The Membership Drive Is On!
This year's membership drive is now underway, and as always, the competition will be intense.
In addition to valuable cash prizes, the winner now also receives the membership plaque, presented at the Annual Meeting. With the highly successful 2019 Annual Meeting now in the books, it is time to work toward 2020.
When you recruit new members, the entire WPA membership is the winner!
New members can join and pay on the website. Here is the link: www.westernpallet.org
MAY 2020
Marketing Focus
The Biggest Marketing Mistake B2B Companies Make in a Recession
by Hillary Femal, Principal, Freshwater Marketing. Hillary was most recently vice president of sales and marketing for 48Forty Solutions
Based on decades of research on business spend and performance before, during, and after past recessions, here’s how to avoid making the biggest marketing mistake B2B companies can make during a recession and come out on top.
Don’t make the mistake of arbitrarily slashing your marketing budget
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, this is not the time to slash your marketing budget. In study after study of firm performance during the past recessions, it’s been well documented that cutting marketing spending only helps profitability in the very short term, while the damage is long-lasting.
It’s easy to see why so many companies make this mistake: following a budget cut, a brand will continue to benefit from the marketing investment made over the previous few years. This mitigates short-term negative effects and leads to a dangerously misleading increase in short-term profitability. Eventually, of
course, periods of below-average marketing spend will show up in business results, and there’s no quick fix for the damage done.
Gain market share by maintaining your marketing spend
While all their competitors are making the mistake of cutting marketing budgets, firms that maintain or increase their marketing during a recession can gain market share and improve the returns at a lower cost. How? When your competition cuts its spending, media companies, trade shows, and agencies feel the pinch like everyone else. It’s often possible to negotiate discounts or lock in lower rates in exchange for a longer commitment, simply because so few of your competitors are willing to do so. And because your competitors have gone quiet, you can capture additional share of voice simply by maintaining your current spend.