April 13, 2020

This paid piece is sponsored by Click Rain.

By Natalie Eisenberg, CEO

Never did we imagine that one of the most commonly used phrases in American advertising would become “uncertain times.” Frankly, it really doesn’t have a ring to it. But with all that COVID-19 has brought upon us, we as businesspeople and marketers may indeed find ourselves feeling uncertain. While these feelings are only natural, it is perhaps more important than ever to grit through. Here are three steps you can take to keep moving your marketing forward.

1. Sweep through everything. ​You need to first assess everything you ​had​ planned. It’s important to do a full-scale audit to determine what stays and what goes. Keep in mind that something that seemed perfectly on point a month ago may be completely faux pas today — a handshaking photo, a call to action to “visit our location today,” regular hours listings, etc. Just go through everything so nothing slips through the cracks. If you don’t have great documentation of all your planned marketing efforts — paid media campaigns, social, email and web content, etc. — now would be a good time to write it out.

2. Decide what you should stop, change and start doing.​ Once you have the current state of your marketing efforts reviewed and documented, you can begin to make decisions about what happens next. Carefully review each item and ask:

• Should we stop this effort?​ If it’s no longer relevant, appropriate or needed, table it. This doesn’t mean it is tabled forever, just for now. Since you have things well documented now, it will still be on the list to return to when the time is right, if that is decided.
• Should we change this effort? ​Sometimes your active plans don’t require a complete pause, but they could be made better or more current if adjustments were made. This might include reviewing media strategies and audience targeting, updating the content calendar or modifying the message.
• Now that you know what will happen with all your ​active or planned ​efforts, set aside ample time to talk through what new opportunities should be considered.

What should we start doing now?

​Chances are, with the significance of COVID-19’s change on societal norms, habits and lifestyles, your products and services now fit in a little differently to their lives. Have you shifted operations? You’ll want to communicate that. Is there a chance to speak to your audience from the heart or send more real-time and/or transparent updates? Start doing that now. This is a place for your brand to shine in a new way, showing your adaptability and willingness to meet your audience where they are.

3. Reassess regularly.​ Perhaps the thing that remains most uncertain about COVID-19 is how long it will continue to require us to live like this — to socially and physically distance from one other. We just don’t know. So our business plans and marketing plans remain fluid too as we ride out the virus’ impact. With that fluidity, find a cadence that makes sense for you to reassess your plans. Run back through the stop, change, start exercise. It could be weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on how much you have going on. But using the documentation you now have in place, do it regularly.

Consumers are consuming much differently today than just weeks ago, but they are still consuming. It’s our job as marketers to adjust to their needs and our challenge as teams to do it in an organized, orderly manner that will serve us well not only today but also as we move beyond COVID-19.