Why Digital Marketing Is a Recession-Proof Growth Strategy

With a 2025 recession looming, fueled by market instability, trade wars, and general uncertainty, businesses are starting to tighten budgets once again.

And just like every other recession, the marketing budget is often the first on the chopping block.

Specifically, digital marketing — especially SEO and content — gets slashed because it’s a long-term investment that doesn’t immediately show ROI when sales slow down.

But is cutting SEO and other digital marketing efforts actually smart?

Short answer: No.

Do digital marketing efforts still matter during economic downturn?

Absolutely. Especially when compared to traditional marketing strategies. And if you want your business to survive the second half of 2025, you should act before Q3 hits.

What We Know About Marketing in Past Recessions

History repeats itself.

The 1990s MarketSense study showed brands that maintained or increased marketing during a downturn, companies like Jif and Kraft actually grew market share by over 50% while competitors fell behind.

Consumer behavior in a recession may evolve, but one thing stays the same: brand awareness matters more when wallets are tighter.

Cutting SEO spend now may not hurt you tomorrow, but you’ll feel it six months from now when your competitors dominate online visibility.

Research from the University of Pennsylvania still rings true:

“Companies that consistently advertise during recessions perform better in the long run.”

And in 2025, digital marketing is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s core infrastructure.

Why SEO during a recession?

Is SEO still a good marketing strategy during a recession?

1000% yes. Here’s why:

• SEO helps you grow your organic audience when paid channels become less cost-effective.
• SEO strengthens your website’s conversion funnel so the traffic you do get is more likely to buy.
• SEO can lower your overall marketing costs because you’re building a compounding source of traffic that you don’t pay per click for.
• SEO keeps your brand visible when consumer trust is critical.

In a recession, people don’t stop searching, they search smarter.

And if you’re invisible when someone Googles your brand name or services? Good luck getting that sale.

What We Learned at The HOTH From the Pandemic and Previous Recessions

The 2020 pandemic taught us a lot:

 Businesses who doubled down on digital early survived — and many even thrived. 

Why? Opportunity.

Although it was a tough time for many, we saw a big uptick during COVID as businesses rushed to bring their processes online and everyone was at home searching online.

The world shifted to online everything almost overnight. That behavior stuck.

Now combine that with classic recession consumer psychology (via Harvard Business Review):

There are four consumer mindsets during a recession:

• Slam-on-the-brakes: Immediately cut all non-essential spending.
• Pained-but-patient: Cut back carefully, wait it out.
• Comfortably well-off: Minor adjustments, still spending.
• Live-for-today: Barely change behavior at all.

And every product or service gets mentally recategorized:

• Essentials: Must-buy
• Treats: Justifiable small indulgences
• Postponables: Big purchases delayed
• Expendables: Bye-bye luxury goods

Even your essential offering can become a postponable if you’re not top of mind.

That’s why brand loyalty and awareness are your lifelines.

Marketing isn’t optional — it’s a necessity for cash flow when things get ugly.

How This Applies to SEO in 2025

Here’s the reality:

• Your competitors won’t stop optimizing.
• Google will continue updating rankings with fresh, relevant content.
• Search engines don’t care about a recession.

If you pause SEO now, you’re giving your competitors a free head start.

During COVID, businesses who cut SEO budgets lost market share they never regained.

In past recessions, companies like Pizza Hut and Taco Bell increased marketing spend while McDonald’s pulled back — resulting in 61% and 40% sales increases respectively.

If history has taught us anything: pulling back guarantees you’ll lose ground.

Why SEO might be more important during a recession

If your industry might be suffering due to a recession, you can see why that #1 spot is even MORE vital so that you can capture the people searching for your target keywords.

Here’s what’s happening right now:

1. The Web Is Still the Best Sales Channel

People will spend less, sure.
But they’re still spending — especially online.

In fact, online browsing tends to increase during economic downturns because it’s free entertainment, free research, and perceived as “safer” than impulsive in-store purchases.

The channels where buying decisions happen (organic search, local search, ecommerce platforms) will only become more critical especially as people adjust to 

2. Local Businesses Need Online Support

Local SEO exploded during COVID. It hasn’t slowed down.

People want to support their communities, but they’ll find you online first — not by walking down Main Street.

