Ideas for Marketing During Uncertain Times

Now is your moment to get ahead, not pull back.  

Even companies that have never marketed before are having to reach out to clients with their COVID-19 strategy. If you’re developing that messaging, we advise that you keep your messages factual, simple, and easily outline how your company is responding. While this should be the top priority, COVID-19 doesn’t have to be the focus of your total brand messaging.

There’s good news on the marketing front. Consumers are still out there, they’re just in different places than they usually are. 

According to WARC, a digital opinion leader, “Time spent online shot up 20% as people confined themselves to their homes. Social networking continued to be people’s favorite activity, but there were surges in time spent mobile gaming (up 44% between January and February 2020), watching short videos (up 14%), and reading news and other information (up 14%).”

Pivoting your company’s marketing strategy is key to staying top-of-mind with consumers. Once the virus messaging is pushed out, it’s wise to focus on marketing efforts that really connect with where your clients are right now. 

A good majority of people are home and engaged with social channels and digital media more than usual right now. As an example, if your advertising strategy has been pushed out in-store and through traditional channels, it’s the perfect time to shift those efforts online and meet your customers where they are with strong digital strategies.

If you’re a brick and mortar business, are there ways to sell your product and service through a different channel? 

If you’re in the service industry, can you reallocate your employees time to a different task?

Markets are really fluid and changing quickly. Be nimble, be helpful, be brave, and be prepared for the big rush back into full-swing. 

There are a multitude of ways to continue marketing your business in times like this. Below is a quick list of marketing, advertising, and public relations tactics that are worth thinking about…

Be Nimble

• Create a vlog (video blog) instead of doing your traditional blog with text and photos. People connect better to content delivered via video. So much so, that it’s 95% more memorable than static content.
• Repurposing the vlog(s) on YouTube and other social channels will boost your organic search.
• Host a webinar. People with extra free time on their hands are looking for valuable content, meaning it’s a great time to teach or learn something new. Webinars help set you up as an industry thought-leader by contributing to the community in a valuable way.
• People are also spending more time on gaming apps. Now would be a great time to capture their attention with mobile digital ads.

Be Helpful

• Your company’s response to COVID-19 can have long-lasting repercussions to your reputation. Customers, vendors, and other business partners will remember if you were helpful or harmful. Think of some ways to help them and/or your community. Be gracious with billing, donate product, or share resources if you can.
• Be generous with ideas and ponder new strategic partnerships that are mutually beneficial. For example, if you’re a restaurant, you could offer unused food to an organization like Meals On Wheels.
• Support your business partners through reviews and testimonials. This is a great way to boost their organic searches and it makes people feel good. As a result, that “feel good” sentiment will boomerang right back.

Be Brave

Now is the perfect time to try out some new marketing tactics.

“The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”
— Peter Diamandis, Executive Chairman of the X Prize Foundation

• With the excessive amount of TV being watched right now, it’s a great time to populate the channels with ads through OTT (over-the-top) advertising. OTT ads are the pre-roll ads that run before and during streaming media services. Though newer, we’ve already seen great success with this…
• Spotify ads would also be worth considering. Like other channels, Spotify allows us to really dial in a demographic and measure engagements.
• A clever mailer campaign would be super effective since people are stuck at home. Who wouldn’t want to receive something fun in the mail?!
• Running an online contest is a great way to boost engagement and remain connected to your audience.  
• Are there some businesses that would be good co-ops? You could pool your advertising resources.
• Keep marketing, even if it’s in small ways. By doing so, you’re benefiting your brand and supporting other businesses who may be struggling during this time.

Be Prepared

The economy is going to swing back into action. If you spend this time developing a stronger marketing strategy, you can hit the ground running when business starts to boom again.

• Keep up with your content output. Get ahead on blogs or vlogs while you have some downtime. Staying ahead of the curve when business picks up.
• Do a SWOT analysis to find missed opportunities. Look at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to better understand where your brand is and where it’s headed.
• On that note, take this time to really evaluate your brand. To help guide you in this process, Asen created a short 10-question interactive quiz to help you do just that!
  
  

COVID-19 is a challenging moment in history. But life and business will go on. 

From our entire team to yours, know that we’re here to help however possible. Together, we’ll get through this. Because it’s our time to reach new heights!