Planning Marketing Under Uncertainty: Cut Activity, Not Clarity

Synopsis

A marketing plan under uncertainty is not a smaller version of last year’s plan. It is a different plan. When tariffs are back in the headlines, the economy is soft and every company you know has quietly paused hiring, the instinct is to cut marketing across the board. That instinct is half right. Cut activity. Do not cut clarity.

This post is for founders and leaders at companies of 10 to 200 people planning the next two quarters with less certainty than they would like. It says what to stop, what to keep, and the one question that decides which is which.

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What the last three months did to your buyers

Searches for “tariffs” in Canada hit their twelve-month peak in the last week of August 2026. “Recession” spiked in late May. “Buy Canadian” is at its highest point of the year. Searches for marketing plans, which usually switch on in October and November, fell to almost nothing in August, because nobody plans in August and fewer people plan when they are worried. Those are Google Trends figures for Canada, read in September 2026; they describe the mood of the people you sell to.

The useful reading is not that demand is gone. It is that your buyers are reading the news while they decide, and the companies that stay clear and calm in front of them will be the ones they remember when they are ready. The firms that go quiet will not be.

The instinct, and why it is half right

When money tightens, marketing is the first line in the budget anyone questions, because most marketing spend cannot explain itself. A campaign that produces activity but not results has no defence in a tight quarter, and it should not have one.

So cut it. Stop the channel you cannot measure. Stop the content calendar that exists because it exists. Stop the tool subscription nobody has opened since spring. If you cannot say what a line produces, the uncertainty is doing you a favour by forcing the question.

That is the half the instinct gets right.

The half it gets wrong

The half it gets wrong is cutting the thinking along with the doing. The two things a company needs most in a soft market are the two things most budgets cut first: knowing exactly who still buys, and saying one clear thing to them.

In a strong market you can be vague and still grow, because enough people are buying that some of them find you. In a soft market only the companies that know precisely who their customer is, what that customer is afraid of this quarter, and what they are still willing to pay for, keep winning. That knowledge is not a campaign. It is the foundation under every campaign, and it costs a fraction of what the campaigns cost.

The honest version of a marketing plan under uncertainty is therefore short: stop the activity you cannot measure, keep the customer research, keep the one message, and spend the little you have on the places where that message meets a buyer who is ready.

What to keep, in order

1. Who buys from you now, and why. Not who bought in 2024. Interview the last five customers who said yes. Ask what they were afraid of and what made the decision safe. Their words are the plan.
2. One message everyone can repeat. If you asked three people in your company what you do, you should get one answer. Under pressure, a company that speaks with one voice looks like a safe choice. One that speaks with three looks like a risk.
3. The place the message is read. Usually the website and one channel where your buyers actually are. For most companies of your size that is search and LinkedIn. Everything else is optional this quarter.
4. Measurement that a board can read. Enquiries, conversations, pipeline. Not engagement. If a number cannot be tied to a conversation with a real buyer, it does not go in the deck.

What to stop, without guilt

• Paid campaigns running against an audience nobody has defined in writing.
• Posting for cadence. Six posts a month that say nothing lose to one that says the thing your buyer needed to hear.
• Tools that produce more output. AI that writes faster is not a strategy; it is a faster way to say nothing if nobody has decided what to say. AI delivers. It doesn’t decide.
• Any agency relationship where you cannot name what they decided for you last month.

The question that sorts the two piles

Every line in the marketing budget answers one question: does this help us know who we are selling to, or help us say the one thing to them? If yes, keep it and probably spend a little more on it. If it does only something else, awareness, presence, activity, it goes until the market turns.

That question is the whole of a Marketing Foundation. In a strong market it is a good idea. In this one it is the difference between a company that spends less and gets more, and one that spends less and disappears.

If you are planning Q4 right now

Plan it in one afternoon, from the customer backwards. Write down the one buyer you want more of, what they are worried about this quarter, the one promise you can make them, and the two places they will read it. Then fund only the lines that serve that page. If you want a senior pair of eyes on it without hiring anyone, that is what a fractional CMO is for: the decisions, not the deliverables.

FAQ