If you’re a local business without a strong online footprint, you’re invisible to a huge portion of your potential customers.

This graph from Trade.gov shows the eCommerce Share of Total Global Retail Sales from 2015-2024.

The upward trend of e-retail sales from 2019 to 2020 due to the pandemic boosted the projected growth through 2024 for retail e-commerce sales worldwide.

Search engine results pages became the new storefront for tons of businesses and this behavior doesn’t seem to be changing.

This Accenture survey found that 84% of participants plan to continue shopping in local stores or buying more local products than before the pandemic once it’s over.

3. Now Is the Best Time to Re-Evaluate Your Marketing Strategy

Smart businesses are adjusting now — not waiting until Q3 panic sets in.

Audit your spend, kill low-ROI tactics, and reinvest in the strategies that actually drive long-term growth.

That means building organic authority through SEO, not gambling on expensive ad auctions when CPCs skyrocket due to limited budgets.

Where do I start with SEO?

Here are a few tips for how to implement an effective SEO strategy:

1. Conduct keyword research to identify the best keywords to target.
2. Optimize your website content for those keywords.
3. Build links to your website from high-quality websites.
4. Monitor your website’s search engine rankings regularly.

Keyword research

You need to start with software to do research on what you are already ranking for and what your direct competitors are ranking for on the major search engines like Google.

This will make sure you are actually targeting search terms that people who want to find your business are using.

You can use paid tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush.

Optimize content

Once you identify those keywords, you need to make sure you set up your website in a way that Google knows you are the best answer to those searches.

This is known as on-page SEO.

For example, if you’re a tennis coach in Tampa, Florida, you need to use those keywords on your website to start ranking for those searches.

That includes the H1’s, Title tags, and meta descriptions for your individual URL. Otherwise, how will Google determine what your website is about and rank you for your keyword targets?

Build links

Link building, back-linking, building links. Whatever you call it, you need to build high-quality backlinks to your site’s pages. To this day, it’s one of the most influential factors in Google’s algorithm.

Just look at this study from Ahrefs, one of the biggest SEO software companies.

The number of referring domains a website has a pretty high correlation to how well it ranks.

Monitor your SERP’s

After building links consistently for a few months, monitor how your organic traffic has changed and, more specifically, take a look at how you are ranking on the actual Search Engine Result Pages.

You can check your current website traffic with our free tool here: https://www.thehoth.com/website-traffic/

…and stop letting potential customers slip away.

Conclusion

Yes, people will spend less in Q3 and Q4 2025.

No, that doesn’t mean you should pause your marketing.

It means you need to get smarter about how you reach people. And SEO is the smartest investment you can make right now.

If you stop showing up on Google, your competitors won’t.

If you cut marketing visibility, you’ll disappear from buyer consideration.

Don’t let the recession decide your business’s future. Start controlling what you can now.

Case Studies: SEO Success During Tough Times

HOTH X is our managed SEO service. And we’ve seen firsthand what happens when businesses invest during economic uncertainty.

Example 1:

For one of our clients in the travel and transportation industry, we saw a 10x growth in organic traffic after four months of a HOTH X 2500 package:

Example 2:
A primarily eCommerce based client who also has a local store frontboosted traffic by 2400% after 6 months with a HOTH X 1000 plan.

Real investment = real results.

And because we actually build links and create content (instead of fake “optimizing” pages like some agencies), our clients get full visibility into where their dollars go every month.

SEO isn’t cheap if you want a managed strategy that will actually work.

And many full-service marketing agencies offering “SEO” aren’t actually building or earning backlinks/creating content.

Smaller businesses don’t know what to look for when it comes to SEO reporting so big companies just tack it on as an upsell and don’t actually do any SEO work.

With HOTH X, you receive transparent reporting and get to see EXACTLY how your budget is being spent each month.

Here are a few testimonials from clients who started in the past year:

If you want organic search results, SEO works. Use your marketing dollars to build a quality website and invest in SEO.

If you are still dragging your feet when it comes to SEOing your website, just know that you’ll never get found if you don’t start somewhere.

If you’re serious about coming out of this 2025 recession stronger than ever, talk to our SEO team today and let’s build your custom growth strategy.

Don’t wait until you’re in panic mode.