How to market during economic uncertainty: Do the buyer's math first

If you're running a startup, building a business on your own or working in a small marketing team, you probably don't have money to throw at marketing just because something might work.

Every new tool, freelancer, campaign or subscription has to earn its place. And your customers are thinking exactly the same way. They're still buying. But they're asking more questions before they do:

• Do I really need this?
• Will it save me enough time?
• Will it actually help me grow?
• Can I keep doing this myself instead?
• Is this worth another monthly expense?

That's why marketing during economic uncertainty can't just be about explaining what your product does.

Your marketing has to help the customer do the math behind buying it.

By the time they reach your pricing page, book a call or start a free trial, they should already understand why solving the problem matters, what their current way of doing things is costing them and what actually changes if they choose your solution.

In other words: good marketing makes the case before the price appears.

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Getting attention has become harder

There's more marketing content than ever. And for startups and small teams, that's a problem. You're not only competing with businesses selling something similar. You're competing with every other LinkedIn post, TikTok, newsletter, founder story, ad and AI-generated carousel your customer sees that day. At the same time, creating content has become incredibly easy.

Ask AI for: “10 LinkedIn post ideas for founders.”

And you have them in seconds. Which is useful. But it also means everyone else can do exactly the same thing. The result is a lot of content that starts to sound remarkably similar. The same hooks. The same formats. The same opinions. The same “5 ways to…” posts. Producing more content isn't particularly difficult anymore.

Creating something worth paying attention to is.

So instead of starting with: “What should we post this week?”

start with: “What is happening in our customer's world right now that makes this worth their attention?”

That's a much better marketing question.

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Information isn't as valuable as it used to be

For years, one of the easiest content strategies was: Teach people something useful.

And educational content still matters. But access to information has completely changed.

If someone wants to know how to create a content plan, improve their SEO, write a newsletter or generate leads on LinkedIn, they can Google it. Or ask AI. Or find hundreds of videos explaining it for free.

So simply giving people information doesn't automatically make your marketing valuable. Think about the amount of content you've probably scrolled past that starts with something like:

“5 tips to improve your social media strategy.”

It might contain perfectly good advice. You still probably won't stop. The bigger opportunity is to give people a realization.

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Create realization, not just “value content”

Instead of telling your audience something they already vaguely know, show them something about their situation that they haven't considered. For example:

Instead of: “Here are five ways to create content faster.”

Try: “Your content problem might not be a lack of ideas. You might be wasting hours recreating the same idea separately for LinkedIn, Instagram, your newsletter and your blog.”

Now we're getting somewhere. You're helping someone diagnose what's actually slowing them down instead of just giving them a helpful tip.

A useful way to think about this is:

• You want X.
• You're currently doing Y.
• Y is creating this problem.
• There's a better way to get to X.

Imagine you're a founder creating content every Sunday night because there simply isn't anyone else to do it. Telling you: “You need to post consistently”, isn't particularly helpful. You already know.

But someone saying: “If staying consistent means spending every Sunday writing posts, your problem probably isn't consistency. Your content workflow doesn't scale”, might make you stop.

Since it describes your actual situation, it’s the kind of marketing that creates demand.

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Start with the buyer's world, not your content calendar

This matters even more for startups and smaller businesses because their customers are often dealing with very similar constraints. Not enough time. Not enough people. Too many things competing for the same budget.

Ask yourself:

• What is our customer trying to get done right now?
• What are they doing manually?
• What takes them far longer than it should?
• What are they already paying for?
• What are they trying to avoid hiring someone for?
• What have they tried that hasn't worked?
• What are they worried about spending money on?
• What would make them say, “Okay, this actually makes sense for me/us”?

Now your marketing has something much more interesting to talk about.

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Do the buyer's math

This is the part a lot of marketing skips. Your customer is already doing a calculation. Especially when they're a founder, solopreneur or someone working with a small budget.

They see your €50, €100 or €500 price tag and immediately compare it with everything else they could do with that money. But the calculation isn't only about money.

It's more like:

Money
Does this make or save enough money to justify the cost?

Time
How many hours will this save me every week?

People
Does this mean I don't need to hire or outsource something yet?

Opportunity cost
What could I work on instead if this problem disappeared?

Effort
Is setting this up going to create even more work?

Risk
What happens if I keep doing things the way I'm doing them now?

Confidence
Do I genuinely believe this will work for a business like mine?

That's the buyer's math. And your marketing should help them calculate it.

Imagine you're selling software for €100 per month. If all your marketing says is:

“Our software costs €100 per month and includes 20 features.”

the buyer has to decide whether €100 feels expensive. But imagine you've already shown them that they're spending five hours every week doing the same work manually. Now they're not comparing: €100 vs €0. They're comparing:

€100 vs 20 hours of their time every month. A very different calculation.

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Make the cost of doing nothing visible

This doesn't mean every piece of marketing needs an ROI calculator. But your customer needs to understand what their current way of working is costing them. And for small businesses, that cost is often hidden in time. Two hours creating a newsletter. Another three are making social posts. Then copying everything into different tools or figuring out what to post next week. Nothing looks particularly expensive on its own. But suddenly the founder has spent an entire working day doing something that isn't product development, talking to customers or growing the business. That's a cost. A small marketing team might have the same problem. Good marketing makes those trade-offs visible by making the problem easier to calculate, instead of creating fear.

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Show what actually changes after buying

Once someone understands the problem, the next question is simple:

Okay. What gets better?

This is where feature-heavy marketing often loses people.

Compare: “Includes AI agents for LinkedIn, Instagram, blogs, newsletters and SEO.”

With: “Turn one idea into your blog, newsletter and social posts without rebuilding the same campaign five times.”

One describes what's inside the product. The other describes what changes for the customer. Features matter of course but they're much more persuasive once someone understands why they matter.

You're selling: less repetitive work, not automation. 

The product is the mechanism. The change is what people pay for.

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Proof completes the calculation

There's still one big question left: Will this actually work for me?

Especially when money is tight, buyers don't want another tool they'll cancel three months later.

So show them:

• Show how someone similar uses the product.
• Show what they were doing before.
• Show the workflow.
• Show the result.
• Show the time saved.

Show a customer saying: “I used to spend four hours doing this. Now it takes 30 minutes.”

Specific examples often do more than broad claims like: “Save time and grow your business.” The more concrete the proof, the easier the calculation becomes.

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You don't have to hide the fact that you're selling something

There's a strange thing happening in marketing right now. Brands obviously want people to buy. But many seem terrified of actually selling. So everything becomes “value content.”

Another carousel, educational post, founder lesson, checklist.

But if someone already recognizes their problem and understands why solving it matters, recommending your product isn't suddenly bad marketing. It might actually be exactly what they need. The key is the order.

• First diagnose.
• Then help them understand the problem.
• Show what could change.
• Give them reasons to believe you.
• Then recommend the solution.

If you've done the first four well, the fifth doesn't feel pushy. It feels logical.

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Good marketing reduces the amount of convincing you need to do

Creating more content for the sake of filling a calendar isn't the answer. Neither is hiding behind endless educational content because you're afraid to sell. The better question is:

Does our marketing help someone understand why solving this problem is worth their time, money or attention?

That's the buyer's math. Get their attention. Show them something they haven't considered. Help them understand the cost of the current situation. Show what changes with the right solution. Give them proof.

Then let them decide.

Because the best marketing makes the decision easier to understand.