There, I said it, that word on everybody’s minds that few dare speak: “recession.” Fear of economic downturn has dominated the business dialogue since we entered 2023. This despite real signs that most companies are still doing kind of ok. Sure, taken together, the economic indicators look quite bleak, but you have to wonder in the chicken and egg world of macroeconomics, how much does preparing for a recession ensure its inevitability?

Regardless of how we got here, here we are. Most marketing leaders have been asked to prepare for the worst, and many are already being proactive about reducing their cost base. Now is the right moment in time to consider that jiu-jitsu thing of how to turn a negative force into a source of advantage, and come out of the back end of whatever this uncertainty is, better than how you entered it. It is possible, but it will require marketing leaders to swim against the tide of fear and boldly lead.

There is no company/brand/organization/division that does not need some form of fundamental reinvention, so why not use this moment of change as the burning platform that drives yours.

Recession Marketing Lessons

As a famous resident of my town in New Jersey once said, “it’s like deja vu all over again.” The economic cycle is just that, a repeated cycle. We’ve been relatively blessed over the last 30 years to have had to deal with this very infrequently – although the downturn of the late aughts is seared in the minds of many marketers who are now in positions where they have to make some extremely tough choices.

So what happens? We cut too hard, often the wrong things, we get to it too late, and we are slow to read the signs about when it’s time to get back in the fight. The recovery often gains steam quickly, so there is little organizational appetite to look backward at our recessionary efforts and assess what we gained and what we lost. So inevitably, we end up repeating the cycle again and again.

Let’s unpack the typical recessionary marketing actions and their sadly typical consequences:

• Those who cut in-market programs too aggressively, do harm greater than their savings, as those who maintain their spending realize a windfall in share growth.
• More than lost share, is the risk of losing a brand’s most valuable customers, as more come into play during uncertain times.
• We let brands erode in favor of down-funnel spend and create an opening for disruptors to reframe our categories away from now voiceless incumbents.
• We delay hiring, often inflicting the most pain on high-potential new spaces which have less current revenue to protect.
• We lay off staff without “rethinking” the work they do (did), so those left to pick up the pieces, and in particular, the strong ones with options, leave. Then we scramble to rehire top talent during the recovery in a seller’s market.

One of the most ironic consequences of recessionary marketing cuts pertains to the timing of cause and effect. For most categories, marketing spending, particularly top of funnel spending, has little immediate impact on your brand. There is lag effect, which, depending on the category and metric, can be as much as 12-18 months. This is about as responsive as steering a supertanker through a slalom course. So, the spending you cut during a downturn has less impact on the market when demand is suppressed and there’s less to gain than it does during the rebound when pent up demand is released. Said another way, the actions your current self takes will weigh most heavily on your future self. Pretty deep, huh?

7 Ways to Create Marketing Advantage in a Downturn

That’s enough negativity. Let’s look at this from a glass half full perspective and discuss how to make the most of this “crisi-tunity.” Let’s introduce 7 ways your brand and business can rise to this challenge. As General George S. Patton once said, “pressure makes diamonds.”

1. Reset your marketing priorities to do more with less
2. Rethink and reduce marketing work – not just headcount
3. Find the small pots of wasted spend that add up to big savings
4. Take this opportunity to clean house with your brand portfolio…
5. …Then high-grade your brand portfolio spending
6. Get aggressive – target others’ high-value customers while defending yours
7. Be proactive – get ready now for the coming post-downturn boom

***
In our next edition of Reinvention Notes, we will dive into each of these opportunities. Until then, stay strong and think about how your organization can seize this moment as a mandate for reinvention.

The post To Recession or Not to Recession? appeared first on Vivaldi.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Partnership marketing can, and should, have a much bigger impact. It can have substance and sizzle. When done right, partnership marketing can accentuate company values and solve consumer needs. It can provide a quicker way to scale for growth and offer reciprocal benefits for both partners.

Too frequently the strategy and thought leadership around partnerships is so painfully obvious (i.e. “synergy”) that it shouldn’t even need to be explained. But there are real, dynamic opportunities to be had. Here are seven strategies to make your partnership marketing actually work.

While there are many types of partnerships — affiliate, brand, technology, strategic, to name a few — these shouldn’t be containers for either/or category distinctions. Instead, they should be both/and. Ideally partnerships not only create attention and encourage curiosity, they also provide value for the customer and demonstrate impact.

For instance, ketchup brand Heinz partnered with online reseller thredUP to create the Heinz Vintage Drip collection — thrifted clothing marked with a unique ketchup stain. Beyond the sustainability mission, the collaboration targeted global hunger relief, with 100% of proceeds benefitting the organization Rise Against Hunger — making the effort interesting, relevant, strategically aligned and mutually beneficial.

