Alexis Krisay
In every type of downturn, the first thing businesses do is cut their marketing budget. We’d already anticipated that a recession would begin during 2020. We posted a premium download about “How to Market in a Recession” quite early in the year, stressing the importance of businesses sticking with their marketing efforts during bad times, but nobody could have anticipated the level of chaos that was looming just around the corner.
COVID has been really rough for most businesses, and marketing firms were not spared. When the Arizona lockdown came in mid-March 2020, more than $500,000 in planned revenue disappeared from our business virtually overnight. The reality we were facing led to some initial “breathing into a paper bag” moments for me and my business partner, but many of our friends at other agencies experienced even bigger cutbacks. Many made drastic layoffs to survive. Others folded. That’s not how we roll. So, we picked ourselves up and decided to win for clients without cutting staff, and that’s exactly what we did.
For example, we do a lot of university student housing and college marketing in multiple states across the country and we’ve earned a reputation for producing results. We reworked our clients’ training programs and converted them to virtual tours in record time, pivoting and adjusting strategies and tactics on a day-to-day basis. Our efforts and the trust our student housing clients put in us paid off big, and we managed to defy all the odds.
One example we’re particularly proud of is Midland University, a small private college in Nebraska. In the midst of COVID-chaos, we launched a new student acquisition strategy and advertising campaign. We placed PR story after story, and the ad campaigns ended up increasing Midland’s enrollment numbers by an astounding 23% YOY. In the middle of a pandemic. That was a huge win.
As we gradually emerge into a post-COVID world, business decision-makers who want to jumpstart their businesses should understand that 2021 is largely a reset year, but that just means opportunity is pounding on the door. The question is, will they recognize it and answer?
Making a Marketing-Driven Comeback: Look to the Future
We’re looking to the future and lessons from the past. The first step for every business and decision-maker who wants to regain lost ground and revenue is to understand it will take some time. In order to build back better — no matter what the sector — businesses marketing teams should be performing regular deep reviews of all their business’s digital presences and channels, then digging deep into their website analytics to identify consumer behavior changes and areas of opportunity. It’s essential to understand that many new consumer behaviors established during the pandemic are here to stay, and demographics are shifting. I can’t stress this enough: Businesses must use real research data to drive their marketing! We invested heavily this year in a research tool that provides us access to real-time, proprietary research data that is refreshed monthly. Businesses will need to fine-tune their marketing strategies and tactics using real data accordingly or risk eating dust from savvy competitors.
And after more than a year of restrictions, consumer discretionary spending is up. For Arizona, travel and tourism rates are on the rise, which will be very important in the second half of 2021 and beyond. These are some of the most exciting opportunities we see on the horizon. Why? We get to host the Super Bowl in 2023, and tourism soars in host cities and states for two to three years post-Super Bowl … and it’s not just our hospitality businesses that benefit. When Arizona hosted Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, we saw a gross economic impact of $720 million. Add in legalized recreational cannabis, world-class golf, resorts, shopping, dining and new tech industries, and we’ll be set for a shorter recovery time with great marketing and business opportunities. Businesses need to be ready for it and start planning how they can take advantage of Arizona’s coming economic boom. Believe it.
Based in Phoenix and serving clients nationally, Serendipit Consulting is a full-service advertising, creative and PR agency that practices Ideation Evolution — the process of blending imagination with core values to produce a continual state of creativity and consistency in an organization or culture — from the development of eye-catching creative campaigns to the implementation of KPI-driven marketing to making sure the right people know the brand’s story.
This is one segment of the August 2021 cover story “Coming Back: How Marketing Will Build (Back) Business after COVID-19.”
Click here to check out the other 10 businesses and the cover designs they submitted for the Cover Story Cover Contest (winner was featured as the actual magazine cover).
