Bank of England cuts UK growth forecast and warns over no-deal Brexit

The Bank of England has cut its forecasts for UK growth over the next two years and also warned that a no-deal Brexit would hit the economy and trigger a further drop in the value of the pound.

The Bank left interest rates unchanged at 0.75% against a backdrop of weaker global growth and ongoing trade tensions between the US and China.

It said the UK economy was expected to grow by 1.3% this year, down from a previous projection of 1.5% in May.

The Bank also cut its outlook for growth in 2020 to 1.3%, from a previous projection of 1.6%.

The forecasts are based on the assumption that the UK leaves the EU with a Brexit deal – however it suggested growth could be much slower in the event of no deal.

Why has the Bank cut its forecasts?

The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) that sets interest rates said the UK was likely to have stagnated in the three months to June.

Its quarterly Inflation Report predicted only modest growth in the coming months due to ongoing uncertainty over the UK’s future relationship with the European Union.

It said there was a one-in-three chance that the economy will shrink at the start of next year, with global trade tensions also weighing on the UK outlook.

And it said there had been a “material and broad-based slowdown” in world growth since the end of 2017.

How is Brexit affecting business?

The Bank said UK economic growth was “likely to remain subdued over the coming year, with Brexit-related uncertainties weighing on spending to a greater extent than in May”.

Its latest survey of businesses showed that 90% of them had implemented contingency plans ahead of a previous March Brexit deadline.

Three quarters of respondents said they were also “as ready as they can be” for a no-deal scenario.

However, the Bank warned that “material risks of economic disruption remain”.

It noted that 240,000 businesses that currently trade solely with the EU were not ready for sudden EU border inspections in the event of no deal.

Many others did not have the right documents to keep selling to the EU if the UK left the bloc without a deal.

Nissan plans to cut 10,000 jobs as for Sunderland workers fear for jobs

Eight thousand Nissan workers in the UK are anxiously awaiting news as to where big cuts by the Japanese car manufacturer will fall.

Before the company’s half-year earnings figures, which are expected to be published tomorrow, reports out of Tokyo indicate that Nissan could call for 10,000 redundancies worldwide, double the 4,800 cuts the manufacturer had previously indicated. The news is expected to come overnight.

Nissan — Japan’s second largest automotive group, behind Toyota — is one of the UK’s largest automotive employers alongside Jaguar Land Rover and BMW, which builds Minis and Rolls-Royces in the country, and Ford, which assembles car and van engines.

The UK is Nissan’s main European base, employing 7,000 people at its sprawling manufacturing facilities in Sunderland, where it assembles nearly 500,000 vehicles a year, most notably the best-selling Qashqai model. There are another 1,000 employees working for its sales and marketing operations headquartered in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire, as well as at its engineering and research technical centre at Cranfield, Bedfordshire, and its design studio, the birthplace of the Qashqai, in Paddington, London.

A spokesman for Nissan declined to comment on the reports, saying: “We have made no announcement.”

The future of Nissan in Sunderland has been a political hot potato ever since Theresa May cut a secret deal with Nissan’s boss at the time, Carlos Ghosn, giving assurances of support for the plant during the uncertainties of Brexit. That, however, did not prevent Nissan from pulling plans to bring its X-Trail 4×4 model to the Sunderland assembly lines.

The reports out of Tokyo indicated that the focus of the job cuts may be in the Americas. Its South American plants are seen to be of low profitability while the carmaker has also been reporting weak sales in the United States.

The job cuts come against a backdrop of crisis at the auto giant. It lost its charismatic leader and saviour, Mr Ghosn, amid allegations of financial wrongdoing at the turn of the year. That destabilised its cross-shareholding alliance with Renault, the French carmaker. It has long been argued, most notably by Emmanuel Macron when he was the French economics minister, that more Nissan models should be manufactured at Renault’s under-utilised plants in France.

Nissan’s financial performance has not been good. Global sales fell last year by 4.4 per cent to 5.5 million. That included a 9 per cent fall in the US and a near-15 per cent fall in Europe, where there has been a backlash against diesel vehicles, directly impacting the Nissan Qashqai. In the first three months of the year, Nissan’s earnings fell to a nine-year low with a warning of worse to come.

How digital marketing teams can cut costs

When a marketing budget is bursting at the seams, it can be tempting to make big changes, but these are more like knee-jerk reactions than strategic decisions.

