Marketing in Adversity: download the report

In the summer of 2020, we asked businesses to share how they had responded to the challenges of surviving and thriving during adverse economic events. We received generous and thorough responses from businesses of all ages across multiple sectors.

This is the story of what they said, what we discovered from the data, and how we think businesses can become more resilient under adverse economic conditions.

It’s free to download and share.

Download the report

Some highlights

• Almost a quarter of responding businesses have weathered several recessions, the advent of e-commerce, two world wars and several pandemics.
• Many businesses, despite the struggles of 2020, saw opportunities and are keen to act upon them.
• A clear correlation between businesses valuing “long term” channels like SEO and content and having a lower propensity to make redundancies or furloughed staff.
• 87% of respondents increased their digital marketing spend even though wider trends reported elsewhere indicate overall marketing spend fell.
• Insight from respondents on what they’d do differently if they knew at the start of the endemic what they know now.
• SEO is the single most important element of digital marketing to more than a third of respondents, though Paid Search benefited from the increased budgets.

Context

Major economic threats come around every decade and can last for a single quarter or several. In 2020, the threat to our businesses was a pandemic.

We can’t be prepared for every eventuality but we can make our businesses more resilient by looking at what happened and planning accordingly.

With our Marketing in Adversity survey, we wanted to review and assess what wider impacts the pandemic might have on British business, especially those who transact or rely upon generating leads from their websites.

The responses and data from the survey were equally varied. They do offer hope that businesses can prepare to meet adversity head-on using both reactive and long-term digital marketing strategies.

You don’t need our research to tell you how “Challenging” and “Unprecedented” 2020 has been. However, our data has created insights on what worked and what didn’t during lockdown conditions, plus actions you can take to help your business survive and even thrive during 2021 – and beyond.

Download the report

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