Many partnerships focus on passions, interests, opportunities, and yes, synergies — and those are all worthwhile approaches. But what about your customers’ pain points? Taking a customer-centric view and offering a solution to something that negatively impacts their daily life can feel revolutionary — even if it’s highly functional.

For people on the go, making a drugstore pickup and a package drop-off just one stop is a genuine time-saver. Walgreens’s partnership with FedEx does just that, providing a real value by combining services under one roof. Pick up a prescription and mail your packages in just one easy step. It also reduces the pickup locations or touchpoints for the retailers.

We’re all familiar with the importance of targeting in marketing, but you also need to ensure that you are targeting in your partnership strategy. You don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to targeting — so why do it with partnerships?

Build in nuance by targeting (or even hyper-targeting!) the specific customer segments that you’re looking to grow. For B2B companies, this may mean targeting by firmographics, stakeholders, and use cases, while B2C companies may prioritize interest groups, age, geography and other demographic details. Prioritize key segments rather than selecting them all and hoping for the best.

With its “Fresh Invest” podcast, Morning Brew and Fidelity offer a program tailor made for a young, financially literate audience interested in early investing. This pinpoints a segment that both partners want to reach and offers a real value for listeners.

Historically, big businesses have held the power, while smaller companies were just happy to be chosen for partnerships. However, the power dynamic is shifting, with smaller, more agile companies gaining leverage thanks to advances in technology, data availability and broader ecosystem connectivity and interoperability.

Rather than viewing small companies as threats, big businesses need to provide a partnership strategy value proposition to bring them on board. Big companies can’t just win on brand and size as in past eras, today they need to win on process, people, and partner value. Not only will both partners see value, a broader sector of society may as well.

For example, multinational giant Pfizer and biotechnology company BioNTech joined forces to release the Covid-19 Delta variant vaccine.

In the world of classic corporate strategy, the other companies in your category were threats to be defended against. However, in today’s world of ecosystems, webs, and interactions, they should be sought after.

Instead of building walls, building bridges offers more long-term payoff. By partnering with industry peers, you’ll accelerate your knowledge, adding value for your customers and serving as a key player in the larger ecosystem.

To offer one-touch, interest-free, buy now, pay later (BNPL) capabilities during physical checkout, adjacent companies Ingenico and SplitIt formed a partnership, delivering point of sale (POS) flexible installment options to consumers.

Our access to sophisticated real-time data has never been greater — so why aren’t more companies using it? Partner measurement capabilities and performance tracking KPIs give both a transparent and accurate view of how partnerships are actually performing in the market. It’s no longer a mystery which tactics are most effective — capitalize on those that work, and iterate on those that don’t. This quicker learning cycle allows for in-market agility and faster product and service updates.

Companies can create and refine dynamic pilots to test, learn from, and evaluate partnerships. Data tracking also enables a more transparent distribution model for equitable profit sharing.

Over a three year period, from 2017 to 2020, ecommerce platform Shopify tracked a new metric, partner attached conversion rates, and saw their revenue increased 17%, and their partners’ revenues increased 61.5%.

Ultimately your partnership strategy should be in line with your overall organization strategy. Some companies realize that partnership strategies are an extension of the organization and have a central function, but don’t have product or business unit level representation. Others let partnerships only happen at product/BU level. Best in class companies understand that you need both.

If partnerships are just a siloed discipline happening at the product/BU level, the effectiveness is limited, while instead they could be seen as an enterprise growth strategy and key revenue driver for the company.

Great companies understand the value of having a centralized strategic function and a distribution within operators, making sure every piece works together. This requires a strategic plan, partnership architecture, opportunity scoring/prioritization, governance, and ongoing tracking and measurement. Enter the Chief Partnership Officer. For organizations to prove that they want to capitalize on and create real value from partnerships, they need a dedicated team member who is making this a priority.

Microsoft’s Nicole Dezen and Starbucks’s Sara Kelly are leading the charge at those companies, viewing their roles as part of an investment ahead of the growth curve that’s developing.

Key Takeaway

These seven strategies prove that partnerships can be much more than two logos sitting together or a boring backend B2B integration mentioned in a press release. They can, and should, have a purpose and make an impact.

The post Seven Strategies to Build Your Partnership Marketing  appeared first on Vivaldi.

We have reached an inflection point right now, not least due to the pandemic, which has accelerated digitization and companies need to consider a different, more agile strategic approach and different business models not only to survive but also to grow. Here are the four recommendations about innovation, transformation, value creation, and cultivation that our experts left us with:

INFLECTION POINTS – YOUR BUSINESS IS NOT DESTINED TO FAIL  

Innovative companies need to discover when and how to pivot their businesses, especially in the current social and economic climate. Building resilience for companies against the known and the unknown requires planning techniques and leadership recommendations. Rita McGrath gave us insights into avenues of innovation opportunity, the centricity of trust in value creation, and salvation from the discovery-driven approach.

