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Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456)

Screenshot of Google Finance showing steep declines in the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last 6 months to illustrate how you can market in a genuinely bizarre economy.

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So, the economy has been going through it over the last couple months — and especially over the last week in particular. That’s a plain fact. But it’s more than just a tough economy. It’s a bizarre economy.

It’s easy at times like this to get discouraged, distressed, or just plain confused about how you can make marketing and customer acquisition work in genuinely bizarre economic times.

So how do you do that? What works when the economy is… strange? What can you do to connect with customers when the economy is unpredictable? In short, how does marketing work in yet another bizarre economy?

That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456) — Headlines and Show Notes

Show Notes and Links

You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac.

Running time: 20m 53s

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Transcript: Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy

Hi, I’m Tim Peter and this is Thinks Out Loud.

Roughly three years ago, I hosted an episode called “Doing Digital in the Weirdest Economy Ever.” We were beginning to emerge from the pandemic, but as I put it at the time, the economic data was “super, super weird.” That’s a quote.

I continued by noting, “It’s not just that the economy is bad, though there are parts of it that very much are. It’s also that it’s really, really strange.”

Okay, so now fast forward to April of 2025, and, well, things are kind of bizarre again. For instance, the National Federation of Independent Businesses issued its Small Business Economic Trends Report for March 2025. And their top line comment said this,

“The implementation of new policy priorities has heightened the level of uncertainty among small business owners over the past few months. Small business owners have scaled back expectations on sales growth as they better understand how these rearrangements might impact them.”

What’s been happening, and you’re undoubtedly aware, is that over the last couple of months, the new administration has enacted some significant tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And then, as you again probably know, over the last week we’ve had those relatively few tariffs, then massive tariffs on the entire world — including an island populated entirely by penguins. Except then, by the end of the day yesterday, those tariffs were on hold for 90 days, replaced by 10% tariffs on everybody. No word about how the penguins feel.

None of this, for lack of a better word, is normal. And all of it affects your ability to find, engage, and convert traffic to customers.

What you need right now is a plan.

Now, I’m not an economist. I’m very lucky that I work with some economists at The Conference Board who’ve helped me be smarter about some of these topics. But today’s show is not going to be about economics or the economy. It’s about marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. That’s what I do.

I’m also not going to get into the political side of this other than to say that this level of uncertainty makes our jobs as marketers, e-commerce, and customer acquisition professionals much, much harder.

So what should you do about the current situation as a marketing or e-commerce professional? What can you do? This is at Thinks Out Loud episode 456, and today we’re looking at marketing in another bizarre economy. Let’s dive in.

So how do you do marketing in another bizarre economy? For better or worse, this is not a new problem. Between COVID, the financial crisis in 2008-2009, the Great Recession that we went through following that, and the dot-com bubble crash of 2001-2002, this is something like my fifth time through weirdness in the economy.

And there are some key lessons we’ve learned again and again from these situations that you can apply when marketing your business.

One quick note, today I’m going to talk pretty much exclusively about the U.S. economy. This is already a massive topic. I cannot realistically address all of the differences that might matter in other countries. Most of the discussion will be relevant no matter where you work or live. Just be aware that my data and some resources are necessarily going to be US-centric.

The other thing today’s show isn’t is any kind of advice about the stock market. If you’re trying to time the market based on anything you hear from me, that is on you. Really don’t do that, okay? We good? All right, good.

That out of the way, there are 10 things I want you to think about when marketing in tough times.

And I want to start with a somewhat long excerpt from a prior episode where I stated,

“First, be a possiblist. I happen, constitutionally, to be somebody who tends to look on the bright side of things. Not because I’m not a realist, and not because I’m an optimist in any extreme sense of the word. What I am is what Hans Rosling refers to in his book, Thoughtfulness, a possiblist. I try to see the possibilities that exist right now while also acknowledging the reality of where we are. And one tangible possibility that exists where we are right now is that times like these are when you get good at what you do.

That’s what I said five years ago. I continued by noting,

“I have joked for a long time that I used to be the best digital marketer in history. It’s true. Everything I did worked spectacularly. When was this? Oh, it was 2002 to 2008. When, of course everything I did worked. Of course it’s easy to have everything work when everything’s going spectacularly well. It’s not that hard.
Times like these are when you actually learn how to get good at what you do because times like these are when it’s actually hard.”

