How to Win During a Recession | EP 809

How to Win During a Recession

1. Importance of SEO and Organic Marketing
2. The Oppurtunity for Paid Ads

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, my name is David Blackmon.

00:35 Tim Strifler: And i’m Tim Strifler

00:38 David Blackmon: Today in episode 809 we’re going to talk about how to win during a recession. Obviously over the last few years the whole world has changed, we’ve had covid, we’ve been in lockdown. Unfortunately some small businesses lost their business because they weren’t prepared to transition should their storefronts close which never in a million years did we dream that would happen. But guess what? It happened. Um so we wanted to kind of talk about, you know some ways and things you could do to um win during economic times like these. Especially in today’s you know. I still look at the online space even though we’ve been online for a good 30 years now. Consistently people from their homes and stuff i still feel like we’re very very early in the stages, and in my opinion it’s still the wild wild west, we’re still trying to figure all this stuff out you know. And believe it or not, we’re the we’re the people that are blazing the path for the for the for the future you know, our children, their children our grandchildren, great grandchildren. We are pretty much laying down the foundation and the footwork and stuff. And um obviously there are some things you can do to win in a recession online that you know are cost effective, that may not cost as much money and stuff. So we kind of wanted to talk about like that and stuff i guess i’ll start off with today, is you know the importance of SEO and organic marketing. So when we started our company Aspen Grove Studios a little over seven years ago, we right out of the gate started writing blog posts, producing content you know. I wish i could tell you that it was intentional, and i did it because i knew what it was going to do for me and the company in the long run. But the truth is, i just like sharing the knowledge that I learned, i didn’t know anything about WordPress, so as we would do certain cool things i figured other people may want to learn about it. And guess what? I found out on the back end that the search engines. Absolutely love that! So coincidentally our websites are insanely high ranking websites, they’re um authoritative in the WordPress space. So if we produce content now on any you know level it gets ranked pretty quickly and pretty highly. A lot of times page one. Uh on on some some things and uh just because we’re in 2022 and you may be coming to the to the content marketing game a little bit later. In the seo game where you’re trying to optimize your seo and stuff it’s not too late because a lot of these businesses aren’t doing these things. So still if you take the time to do these things you can really really give yourself a leg up. Especially in these recessive times, where you really really need to get traffic, you really really want eyeballs on your products and stuff. And this is just a really good way to do it you know. A little bit of sweat equity start producing content, putting out some valuable relevant stuff and it can help you a tremendous amount in the long run especially in a recession and stuff.

04:03 Tim Strifler: Yeah and to David’s point during a recession a lot of times businesses cut back. Right, they cut back spending and so sometimes blogging paying whether they’re paying it someone internally to do it, or they are paying an outside agency . A lot of times stuff like blogging is what gets cut first, because that’s a long term play. And so they want to focus their spending on things that are going to help them short term. And so that creates more of an opportunity for you to put in the effort and see those results and be able to win when other companies are cutting back from certain areas. And on that same note it brings us brings us to the the second part of this episode which is there’s a huge opportunity for paid ads. Right so kind of the whole principle behind this episode of how to win during a recession is doing the opposite of everyone else. Right when so when others zig you zag, when others are cutting back, you spend and the reason is because the natural tendency for companies during a recession is they cut spending. They hold back right, because it’s like there’s so much uncertainty. They don’t know what the future is going to be, they don’t know how long we’re going to be in this, they don’t know how bad it’s going to get. So the natural tendency is to be a little bit fearful. A little uh more risk adverse and so you know they’re not going to be investing in seo or paid ads as much. So ad costs actually go down, so during a recession there’s an opportunity to get more bang for your buck on the paid ad platforms Facebook, Google, Youtube um other other platforms as well. So you can think okay well i can do what everyone else is doing, and i can cut spending and not advertise or cut back on my advertising spend or i can seize the opportunity and where others are freezing i can run. And uh you know, cover a lot of ground quickly when normally it would be a lot more competitive. And so there’s a lot of opportunities to that beyond just the examples we’re giving. I think, it’s having a mindset of looking for the opportunities, because here’s the thing. During recessions millionaires are made, like if you look at like the biggest recessions that we’ve had in history like the great depression like there are people that made a lot of money during those times, not because they were greedy or doing anything unethical but they were just while everyone else was being fearful they were being opportunistic. Right, they were looking for those opportunities. An actual example from a personal friend I have, a good friend his brother-in-law during the 2008 recession when a lot of people lost everything, he had a billboard ads business. Right and so his business like tanked during that time because no one was wanting to spend money on advertising, but they had they were really uh profitable company. So him and his partner what they decided to do is invest money that they had saved and buy commercial real estate, and so they bought a big office building that they got it for you know a fraction of what they would have paid, uh you know a year or two before. Um and they that is basically their retirement plan. Now um they’ve they’ve held on to it all this time that was back in 2008 and they don’t need to sell it because the amount of money they make from those recurring uh fees from their tenants, like that’s their cash cow right there. And so they were able to see that opportunity and jump on it opposed to most people being like well whoa whoa i’m not going to buy real estate right now that’s a terrible idea you know, we’re in a recession. But they benefited greatly by buying when the market was down so anyways there’s opportunities like that everywhere you just have to be on the lookout for them.

08:15 David Blackmon: Yeah and i will tell you that people are not quitting using the internet. So if you know you let the people that aren’t advertising and doing these things the eyeballs that are out there are still out there and people are still searching. So um take it for what it’s worth. Tomorrow we’ve got another great episode, Tim until tomorrow we’ll see you then

09:05 Tim Strifler: Take care, bye.