3% of Gen-X said the same. Only 8.9% of Boomers said they were influenced by social media before purchasing electronics. The point to take home is that, as a business, it pays to invest into online marketing to influence the younger generations’ spending habits.

Drenik: What strategies does a business shift on social media during an economic downturn?

Amra & Elma: Take advantage of every single new feature on Instagram, or other platforms like TikTok. For instance, use InstaStories or Reels to create engaging content for your target audience, or on TikTok, create a fun challenge with your followers to boost engagement on your account or join-in on a discussion. These features are for free and a creative way to reach your customers or keep your brand on top of mind when a consumer is shopping.

Drenik: Has influencer marketing become a necessity (rather than an add on bonus) in 2023, can retail (including DTC industries like beauty, fashion, travel, home decor, etc.) survive without it?

Amra & Elma: Influencer marketing has absolutely become a necessity in 2023, and retail, including DTC industries like beauty, fashion, travel, home decor, etc., cannot survive without influencers. Here’s why – all of the aforementioned verticals are highly dependent on visuals. It is simple math. Engaging influencers is much cheaper than incessantly paying for photo shoots with models in order to populate your Instagram grid. Hence, many successful online brands, like Revolve and Alo, have made the smart decision to invest into influencer content.

The other side to influencer marketing is having another, an online personality, endorse your brand (rather than the brand directly vouching for itself, the former seems more trustworthy). Hence, it certainly does not hurt blasting influencer campaigns to permeate the social space and spread the brand’s mission, purpose and values.

Drenik: Is going dark on social media ever a good idea even during hard times?

Amra & Elma: Not investing into social media is never a good idea as it is equivalent to taking yourself out of the game altogether and not giving your brand even a slim chance to win. It is a really powerful tool to spread the word and in turn influence your target demographic. Even when cost-cutting, a pro will understand how to form a web of strategic relationships on social media and have those partnerships elevate the brand whether through brand image or by reinforcing the brand authority with influential allies.

We always advise to be smart with social media, and shift strategies as technologies innovate and you monitor the response of your online audience. For instance, make use of micro influencers rather than a celebrity if the budget is shifting or invest into influencer created content rather than editorial content for social media. In fact, a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey shows that 18% of Gen-Z consumers reported that they are influenced by influencers when purchasing apparel and fashion products and 17.4% when purchasing beauty products.

Drenik: Why is it always content first and selling second?

Amra & Elma: Content is and always will be king, it is what grabs attention, retains attention and forms trust, i.e., relationships, with the audience. By investing into content, in turn, the brand is investing into its future. When Amra and I started, I remember one of our pieces of content (how to travel to Bora Bora on a budget), on our blog, went viral. Three months into the blog, we had over 100,000 unique monthly visitors just because of one article. The moral of the story, so to speak, is that it is well worth the investment, to pull together and come up with a content strategy that resonates, helps, and emotionally moves your audience. Well-crafted content sells itself, i.e., the movement of your branded content permeates the Internet from YouTube to Google to Pinterest, etc. In other words, this is virality. We have seen too many brands fail to see the results because of a poor content strategy.

Drenik: How to use events, even small-scale events, to grow my brand?

Amra & Elma: Events are an extremely important part of the marketing puzzle, they are the perfect opportunity to forge relationships with the media, influencers, celebrities, or other strategic partners. The connection between strategic partners and the brand is widened and deepened through personal relationships formed at events. Even if as a brand, you need to start small, it is better to make a soft launch/entrance than to sit on the sidelines and do nothing. (And it is okay to know that no brand gets it right 100% of the time, and some of the best leaps forward have happened because the brand learned what does not work, i.e., in order to deduce and find out exactly what does work.)

Drenik: I want to thank Amra and Elma for your insights on digital marketing from social media to influencer partnerships and content marketing. It was my pleasure to have a chat with these two pioneers who understood the power of social media, Google and content marketing when they started in late 2012 to become two media and marketing mavens and form a cutting edge New York digital marketing firm Amra & Elma. Thanks again for your time.

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