Marketing in economic uncertainty impacts every marketer.

From marketing to investors, it is especially an obstacle to overcome.

As the economic news gets worse and worse, it’s only natural for some investors to worry about a dip in the overall market or falling stock prices.

Historically, stock prices usually take wild swings, and even may crash, especially when the economy is in a recession (or perceived to be in one).

How do you promote an investment newsletter during an economic and investment downturn?

That was the question on investment guru, Scott Smith’s mind, when he came to me and my team at CDMG with the idea to launch his new financial investment newsletter… At a terrible time to launch a newsletter.

For us the answer was simple, as we focused on 3 main goals, which we outlined to Scott:

1. Overcome investor skepticism, panic and uncertainty.
2. Establish Scott Smith’s credibility and unique selling proposition (U.S.P.) for uncertain times.
3. Create a powerful offer.

It sounded simple enough, but Scott wasn’t as confident as my team and I were. He was concerned with the fact that angry, disillusioned investors were canceling other investment newsletter subscriptions, or choosing not to renew them at all.

As a result, several ­ financial newsletters lost 40%-60% of their subscriber base.

In Scott’s mind, the timing to launch a new investment newsletter was equivocal at best, and like many advertisers, his inclination was to hold back on any ad spending — which is the worst thing an advertiser/marketer can do.

According to a recent article in Forbes, “In the aftermath of the last recession in 2008, ad spending in the U.S. dropped by 13%. When broken down by medium, newspaper ad spending dropped the most at 27%, radio spending dropped by 22%, followed by magazines with a decline of 18%, out-of-home by 11%, television by 5% and online by 2%.

Nonetheless, there have been several studies going back nearly 100 years that point out the advantages of maintaining or even increasing ad budgets during a weaker economy. Those advertisers that maintained or grew their ad spending increased sales and market share, over their competitors during a recession and afterwards. These advertisers showed an 8% to 10% increase (or more) in profits over their competitors.”

This same increase was found during and after the pandemic shut down that those who marketed dramatically increased profits by over 100% over the competition.

For nervous investors, because of the dramatic swings in the economy, hard money investments — such as gold — became much more attractive to this group of investors who viewed it as a way to prosper in an uncertain economy.

However, my team and I were confident that it was the perfect time to launch Swiss Confidential, Scott Smith’s new financial newsletter, which was based on free market principles — a concept that similar newsletters lacked … and writing the copy directly to address the investors fears.

Scott had spent more than 30 years as a member of the Swiss banking elite and wanted to share the wealth-building, asset-protection, and gold investment secrets he had learned with his fellow Americans.

My team at CDMG immediately went to work on Scott’s project and came up with a high-pro­file way to promote the launch of Swiss Confidential during the worst economic climate in 50 years. We created a series of powerful, 60-second direct response television and radio spots to attract conservative/libertarian hard money investors, and CDMG was able to draw attention to Scott newsletter and communicate his investment expertise in a short amount of time.

Broadcast spots furthered Scott’s credibility, playing off the threat of inflation and downturn in the market. CDMG created the broadcast spots to showcase examples of other incredibly pro­fitable stocks recommended by Scott.

At the end of each spot, viewers and listeners were directed to either call a Toll-Free 800 number or visit a customized landing page for the detailed information they needed to subscribe to Swiss Confidential and invest in the featured stock.

To attract even more subscribers, Swiss Confidential included a compelling offer for potential subscribers: A FREE 4-part in‑ action Survival Kit.

And the campaign was multichannel. Complementary to the TV/radio campaign were digital and direct mail.

To Scott’s surprise and delight, the campaign exceeded goals and generated new paid subscribers. It also helped create a lift in the multimedia campaign, turning it into one of the most successful newsletter promotions — despite an uncertain economy and cautious investors. Swiss Confidential attracted more than 4,000 paid new subscribers just in the testing part of the campaign in a little over 6 months, at over $100.00 per subscription.

Our team showed Scott what over 40 years of experience can bring to the table, and that with the right advertising message and marketing strategies, we can make a business or product launch a success.

In fact, we’ve helped turn entrepreneurial start-ups into large companies … and large companies into multibillion-dollar businesses, through all sorts of economies.

Give us a call at 615-933-4647 or email Craig at [email protected] to discuss integrated, multichannel marketing campaigns and how we can help you.