I said at the time,

“If you’re a bodybuilder and you’re only lifting very, very, very light weights, every time you lift, you’re probably not going to build a whole lot of muscle. You’re probably not going to get stronger. But if you have to lift really heavy weights at least some of the time, that’s going to make you stronger than when you’re just lifting a very light weight all of the time.”

So keep that in mind all throughout this. Don’t think about this time as a struggle, but as the time when you’re going to build muscle and get stronger for the long term.

How can you do that? Let’s go through them.

One, as much as possible, do not cut your marketing activity. I see people make this mistake again and again. Study after study after study shows that companies that market through recessions or other slowdowns generally outperform companies that shut down their marketing or scale back their marketing significantly.

Think about it. Now is when you need marketing most. Now is when your customers have tougher decisions ahead of them. Now is when you stand to gain or lose the most relative to the market as a whole. Why would you choose now to stop talking with and listening to your customers? That simply doesn’t make any sense.

Yes, you need to be more focused in your marketing. Yes, you need to be smart with your budget. Yes, you need to make sure you can keep your doors open. That’s true. This now is a definite “Core and Explore” moment where you double-down hard on the areas that work and conduct small tests of new ideas and areas. It’s also a time when you need to be more creative to find new channels, new customer segments, and new markets to sell to. Doing anything else could be the difference between keeping your doors open or not. You want to be creative…

And speaking of creativity, it leads to our second thing you want to do. And that is “sell the destination first.” And I’m putting that one in air quotes.

This is borrowed from the hospitality and travel industry. What I mean by it is that you need to make people understand why what you offer is worth considering in the first place. And what I mean by what you offer, I don’t just mean your specific product or service. I mean the entire category of products and services in which you operate.

In travel or hospitality, I can’t get you to choose my beach resort if you’re thinking of going skiing. I have to sell you first on the idea of going to the beach at all. Then I can sell you my resort.

The same is true across other industries. If you think about it, the most common choice customers will make is to do nothing. Inertia is your biggest competitor. If your customers are thinking about getting by with what they already have or what they already know, it’s incredibly hard to sell them your specific product or service. You have to get them to consider buying anything, the kinds of solutions you offer generally before you can begin to sell them what you actually want them to buy, which is your product or service. So sell the destination first.

The third thing you need to do is don’t discount recklessly. It’s a fallacy that discounting drives demand. What it does do is hurt your bottom line and make it harder for you to raise prices in the future. Running a race to zero with your competitors is a race that you can never win. Don’t run it.

Evidence from past recessions and other tough economic periods we’ve lived through has shown that folks who managed pricing effectively during difficult times made more money both during the problem and after the economy normalized. It doesn’t mean you don’t want to test interesting ideas, but there are three things you can do that aren’t just straight slashing your prices.

The first is to offer customers different way to pay. Think things like buy now or pay later or lay away or installment payments. That kind of thing. That works for B2C and B2B. Work out different payment plans that work for your customers versus simply offering them a discount.

The second is different offerings. Think instead, instead of slashing prices, think about “value adds” or “value minuses.” Sometimes I call them “value unders.” What can you layer onto your product or take away from to provide greater value without changing the base price of your existing products and services. I have a podcast episode I will link to in the show notes called “The Lost Art of Value Ads” that I would encourage you to check out there.

And then the third way to price differently is think about different customers. You know, maybe you offer a specific discount to best customers or new customers or some other market segment that makes sense. As long as you can make it clear to those segments why this is a limited time offer to some distinct group, that usually doesn’t have long term effects on your pricing, so it’s something you can do and test and have great success with.

Next, automate everything you can that makes sense. What, you thought there wouldn’t be an AI angle here? I mean, what good are these tools, are these artificial intelligence tools, if we can’t put them to work when we need them the most? AI is a useful tool. It can help you brainstorm strategy and tactics for connecting with your customers during challenging times like these.

You can test sales coaching tools or predictive modeling for pricing. You can test Google and Meta’s automated ad tools and a host of other AI and automation tools to help you reach your customers faster, cheaper and better. Now is a perfect time to pick a few ideas and try to put AI to work to grow your business. Now is the time you want to make these tools work for you, because if you learn how to do it now, you’re just going to be in a much better position later.

