Inflation is soaring. Markets are down. Recession looms. As a tech company, what do you do to weather the storm?

Most companies hunker down and cut costs in tough times, especially on marketing items that may be easier to pull back relative to fixed expenses like payroll. 

But this can be a mistake. Studies show that proactive marketing during recessions pays off in higher sales, which means you may be looking at an opportunity to create a real point of difference and supercharge your growth.

So, how do you make your content strategy work in a downturn?

By turning conventional wisdom on its head, that’s how. And it starts by implementing these six counterintuitive tips.

1. Audit your existing content to support your budget allocation

First up – don’t panic! The economy may be looking pretty crooked but your actions don’t have to be. 

That means no slashing and burning of your current content strategy without first doing some careful analysis.

Businesses that adopt data-driven decision-making make three times better decisions, reports PwC, so now is the perfect time to audit your content library and review your data. 

Ask yourself:

• What are your most popular blog posts and social posts?

• What isn’t gaining any traction?

• Are there any areas where you can trim the fat without affecting customer engagement? For example, do you really need to be producing six blog posts a month or can you get away with four, two or even one?

• What are you even measuring? A lot of businesses routinely track metrics like web traffic and social shares to measure the success of their content without having any idea whether those numbers actually matter to the bottom line. In slowdowns, it’s easier to justify your budget if you can demonstrate that your content advances your lead acquisition, nurturing and/or sales goals.

When you look at the data, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions about where you might be wasting money in your content budget.

For example, do you have too much top-of-funnel content that raises awareness, but not enough bottom-of-funnel content that actually drives conversions? Or vice versa?

Are you wasting $$ on nice-to-haves like content for a niche, low-value audience group instead of concentrating your efforts (and cash) on targeted content that serves your most valuable customer segments?

2. Interview your subject matter experts

B2B does not mean boring to boring. But goodness, how many times have you read content that is?

So much content in the B2B tech space is repetitive, generic and eye-glazingly dull. 

There are many reasons for this, but the biggest is that writers are often given the impossible task of producing original thought leadership with nothing but a Google search bar to guide them. 

If they’re relying on desktop research to come up with ideas, they’re going to end up writing the same old thing that’s already been said a million times before.

The way to break out of this rut is to speak to your subject matter experts. 

These are the people in your company who are true experts in their field – whether it’s product development, engineering, data analysis, or business operations. 

Expert advice makes the world go round. Building your content on your experts’ great ideas is like strapping a rocket to your content and sending it into space. 

Their insights are going to make your content better, richer, and different from anything that’s been published before.

At Leadwave, we believe that interviewing subject matter experts is something you should be doing all the time. 

But it’s even more important in tough times when differentiating your business is key to success. And don’t forget, your experts already work for you. 

Tapping into their knowledge won’t cost you a cent – which means you can give your content marketing an originality boost and a credibility boost, entirely for free!

3. Get more mileage out of the content you have already

With a better understanding of what’s working (and what isn’t), and insights from your subject matter experts, you can start to repurpose your current content to make it work harder for you. 

For example, if you have a ton of great blog posts on a topic, consider turning them into an ebook or creating a course out of those articles. 

You’ll give customers a unique resource that helps them in their day-to-day and, for new prospects, you can exchange it for an email address so you can continue building relationships with them. 

Or go the opposite way and break longer pieces into bite-sized chunks to be used as infographics, short explainer videos and social media fodder.

To make your older content more relevant, think of ways to re-angle your blog posts so they speak to the current situation. 

For example, if you have a blog post about how to build a content strategy, you could re-angle it as a blog post about how to build a content strategy during a recession (see what we did there?!)

You can also get more use out of your content by flexing the platforms you publish it on. 

Repurposing your content as Quora answers or posting it on a relevant tech subReddit may be well outside your comfort zone. 

But innovation happens when budgets are tight, and if you can get old content in front of new eyes, it’ll be worth it.