It may be that cuts are necessary for some areas, but before you make any drastic cuts to your team’s resources or consider losing staff, try not to panic. It’s likely that several smaller changes will add up to a more significant saving than you might think.

Making your current processes more efficient and giving employees the tools they need to improve productivity can have significant benefits. Here’s how digital marketing teams may be able to cut costs in simple but effective ways.

Embrace Automated Marketing

A big drainer of time in marketing is the small tasks which eat into your day and prevent you from focusing on the activities that result in profits. Luckily, there are lots of tools now which take a lot of the administration away from your day via automation. There are plenty of social media scheduling tools available, and these can manage your communications and publish content at the best time.

There are also chatbots which can respond to frequently asked customer questions. Mailchimp and Marketo enable you to create and send email campaigns to a schedule and feedback the key statistics so you can analyze its success. Automation and artificial intelligence is not a replacement for humans, but it can definitely take the strain off and give your staff more time to focus on what makes the business profitable.

Don’t Work Harder, Work Smarter

This is particularly relevant to marketing agencies, but it’s also a good lesson for any marketing team. Make your interactions with clients as meaningful as possible by ensuring both you and them are working towards the same objective and tracking the same measures of success. When you do meet to discuss progress on a specific project, you need to be on the same page and can understand exactly what matters to your client from the outset.

In terms of team communication, try to reduce the number of trivial emails by introducing instant messaging tools like Slack, which will streamline inboxes and keep projects flowing.

Find Cheaper Office Supplies

Even digital companies need office supplies, and all too often, we spend too much on the products we use. It could be because we are convinced certain brands are better than others simply because they charge more, or it could be because we have been with the same supplier for a long time and just accepted the price increases. It’s always worth taking some time to shop around and see if you can find a better deal. Visit www.cartridgepeople.com to see if you could be paying less for paper, ink, toner, computer accessories, and stationery.

Target Your Strategy

You could spend a fortune on marketing and generating sales leads, but if the people you’re attracting to your business aren’t likely to buy from you, you’re going to be wasting money. You may be targeting an audience which is too broad, so consider looking at more concentrated, smaller segments. Your audience research should be based on data and not assumptions, but make sure you’re looking at more than age range or professions.

Customer insights should also include buying habits and lifestyle information such as the TV shows they like to watch. It will enable you to create a more bespoke marketing campaign which is more likely to return new customers. Consider using online surveys and customer interviews to gather this information and use it to create customer personas. You will be able to increase your customer understanding on a deeper level.

Lose What’s Not Working

Not every marketing channel is the right fit for every business. For example, many companies spend a lot of time working on creating content for social media platforms when, in reality, this is not where their target customers will be found. You may be spending a week or two collating a monthly email newsletter which doesn’t actually result in any extra business or engagement.

Take an objective look at all your channels and see which is most profitable. That’s where you should be investing your time. You don’t necessarily need to stop using the underperforming channels altogether, but you should make sure you’re using your time and money wisely.

Use Free Marketing Tools

Digital marketing is simply bursting with new online tools and platforms designed to help both agencies and companies to improve their operation. This could be a tool for keyword research like answerthepublic.com or an email marketing platform. Some tools require a subscription fee to open up all their functionality, service support, and intuitive interfaces, but there are lots of free tools out there too.

If you are paying for subscription-based tools, do some research to see if there are any free tools which offer a similar service. Try the free tools for a while to ensure they provide all the features you need, but you may find that you can save a lot of money by using simpler versions.

Go Remote

While remote working isn’t right for every business, it can offer some great benefits to modern teams. It’s never been easier to communicate from email and video conferencing to online instant messaging. By enabling team members to work from home or premises, which are more convenient for them, you are giving your team more flexibility, which is great for morale.

It could also reduce your overheads as you won’t need to furnish, rent, heat, or cool a workspace. You can set specific weekly meetings when the whole team comes together in a virtual meeting space.

Measure Your Performance

If you are spending chunks of time on specific tasks and you have no way of tracking whether or not the time has resulted in new customers, you need to rethink. This also goes for all the cost-cutting changes you’re about to make. You need to be able to test whether or not what you’re changing is having a positive impact on your business. Marketing teams are well-used to A/B testing, so make changes gradually and only rollout those which are proven to be a success.