Crisis Marketing During Corona
In the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak, businesses are struggling due to lack of customers , quarantine restrictions, travel bans, and so on. We have put together some tips on what to do with your marketing during these times.
Tips For Marketing During a Crisis
1. Assemble Your Management Team (if large), Assemble Your Team (if small).
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There has been a newed interest in crisis management teams and practices. While I am not against it I see this as a role that your upper management (if large enough) should have a plan for already. If you are a #remoteworker or #digitalnomad this does not apply to you other than organizing yourself during a crisis and what you can do for your business and your client´s business. You should keep up communication with your customers and informing them that you are open for business and available for them.
2. Protect Your People/Work Remotely - Everyone can!
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During the early outbreak, it's difficult to communicate the correct information because new data and events might make the present practices obsolete. Also, the scare might create room for misinformation. Therefore, it's mandatory to protect your employees. This can be done in the following ways:
Make remote work available to everyone! Use your #visiple account to connect to everyone. Hold daily standups or virtual coffee breaks to keep the team together.
Respect the fact that people have lives and need some space as they have a lot more on their plate than just âworking remotelyâ.
3. Possibilities and Communication Plans
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Communicate with your stakeholders, such as investors, suppliers, and vendors.
Assess and evaluate various possibilities that may happen due to the crisis (COVID-19 in the present scenario), and how they may impact the organization and its stakeholders. Develop holding statements or response modules for every possible situation so that you can communicate with your stakeholders on-time.
It should be empathetic, action-oriented, and should steer away from speculations and unverified updates.
4. The Right Communication Channels
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Choose the right communication channels to deliver information. Along with your official website, emphasize on social media and email newsletters to consistently communicate information but don´t over do it! Often in desperation companies blast emails with sales offers multiple times a day. Nothing will chase away customers faster. Up your social listening game and proactively respond and reach out to customers to reply to their queries, complaints, and seek feedback.
5. Marketing Contingency Plans
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The market is volatile, consumer behavior is unexpected, and the business, in general, will face sudden fluctuations. Therefore, evaluate the current market scenario and predict short and long-term market behavior and plan your marketing activities accordingly. For example, Puma has taken a serious hit in China due to COVID-19 and had to close more than 50% of its stores, but they are working under the assumption that the situation will normalize and the company will be able to reach its annual revenue goals.
Simultaneously, you may also need to identify and work with other vendors and suppliers to balance your supply chain. This would also mean the reallocation of certain budgets to other essential marketing activities in the short run.
6. Alternatives to Deliver on Your Promises
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The primary industries that are adversely impacted by the Coronavirus outbreak are events, retail, hospitality, and SMBs.
An alternative to this is to make it a virtual event. There are a plethora of applications available that can help you run the event digitally. Try to stream, try to record and distribute through YouTube and Tiktok which you can through Visiple. You can optimize this by introducing online discussion tools before and after the event to enable the participants to continue the dialogue, for example, by informing and engaging users on Twitter or LinkedIn.
There's still not enough clarity on COVID-19, and organizations need to be on their toes to ensure that employees, stakeholders, and customers are adequately informed. Even though the intensity of the crisis may lessen in the future, organizations should revisit how they address such challenges. Be part of the solution not the problem.