The fifth thing you can do is partner with others in your market. To the point of value adds and sell the destination first, think about whether there are complementary companies you can partner with that boost both of your businesses. Joint promotions, cross promotions. Have them email their list on your behalf. Email your list on their behalf. How can you work together to find new customers or create new markets? You do not have to go it alone. You do not have to think or swim on your own here. Partner with others and get the benefit for both of you.

The sixth thing I want you to think about is to make any downturn your competitors problem. Now, I don’t mean this to contradict what I just said a moment ago. You want to be a good partner with people. You also want to make sure that you’re getting a fair share or more of whatever demand exists in the market for your products and services with direct head-to-head competitors.

Pay attention to what your competitors are doing. They can be great sources of intelligence on what’s working in the marketplace right now and what isn’t. Consider copying some of their successes. I don’t mean violate their trademarks. I don’t mean violate their copyrights. But if you see them doing something cool, what’s to stop you from doing it? And definitely avoid their missteps. If you see them do something stupid, maybe don’t follow them. You know, if it’s like they’re slashing their prices like crazy, maybe don’t do that. Maybe instead ask, how can we show greater value without slashing prices? Because I can guarantee which of you is going to make more money in those cases.

This isn’t about kicking folks when they’re down. Try to work together with people to grow the pie and not fight over a single shrinking piece. But just make sure you’re also watching your numbers and your reality and make sure you’re working to get your fair share.

Another thing that you need to do is take care of your customers. Remember always that your customers are dealing with the same uncertainty you are. They’ve got concerns too. Think about those concerns in your messaging and how you talk with them.

I hate, hate, hate, hate when companies prey upon people’s fears to try and drive sales. Can it work? Yeah, I suppose. But maybe think about your customers as, I don’t know, human beings? Maybe think about yourself in human terms too. Where’s your basic humanity here? What do your customers need? What’s keeping them up at night? And how are you helping them address their concerns and fears? Customers will remember who did right by them in the longer term. Try to be one of the folks that does, and you’re going to have great success in the longer term, not just with what happens today.

Next, make sure you’re staying informed about what’s going on in the economy overall. There are tons, tons, tons of amazing, free, regularly updated resources out there. I particularly pay attention to the Conference Board and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Economic Analysis are great too. I also like Bank of America’s Consumer Checkpoint and a site called Econofact, as well. They’re all super, super helpful.

If you prefer podcasts, Marketplace is an amazing show, and there are just loads of other resources out there that I’ll post links to in the show notes that can help you make sense of what’s going on with the economy at large. Make sure you check them out.

Also, stay in touch with your town or county or state chambers of commerce or convention and visitors bureau. Sometimes the local economy matters more for your business than what’s going on nationally or regionally or globally. Your local Chamber of Commerce or your CVB can provide you insights you may not get anywhere else. So make sure you’re giving them a chance.

Finally, this is my last point, don’t be afraid to call your Congress people or senators and ask them to help. This isn’t about politics. I do not get into politics on this show.

This is about policy that affects your business and your life. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle those folks are on. This is about saving your livelihood. It’s our Congress critters’ job to represent our interests. And they can only do that if they know what your interests are, if they hear from you directly. So don’t hesitate to give them a shout and let them know what you think.

So yes, we’re in a bizarre economy, but you can succeed no matter what.

Remember:

  1. As much as possible, don’t cut your marketing activity.
  2. Sell the destination first.
  3. Don’t discount recklessly.
  4. Automate everything you can that makes sense.
  5. Partner with others in your market.
  6. Make any downturn your competitor’s problem.
  7. Take care of your customers, they’ve got concerns too.
  8. Stay informed about what’s going on in the economy overall.
  9. Don’t be afraid to call your congresspeople and senators and ask them to help.

Above all else, be a possiblist. Think about the possibilities here. Now is the time when you’re going to build the muscle and build the strength and get great at marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. Or at least it will if you accept both the reality of where we are and keep working towards your positive vision of the future.

I know you can do it and I can’t wait to see what you do.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week.

I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too.

You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 455, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast.

And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Thanks for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. Until then, please, be well, be safe, and, as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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