Without getting into anything political, it’s clear that the market is volatile, unsteady and moving slowly right now. As any marketer knows, when economic uncertainty creeps in, budgets get scrutinized and things grind to a halt or get put on tentative hold.  

Most of us have already been doing 'more with less'. Now with buyers being tentative and sales cycles taking much longer, you're being asked to 'pause' large-scale marketing and digital efforts. Pulling back on big efforts may be somewhat inevitable until things shake out, but holding on everything and doing nothing is the fastest way to lose ground. While you’re holding or pausing, your competition is moving forward. 

Keeping Momentum with Small-Scale Initiatives 

Even if major projects are stalled, there are plenty of smart moves we can make right now that don’t require a massive budget or executive sign-off. Rather than hold on everything because budgets are tight, look for small ways to move forward that cost less but can have big impact. These small but valuable initiatives will give you the data and insights needed to justify bigger moves when budgets open up again. 

Here’s a few ideas to keep moving forward with: 

• Low-hanging Fruit Adjustments to Keep Customers: Retaining customers in an uncertain economy is critical. What are the simple updates you can make to keep current customers happy? Fixing these areas will bring you the quickest return. If you aren't sure what frustrates your customers today, consider sending a survey or asking them to complete some inexpensive user testing. This information will be invaluable to you as you figure out what to focus on.
• Website & Digital Audits: Pinpoint performance issues, accessibility gaps, and areas where user experience can be improved. 
• SEO Audits & Competitive Analysis: See where you stand against competitors and find quick wins to improve visibility. 
• Optimize Core Web Vitals: Improve page speed, interactivity, and mobile-friendliness to boost rankings. 
• Refresh Existing Content: Updating older content is a fast, cost-effective way to gain traffic without creating new assets. 
• Content Audits & Inventory: Take stock of what you have, what’s working, what’s outdated and where you’re missing opportunities. 
• Content Modeling: Organize and structure content to improve searchability, engagement and delivery across all channels. 
• A/B Testing & User Testing: Test different messages, layouts, and UX elements to optimize engagement and conversions. 
• SWOT Analysis: Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to refine your strategy. 

None of these require massive spending, but they set you up for smarter decision-making when you’re ready to scale. 

Using This Time to Align Internal Stakeholders 

Another idea is to use this time to push discovery or business requirements gathering for a major digital initiative. If you will be planning a website, customer portal or digital transformation project in the upcoming year, use this time to interview stakeholders, gather benchmark data, document business requirements, audit your tech stack, identify and select technology providers and get internal teams and executive stakeholders on the same page. You can do much of this work with your own team. Or, you can leverage your digital partner and break this smaller discovery/analysis part of the project out from the larger development initiative so that you don’t need executive budget approval.  

• Engage internal teams to document their needs, priorities, and challenges. 
• Develop a shared roadmap so that when bigger initiatives launch, you’ve already laid the groundwork. 
• Audit your technology needs so you know what legacy solutions will be kept, what new technology needs to be added, data or content to be migrated, etc.  
• Streamline internal processes to eliminate roadblocks before they become last-minute surprises. 

Keep Taking Baby Steps Forward Now So You Can Execute Faster Later 

In uncertain financial times, your customers are also feeling apprehensive. Pushing your marketing efforts forward, even if with baby steps, will also reassure your customer base that you are here to continue to support them. This ultimately will help with retention which is critical in down economic times.  And, if leadership wants efficiency, give it to them by making strategic moves today that set you up for success tomorrow. When the market rebounds and budgets return, you will be in a good position and won’t be left scrambling.