THE INVERTED FIRM – PLATFORM IS THE NEW NORM 

As consumerism migrates online en masse as a result of the inflection point, businesses turn to digital transformation as an imminent need. The movement promotes the idea of the inverted firm and how Platform Strategies can allow swift responsiveness and adaptation. Geoff Parker gave us insights into looking at scaling your business with a different lens, how traditional metrics of evaluating business growth may not apply in the platform economy, and how businesses can learn to operate in this Post-COVID world.

BRINGING STRATEGY BACK TO LIFE  

Transforming to the digital platform through the inverted firm presents new obstacles that the old practice of Strategy does not address. Harvard Business School professor with research emphasis on corporate strategy, industry analysis, and global competition, David Collis invited us to think about the different value types and what strategy really is today. He shared insights into modernizing strategy, tackling digitalization problems, and how value should not just be about capture but also creation and realization to achieve business success.

IS YOUR BUSINESS SMART ENOUGH TO GROW? 

Growing your company while acclimating your business to the digital platform may seem impossible, but you may come out a champion if you know the paths to get there. The key element of what helps the best companies grow today is taking advantage of internal and external levers to position themselves for explosive growth. Tiffani Bova taught us the importance of focusing on getting the job done, fostering company culture, working with competitors, and the positive business outcomes of social responsibility.

CONCLUSION 

Adapting to the modernization and digitalization of businesses requires new approaches, leadership, and strategies— especially in the pandemic era. Identifying inflection points is critical for leadership to steer the ship towards innovation through phased trial and error. As businesses join the digital platform economy, shifting traditional to digital strategies provides new opportunities for production alterations, rapid reception, and customer reach. With a growing progressive audience, thinking in different value structuring types will allow businesses to become resilient as the landscape continually evolves. Growing during digital development may seem daunting, but by positioning your business in the ecosystem through co-opetition and customer co-creation, your business will successfully transform and dominate the field.

This was the recap of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

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Kevin Lane Keller and Erich Joachimsthaler discussed modern marketing strategies.

Here are some of the key principles of Kevin’s Marketing expertise:

1. It is critical to define your product and services, then to determine collaborations. The intent of your company must be clear before considering potential partnerships. All companies are part of a broad ecosystem that serves a purpose and relates to one another.

Collaborating is not something new and has been done frequently in the past, but Kevin expresses how the function of collaboration has evolved into an integral part of marketing. Partnerships tell a story behind the companies. There is a resulting creation of new customer segments with fortified and enhanced offerings.

“It’s really important to not think of yourself as a marketer or as a company selling products or services, but that you’re satisfying needs, supplying benefits and solving problems.” – Kevin

2. With customers driving the company’s purpose and direction, marketers are no longer in control as they were in the old push-pull world. In the past, marketers are the ones prescribing how customers consume their products and services. Currently and in the foreseeable future, the customers are the ones creating a culture around the product and services through their natural response.

Kevin stresses how “Marketing Myopia” should still be a solid foundation. There is less of the traditional structure nowadays because of the organic synergies that take place through the audience. It is imperative to pay attention to these interactions that produce signals and opportunities to integrate them into the marketing strategy.

“We as marketers are really orchestrating value creation— orchestrating communications and orchestrating your Four P’s rather than designing them all.” – Erich

3. The Engagement Forum is the main ingredient in modern marketing. Word of mouth has been migrating to the digital world, but not entirely. When we interact through interest-driven communities in real life, it also becomes a marketing platform. Setting up a forum for these interpersonal interactions, both digitally and physically, has become one of the primary responsibilities of Marketing Managers.

As Kevin and Erich discussed, each of these niche interest-driven communities have varying dynamics and operations. Keeping track of people’s social and emotional signals in these communities and responding to them allows relationship building while making it feel less transactional.

“I’m changing knowledge and changing the way people think, feel, and act in a way that is going to help my brand and or help the mission of my brand. I’ve got to make sure that that happens.” – Kevin

Companies need to consider having a “Customer-First” mindset:

• Building communities as part of the business model: In the world of hyperconnectivity, value creation is synergetic and not one-sided. The culture built around company offerings and the consumption habits within communities become essential components of the business model.
• Letting consumers create the brand: Making customers feel like they are part of the brand’s co-creation process will increase their brand loyalty. The resulting interaction themes could be reinforced to help lead new insights and new practices.
• Creating value that withstands constant change in the consumer landscape: Companies must connect a business to a brand, not only with the value proposition but also with their promise to the customers. Marketing has evolved over the years, but its value proposition must have an adaptable quality with customers’ relationship as the foundation for decision-making.

