OPINION: Pep Talk for a Pandemic Economy

Item #1: A Pep Talk

We need to get our heads right.

I woke up this morning to discover that 10 million Americans have now filed for unemployment. Business leaders are rattled and making unthinkable decisions right now. So what can we do? The simple answer guys is, do what you can do. Let’s do just that by looking at some things you can be doing when there’s no one to sell to because as we know, in many industries, the customers are gone. The contracts are up in the air. The airplanes are on the ground. Your employees are at home and so are you.

Crawl into a bunker and give up? No, tell your story.

If you can stay in business through this…I repeat, if you can…it’s time to sit down with your team (remotely) to develop ways to tell your story. And by any means possible with what you can afford. Businesses that rush to cut entire marketing budgets to “hunker down” are placing your brands at risk of fading away. Your audiences need to be compelled, whether they do business with you now or after all of this. But you have to step into the lead and engage in the process. It’s why, for goodness sake, you can’t cut loose your creative teams, your marketing/branding people, production resources…whoever you’ve partnered with who’s creating content. Instead, use your spare biz hours and unused, unhired resources to take your company into the shop and work on it with your storytelling team or specialist. I help companies do this with my content studio. Tighten down the loose parts. Sharpen up your brand. And what will emerge is a story that’s worth being told in new ways and many marketing channels. Even in a recession, or worse. One of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous quotes, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” It’s time to sit down and get that axe sharpened up folks. Your story told well might just see you through.

In a survival situation, you start with what you know, what you can do, and use a survival kit if you have one. When the power goes out in the winter here in Seattle, we light the candles and throw our freezer items out into the snow. You do things differently in a storm. If you’re really good, you have emergency kits for things. So be really good.

Survival kit items #2-10 below are for businesses attempting to stay in business. Most can be done for free or on the cheap, but I want to stress that most of these should be guided by creative marketing pros (at least one) whom you pay for their services, and that attempting these yourself could be really counterproductive:

#2 Asses your brand strategy

A refined brand direction with all things aligned. Lots of “why” questions. This will impact ALL media across the entire company, most noticeably in things like logos, colors, messaging, website design, social media tone, etc.

#3 Review your website analytics for trends

So you can make informed biz decisions.

#4 Establish email marketing—monthly or bi-monthly

Stay “front of mind” but not too often. These email newsletters should be providing your audiences interesting content.

#5 Establish a social media strategy that involves finely tuned posts with interesting content—weekly

In many ways this kind of communication is the first impression so it likely needs sharpening and long term attention.

#6 Crowdsourced content gathered from your employees

If you still have employees, and they need something to do, put them to work filming, writing, etc with their own devices. Video content especially is gold, so turn them loose.

#7 Content Management System (CMS) evaluation and sharpening

In other words, get organized.

#8 Digital Marketing

This one is pretty complex, and does need some budget, but a strategic conversation about it needs to be had.

#9 Get creative with your core customers

There may be new ways you can serve them and pivot with the times.

#10 Give

With anything you have left, throw it at caring for people directly affected by COVID-19. In some cases, you might consider allocating large chunks of your budget to giving and then build “content marketing” campaigns around those donations.

Click here for a downloadable quick reference survival kit

I invite your responses and questions guys! Let’s get through this, and please remember to stay home if you can.