4. Listen to what your customer is saying right now

When your customers’ operating environments change, their spending priorities also change. 

This is especially true in a tough economy when the people you do business with are hyper-focused on getting the most bang for their buck. 

What content can you create that will help your audience make a business case for your product or service? 

How can you help them get more value out of what they’ve already purchased from you?

Your content should always be customer-centric, but this is especially important when your customers may be second-guessing their decisions or their needs are changing. 

Be empathetic, and make sure you understand exactly what they’re going through.

Your sales and customer support teams are your ears to the ground. They’re in constant communication with customers and they know better than anyone how customers are feeling right now. 

What are they hearing? What challenges or worries do customers share with them? Use this feedback to create content that helps address their concerns.

Then pan outwards. What are customers saying on social media? On industry forums? Are they asking questions? Are you?

Your customers are not one person; their priorities will change in different ways. Some will increase spending in certain categories while others will stop spending altogether. 

It’s your job to figure out what changed for them, and how you can help.

5. Prioritize content that engages current customers

Controversial? Yes. After all, you need new customers to grow. 

But the reality is, your current customers are your best bet for maintaining revenue during tough times. And it’s much easier to sell (or upsell or cross-sell) to people who are already familiar with your business. 

Did you know that the success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% – versus just 5-20% for a new customer?

From a content perspective, prioritizing retention means you can deliver some terrific, high-touch pieces that respond to your customers’ pain points in real-time. 

Are customers calling you with a specific question? Write a blog post that answers that question and have it published ASAP. 

Whether it’s troubleshooting, resource-optimizing, or general how-tos, this type of content helps strengthen customer relationships and improve your chances of repeat business, referrals and upsells.

You might also take advantage of a psychology hack called the Halo Effect. 

This is when one trait or experience influences how we feel about other, unrelated traits or experiences – it explains how we perceive good-looking people as more intelligent and popular, for example. 

This means that if your content is a trusted resource for one product, challenge or type of information, you can lean on that “halo” to open wallets for other products and services, too.

6. Get scrappy with your content creation

In good times, it pays to take a methodical approach to your content strategy. 

Analyze your industry, profile customers, identify influencers, track competitors, establish KPIs, perform qualitative audits, quantitative audits… the list goes on.

But in bad times, you need to get a bit more scrappy. 

That means being okay with experimenting. And crucially, it means being agile enough to change course and quickly move on to the next idea if something doesn’t work. 

In the words of Mark Zuckerberg, you have to move fast and break things. 

Now, this doesn’t mean you should abandon your strategy altogether. But you will have to loosen the reins a bit because forging ahead with a pre-recession content playbook will not make the recession disappear.

This is one area where partnering with a nimble content agency can be truly valuable. 

Because they’re not bogged down by legacy processes, they can help you experiment with new ideas quickly and efficiently. 

And if you choose an agency with topical tech expertise, then you’re guaranteed to get the worm’s eye view of what’s working in your industry right now so you have some seriously good guardrails to work within.

In its 2022 Annual Report, the Content Marketing Institute found that 57% of the most successful content marketers used outsourcing to do more with fewer resources. What can we derive from that?

• Outsourcing content creation to specialists means you can fill your content gaps without incurring the payroll expense of full-time team members.

• It brings in expertise when it’s needed, and how it’s needed, and when it’s needed, to nurture those connections with your audience.

• You get the benefit of an outside perspective, fresh ideas and varied viewpoints, which can help you do more with less and stay ahead of your competition.

• It’s easy to track, measure and prove that your outsourced content partnership is worth the investment, which is critical when every penny counts.

Strategizing through the tough times

For many businesses, a tough economy will lead to some tough decisions about where to spend their marketing budget. 

As you balance the desire for growth with the urge to save, don’t pull back on your content as others surely will. 

It can be a powerful tool for retaining customers and driving revenue in good times and bad. 

Those who go against the grain and box clever with their content budgets could find their business in a much better place and leap ahead from their competition as soon as things get better.