Conclusion

The rules of marketing are changing as platforms and interactions become more democratized and digitalized. The connection culture of communities, collaborations, and customers have grown to be key players in creating successful company offerings. Orchestrating the organic synergies among these audiences provides informative trends and signals that will allow them to acclimate and demonstrate resilience in marketing’s ever-evolving consumer landscape.

Watch the full event here:

• 9:56 – The next steps in terms of brand marketing  
• 15:24 – The whole is greater than the sum of the parts in building an ecosystem 
• 18:14 – The consumer creates the brand 
• 31:36 – The importance of brand purpose and communicating it to your audience 
• 36:52 – Beyond branding and new opportunities 

This segment was part of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

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Businesses need to transform from the inside out, yet learn that in today’s market value is generated when you bring outsiders in. Closed off and siloed firms with rigid hierarchies that stifle innovation and efficiency are no longer fit for purpose in an agile and connected world.

In our report, Vivaldi’s brand building experts share winning approaches to tackle these challenges and unlock growth opportunities in five key areas:

1. Brand Leadership

Presented with a sea of uniformity, 86% of B2B buyers cannot discern a meaningful difference between supplier offerings. B2B companies need to reconsider what they stand for and how their firm is really perceived.

Brand-led transformation offers a clear opportunity to stand out. Brands that can articulate their value proposition and differentiate their positioning will cut through. Those without a purpose driven brand strategy and corporate identity will lose the ability to form human connections with employees and customers.

2. Marketing Performance

B2B marketers need a performance measurement system to improve marketing effectiveness. Omnichannel demands marketing effectiveness and operational efficiency. And yet, 53% of B2B marketers fail at measuring the output of their activities.

The challenge of keeping up with a rapidly evolving digital revolution has, to this point, been a reasonable explanation for why so many B2B marketers have yet to develop performance measurement frameworks. Marketing transformation has instead been concentrated on enabling greater sophistication of communications strategies and campaigns. But businesses need both executional sophistication and performance measurement.

Planning and execution only gets businesses so far. Executives are looking at a challenging global marketplace and want proof that the marketing budget provides an ROI, and not just in terms of the bottom line. Marketing led innovation can steer corporate strategy but not when its performance is opaque. When we can’t identify our successes and failures efficiently, it not only effects our response time in tailoring our marketing tactics. It can slow down the whole company.

3. Experience Innovation

B2B buyers’ expectations are driven by their B2C experiences. B2B buyers expect a consistent brand and user experience at every touchpoint. However, B2B is widely accepted to be off the pace when it comes to delivering on the promises of digital transformation.

This gap between expectation and reality provides ample opportunity space for companies with innovation and platform strategies to thrive. However, inventive product and service design will only take you part of the way.

Buyers expect to be enticed into your brand world and guided through a personalized customer journey. They demand a coherent and seamless customer experience, and superior UX design. An ‘always on’ approach that integrates every touchpoint across all channels is vital.

With 57% of the buying process completed before the prospect first comes into contact with a salesperson, there’s a lot of room for error. However, when properly designed and executed, the online customer experience can be unbeatable.

4. Platform Thinking

The conventional pipeline is obsolete. By 2025, 30% of the world economy will be platform-based. Companies that don’t take steps now to create a customer-centric business model that can connect with and truly understand its users, risk both their relevance and their survival.

Platform thinking represents a great opportunity for B2B companies. By facilitating interactions between users and providers, platform design and development creates a competitive advantage.

The benefits of connectivity extend beyond that which occurs between a brand and its customers. Links between suppliers, even competitors, can also enable two-way value creation and generate insights that fuel growth.

Platform thinking, and the blurring of boundaries enabled by interaction fields, are radically changing what we understand brands to be. Grappling with the challenges of platformization readiness now is the key to future performance.

5. Organizational Strategy

Companies that exist in siloes are inefficient, and the demands of our increasingly complex world can only be met by more agile organizations. An aligned strategy is crucial to optimally guide marketing, sales and IT in their daily activities. Purpose-led brand strategies can catalyse organisational alignment, establishing shared values, motivating co-operation, shaping decision making with a revitalised sense of strategic direction.

Developing new business models, accelerating business transformation and executing on growth strategy requires a fundamental commitment to co-operation. Companies wanting to meet the challenges presented by a platform-based economy and the omnichannel customer experience need to break down internal barriers and eliminate rigidity. Rigidity in thought; rigidity in process; rigidity in practice. They have to become cross functional organizations that are built on a corporate culture of shared interests and trust.

Vivaldi’s unique approach to the business ecosystem and interaction fields is helping inspire change for global brands. Our experts work to create cohesive strategies capable of driving the business transformation, brand leadership and experience innovation required to meet today’s B2B challenges.

Download our report now to see best-in-class examples, advice and case studies for how businesses can meet key B2B marketing challenges and change from B2B to H2H.

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