🚀   It’s Not a Recession
đź« Â Â Marketing In Uncertainty
đź’¸ Â Â Skip the Discount
🚀 It’s Not a Recession
It’s hard to avoid the R word. It’s thrown around constantly on business media as pundits prognosticate our impending economic doom.
We are not in a recession. The first quarter of 2025 has delivered outstanding results for private and public companies. Google, P&G, and the banks all beat expectations.
Most of Sticky Branding’s clients exceeded their sales targets in Q1. 2025 took off like a rocket.
What we need to do is reframe our understanding of this economy.
The word “recession” is problematic for two reasons:
- No two recessions are alike. You can’t rely on the lessons of the past to navigate the issues of today.
- It’s a macroeconomic measure. The technical definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. That’s not a helpful metric for our businesses.
Let’s push aside the R word to name the real issue: Uncertainty.
The challenge of uncertainty is fear of the unknown. You can feel it: decisions are being delayed, projects are being canceled, and sales opportunities are harder to come by.
Instead of talking about macro issues like a recession, get granular. Speak directly to the challenges your customers are facing in their business, supply chain, and market. You may not be able to solve their issues, but empathy and understanding lead to relevance.
When you understand your customers’ needs, you can be more focused and relevant in meeting them where they are.
One Stat to Watch
51%
of companies surveyed plan to increase prices between April to June 2025, according to the Q1 2025 Vistage CEO Confidence Index.
đź« Â Marketing In Uncertainty
Uncertainty disrupts buyer behavior in noticeable ways. Customers scrutinize and prioritize their purchases into three categories:
- Essentials: The most necessary items for running a business and maintaining business-as-usual.
- Postponables: There may be a clear need or desire for the purchase, but it can also be reasonably delayed.
- Expendables: Purchases that can be canceled because they are perceived as unnecessary or unjustifiable.
Many B2B purchases are landing in the unpleasant second category, postponables.
Postponables are insidious because you can receive a verbal commitment or even a letter of intent (LOI), but you can’t forecast if or when you will actually get the business.
If you are not selling an essential product or service, then you need a fourth way: become essential.
This requires a different approach to marketing that is focused on three elements:
- Speak to Burning Needs: Identify a problem or need in your customers. What will they create a budget for or act on if you can provide the solution?
- Sell to Decision Makers: If you’re not selling to the CEO or the highest-level decision maker, you’re not selling. This requires gaining executive access and selling to decision makers that can reallocate budgets and make purchase decisions.
- Be Proactive: Dramatically increase the volume of outbound sales activity. You have to kiss even more frogs to find your prince or princess.
Marketing in uncertainty requires reframing your value proposition for the highest-level decision makers and leaving nothing to chance. If you don’t blow your own horn, nobody will.
💸 Skip the Discount
Uncertainty is leading to price pressure. Customers are hesitating to buy and asking for deep discounts.
Price is a basic value proposition. When customers are scared, it’s easy to fixate on price as a form of defense.
Avoid the pressure to discount, because it doesn’t solve the customers’ problem. More importantly, it doesn’t guarantee you will win the sale.
Instead, look at discounts through a strategic lens:
- Are we delivering the right value proposition for the market right now?
- Is our product or service priced fairly and appropriately to comparable, available options?
- How do we help our customers achieve their objectives more effectively?
Instead of discounting one customer at a time, use customer feedback to reframe your value proposition and pricing for the current market conditions.
If you can eliminate purchase objections early, you will acquire better quality customers with less resistance.
🤔  Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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