Three strategies to help brands thrive in an uncertain economy

In the latest episode of Salesforce Connections, Bloomberg Media Global CMO Anne Kawalerski talked with Salesforce President and CMO Sarah Franklin about how brands can solidify their foundation and grow audience awareness around key profit drivers amid an uncertain outlook. Watch the full episode here, and read on to hear from Anne on three key strategies to help your brand thrive during an economic downturn.

By: Anne Kawalerski, Global CMO, Bloomberg Media

1. Do more with less by ruthlessly prioritizing and seeking opportunities for innovation.

Investing in your brand is the smartest thing a business can do to ensure that more people who are deciding what product to purchase ultimately choose your brand over your competitors. However, not all investment is created equal. 

Tough economic times present an opportunity for marketers to get creative with their strategies without necessarily investing more marketing dollars. Those who prioritize launching fewer, bigger, more concentrated initiatives that work harder, versus placing many smaller bets, can drive higher impact while making the most of their budgets. It’s also more important than ever to drive brand awareness around utility and how you meet your customer’s needs, while being strategic about where and how you’re reaching your audience. 

At Bloomberg we’re focusing on the long-term potential of the brand with mid-funnel creative that drives lift of key awareness metrics while promoting specific content, products, and initiatives that we’re developing as proof points. For example, ESG represents a huge opportunity for advertisers with a 1500% increase in media coverage since 2017. We’re marrying that trend with our commitment to sustainability and climate justice by providing the data and insights that modern leaders need in order to make informed decisions in their own sustainability efforts. We’re also leaning into how we provide utility for our customers by focusing on our events business and fostering communities for our advertisers around ESG, like the Bloomberg Green Councils.

Another way to support your long term growth strategy is through partnerships that help to address any areas of vulnerability with your brand. A great example of this is our partnership with EBONY, which has elevated visibility of both brands while expanding our combined reach and relevance with the Black community through joint initiatives at the EBONY Power 100 event and the Bloomberg Media ESG House in Cannes. By partnering with other brands that have synergistic values, you can help drive your collective objectives forward. 

Simply put, you can’t not spend in today’s economy. Prioritization and innovation is the winning combination to ensure you’re making the most of your marketing budget -- while building effective partnerships and driving utility for the customer that help to support your goals.  

2. Systematize audience data and integrate insights across planning and execution.

Data and research are vital tools that empower marketers by informing ongoing product innovation and campaign strategy. Bloomberg Media utilized data from our Change the World Report to inform the launch of the first-ever large-scale brand campaign in 2021. By dimensionalizing what making a positive impact and changing the world means to the Modern Leader today, we were able to identify our audience’s motivations and values across specific topics that we cover through our content — or may not cover yet — in order to inform the marketing campaign strategy and messaging. 

The Change the World data has proved so useful that we’ve turned it into an annual global study to inform how and where we invest in innovating our brands on behalf of our audience. As a result, we’re growing our audience for the brands that reflect the areas our audiences care about most, like Bloomberg Green, and ensuring that we continue our data-first approach to our reporting. We’re also using the data to evolve into new editorial areas and products for Bloomberg Green such as Greener Living, Bloomberg Green's Electric Car Ratings, and the Bloomberg Green Summit – all of which respond to the insight that our audience wants more content on how to live a greener lifestyle. Arming yourself with data-driven insight allows you to accurately address whitespace opportunities and invent new offerings that can increase company revenue.  

3. Demonstrate how marketing spend correlates to revenue growth.

The role of the CMO has evolved dramatically in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the resulting shifts in the world today. CMOs are now required to be an expert across a wider range of areas including revenue, operations, sustainability and HR. It’s no longer enough to report on the soft metrics of marketing. Marketers are expected to show hard metrics that demonstrate how marketing spend drives revenue. 

Below are key behaviors for marketers to help drive revenue:

• Forge new partnerships that open doors to revenue opportunities
• Identify branding opportunities that enable your organization to monetize new parts of the business or products
• Work closely with your commercial counterparts
• Report hard metrics that correlate marketing spend to revenue growth
• Be close to the customer to understand their needs

To set themselves up for success, marketers should be clear upfront with their stakeholders about how success will be measured, what the KPIs should be and why, the audience targets, and how the campaign will translate into broader business impact -- and have them buy into this thinking. 

Finally, all three of these key strategies put solving customer problems at the forefront. Prioritizing investment that super-serves your audience, accessing insight that helps you exceed their expectations, and taking an active role in driving company revenue are the north stars to growth, whether or not a recession is around the corner.