A crisis hits, clients start calling, and the next thing you know, potential budget cuts are on the table.
Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? What your customers need to hear right now, during this coronavirus outbreak or during other periods of crisis, is that they have no reason to worry when it comes to the services and products your company provides them. Going dark is the last thing a company should be thinking about at this point. The reality is, making smart choices for active tasks in your marcom program, rather than pulling back, will help guide you through this temporary wave of business uncertainty.
Where to Make Changes
Two areas need focus right now: short term and long term communications (for a list of strategies, see this post). Each will impact the overall outcome of your client communication strategy during this time. The key is modifying your response to address the immediate concerns of customers, understanding that once the calm sets in, business should return to a semi-normal state.
Short term plans typically cover the messaging needed within the next 2-3 months. What new questions are your customers asking and how do you respond? How will you reach key accounts that address business disruptions? Do you have the sales resources mobilized to respond to customer inquiries—not just your team, but the marketing materials they need to tell the right story?
Your long term strategy should focus on maintaining that company-client relationship you had prior to the crisis. There’s a reason your customers were with you in the first place, so keep that light at the end of the tunnel. Usually implemented around the 3-6 month mark, long-term tactics should aim to resume your strategic message, once customer confidence in the situation, the industry and your business has been restored.
Identify Current Needs
By prioritizing the best way to answer today’s customer questions, you can determine what activities will make sense for the short term, using the resources at your disposal.
The main goal of any of the activities you undertake at this juncture is to instill confidence in your customers that your business is solid. So, lead generation may take a back seat for now, as marketing activities focusing on answering the questions that current clients may now have. Prospects will have the same questions, so in addition to communicating directly with customers, make sure you are updating your website, social media posts and other outreach with the same messaging and information.
Check In on Your Digital Presence
Before you start any new promotional activities, take a look at your website and other digital platforms. Does your website need some TLC? It’s going to be one of the most important assets you have right now, if it wasn’t already.
Consider updating homepage graphics that reference the most important products, services or procedures from your company. Invest in some SEO research, including keywords rankings and content gaps, then start writing blog posts or new webpages that are relevant to those important topics.
People are going to be using websites more than ever during this period since in-person events and sales meetings are unlikely to happen. Making sure your website is devoid of insensitive materials (event listings are removed, messages or graphics that run counter to current social distancing measures are replaced), you are adding new content relevant to timely needs, even updating some processes or easily identifying the best for customers to contact you will make your site even more valuable to your customers.
The same can be said for your social media channels. Update graphics and post updates about new operating procedures. Post your email address and phone numbers so people can easily contact you. Explain how you’re still there to help. States and countries are operating at different standards, so letting your customers know where you stand, even if it’s just to say people can contact you as normal, is an important update during these times.
The Next Wave of Marketing Tactics
Once customer confidence has been reestablished, it’s time to turn a bit more attention back on lead generation. Hopefully you had some solid, data-driven results to rely on to see which marketing activities produced the best lead generation were most successful. If not, don’t fret. There are still ways to determine the best path forward.
Start by taking stock of what you do have available and what you may need to ramp up quickly.
- What type of information collection method do you have? The litany of marketing tools available today range from single-function applications to integrated systems that manage several areas of your marketing activities. Understand what makes sense to implement now and what you may need to scale to later. Are your activities integrated with your CRM or more sophisticated martech tool?
- Do you have access to some more comprehensive tactics, like a marketing automation program to handle both lead generation as well as to nurture existing business contacts? Each serve a different purpose to move prospects through the sales process.Lead generation campaigns often run for a finite period, typically from 6-8 weeks, and are created around a specific event, such as a product launch, entry into a new market or education of a new technology innovation. Nurture programs run indefinitely and provide ongoing resources tailored to the interests shown by identified leads and contacts.
If you don’t have a marketing automation in place yet, our advice is: don’t be blinded by the bells and whistles of some of the larger platforms that charge hefty monthly fees. Our agency model enables clients to utilize a suite of sales and marketing automation tools at an extremely competitive price point (we’re talking hundreds of dollars a month, versus thousands.) The platform provides all the same features as ‘the big guys’, but lets companies with limited resources implement cost-effective solution, and still have budget left over to develop the content needed to make campaigns successful.
- We were a global economy before any crisis hit, so reaching people digitally should have been a part of your mix. Are you happy with that piece of your marcom program, or do you need to take advantage of some other tools for better results? Some cost-effective areas we manage for clients include modest budgets in the following:
- PPC advertising
- Retargeting
- E-letter sponsorships through industry publications
- Social media posts or adsThese four tactics, and others, are easy to start as well as easy to update. Consider including ads with messages of help or solidarity in your rotation with products or services ads during this time.
Anticipate the questions
In a situation of great uncertainty, your customers and prospects will start asking different questions, and you’ll need to be able to respond to these with the same business acumen as you had in the past. Review your company messaging, and shift some of the language to fit the current top-of-mind issues your customers are facing.
The same things that resonated with your customers during the ‘good times’ is now more important than ever. It just needs to be put in a context that matches the current business climate. So, anticipate the questions and know how you’re going to respond. Most of our clients have posted COVID-19 update pages on their websites to alleviate business concerns and provide them with easy access to the companies’ current policies and procedures as well as update customers on how to best get in touch with personnel or resolve issues they may be facing.
Communicating in a crisis doesn’t need to turn into a fire drill. If you stop to take stock of what you have at your disposal, realize the shifts your business needs to make and have a good strategy in place to allocate all available resources, you’ll not only weather the storm, but come out with customers and prospects that have a deeper sense of confidence in the business you conduct.