If this government shutdown continues through October, your marketing playbook can’t stay in “normal” mode.
This disruption is a forcing function pushing you to retest assumptions about demand, customer priorities, and the pace of economic cooling. With thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay, discretionary spending will contract, regulatory friction will rise, collateral impact will be felt by all sorts of businesses and customers, and public confidence will waver.
Marketing plans must shift from predicted growth to resilient adaptation. This means gaming scenario paths, doubling down on real-time signals, holding reserves for opportunistic moves, and understanding how customer behavior may reset midquarter. This will be difficult to predict with the lack of government economic data during the shutdown and the corresponding uncertainty in the market, but it should be done.
Here are three critical considerations for adapting your marketing strategy as this unfolds:
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