The Virtual CMO

Crisis Marketing: How to Rework Plans for a Recovery

April 05, 2020 Eric Dickmann Season 1 Episode 5
The Virtual CMO
Crisis Marketing: How to Rework Plans for a Recovery
Show Notes Transcript

The sky is falling! Watching the news every day makes it seem that way. There is no shortage of bad news for us individually, for our businesses, and the economy. The pandemic of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has presented government and business leaders with an unprecedented challenge of saving lives and the economy at the same time. It's not an easy task, and history will judge how successful they were, but for small and midsize companies, the realities of these changes are significant. For many, it pushes their viability to the brink, and every day becomes a fight for survival. As business owners, executives, and marketing professionals try to navigate these rough waters; there are some practical considerations of how to rework strategic business plans and deal with crisis marketing. In this episode of The Virtual CMO, host Eric Dickmann will discuss:

Marketing should lead your recovery

  • Analyze your data
  • Adjust your budget priorities
  • Focus on your top customers
  • Think differently about how you go to market
  • Be consistent in your outreach

Make use of this downtime
Don't be tone-deaf
Empathize first, sell later
Be open and honest


For a full transcript of today's episode: https://fiveechelon.com/crisis-marketing-how-to-rework-marketing-plans/

Season 1, Episode 5

speaker 0:   0:00
Hello and welcome to the Virtual CMO podcast. My name is Eric Dickmann, and I'm your host, and very glad you could join us today. We've actually been off the air, so to speak, for the past couple of weeks, and I wanted to tell you why. So we got into podcasting here at The Five Echelon Group,  a few months back, and what we really wanted to do was create a program that would be of real value to marketing professionals at small and midsize businesses. Podcasting is one of these great mediums in that it really doesn't require that much equipment. You can do it on a phone, an iPad or computer. If you've got a Mac, much of the software is already built in. There's a lot of free software available for PCs, so it just doesn't take a whole lot of overhead to put together a podcast. But if you want to do something that is professional, that sounds good and really has a high level of production value, you've got to invest a little bit in some equipment, and that's exactly what we've done. And so hopefully you will notice that our production value is up a little bit from the last time we recorded, and we'll continue to appreciate your feedback and comments, and we will continue to work to improve the production value of the podcast. So that's why we took a little bit of a break. But we're back here now, and what we really wanted to focus on is what's going on out there in the world. You know, we're recording this in early April of 2020 and you know the world has just been turned on its head because of covert 19. Um, the economy is more or less shut down. People are filing for unemployment. The stock market is on a roller coaster ride. It's just a very turbulent time. And I think this is a especially critical time for marketing professionals. And so we wanted to take some time and sort of dig deep into that a little bit not to talk about all the depressing things that are happening around marketing in the economy, but really to talk about crisis marketing and how to rework plans for a recovery. So let's get into it. All right. So marketing in a crisis is difficult when we get into a period of rebound when the economy comes roaring back, which I think most people truly believe that it will. I mean, the economy was doing well before this crisis hit, and there's no reason to believe that after things restart, it won't be a strong economy afterwards. But it's not gonna happen overnight, and it's not gonna happen for all businesses at the same time in the same way. And I think being in marketing, we really play a role in leading the recovery because people are going to want to buy. People are gonna want to restart their businesses. They're going to need to buy supplies, inventory equipment. Many businesses will have taken this time to really re evaluate their business to evaluate their business strategy, to take a look at what's working and what's not gonna work. I mean, not every business is going to survive. Many of the businesses that comeback are gonna be leaner. They're going to be looking for increased efficiencies as they try to doom or with a little bit less. And I think for those of us who are out in the marketplace trying to help sell. Trying to help drive awareness in our products and service is this is going to be an amazing time, one of the temptations in this environment, and it's perfectly understandable, right? If you are a business owner and you are looking at how to make your business survive, you're cutting expenses left and right in. Marketing is obviously gonna be one of those expenses, and it only makes sense because when you don't have buyers out there when you don't have people who are looking to buy your products and service is it really doesn't make a lot of sense to be spending money on promoting products. And so marketing is on appropriate thing to dial back in situations like this. But it also provides us a tremendous opportunity to prepare for the recovery. And that's really what I want to focus most done during this podcast. So one of the first things that I think this pause in our marketing activities allows us to do is really analyze the data, and what I mean by this is over time you have probably collected a wealth of information that you used to run your marketing campaigns. These could be mailing lists, whether it's postal mail or email. They are your list of existing customers, their lists of past customers. You probably have a lot of names. If you are doing any kind of marketing, you have a database of names. And if it's anything like most businesses, what happens is that database grows and grows over time. But rarely does it get pruned. Rarely does it get shaved back to a manageable list. And what happens is you're spending a lot of time in marketing going after people who were really no longer your target buyers. You know, I tell the story often that I've been in my current residents here in Orlando, Florida, for about 15 years now, and I still receive every week, literally almost every day. I still receive mail addressed to the previous residents. You know it's all junk mail, but it still comes addressed to the previous residents. Their deceased. They were deceased before I purchased the home. And so marketers are buying email lists or postal mail lists. I should say that are at least 15 years old, if not older. I mean, I'm sure this is something that you've all experienced and it's It's a classic case of just bad money spent on marketing strategies that aren't going to perform. But this is very true with email as well. If you are an aggressive online marketer, you have collected emails over time. Maybe it's because somebody opted into an offer or a newsletter or a campaign or promotion something that you were doing. It's very easy to let those emails stack up, and especially if you're a larger company and are doing a lot of business online, those emails can pile up very quickly. So I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, one of my favorite companies, which is Hub spot and some of the criteria that they use when they talk about what is an UN engaged contact versus an engaged contact. So generally it falls into one of two sets of rules here. The 1st 1 is that if the contact has never opened a marketing email from you and hasn't opened the last 11 emails that you sent, they're un engaged. This is not somebody who looks like they're that interested in what you're offering. If after 11 e mails, they haven't even opened a single one of them. They're not unengaged customer. This is somebody you should look to prune off your email list. The 2nd 1 was somebody who had previously opened a message but now has an open one out of the last 16 messages that you sent again. Maybe they had some initial interest. They looked at your product or service. They found out that they didn't like it or they purchased something else, and now they're no longer engaging with your brand. It's best to call those names out of your email list and focus on your real potential buyers. I think there's a real temptation, especially with email marketing, to say, Well, it's sort of a no cost thing, right? I can send, you know, 1000 e mails out or I can send 2000 emails out, and it costs me no more money to send 2000 out than it did 1000 out. You just push the send button and you go. But the problem is that we all experience getting bombarded by e mails from companies and vendors that we really have no intention of doing business with. But for one reason or another, maybe We're just too lazy to go in unsubscribe or they've made it too difficult. It doesn't do that brand any good to constantly be showing up as an annoyance in someone's in a mailbox. And so you're much better off as a brand toe pull back from somebody who's saying, Look, I'm not interested in engaging with you and you know, you can always go back to those un engaged emails you know, a year down the road or something, and maybe just send out one email and say, You know, just checking in, seeing if there's anything we can do for you. Nothing wrong with that. But to keep them on the heavy rotation of e mails and promotions that are going on is a mistake. And so now is an excellent time to start trimming back your list so that when the recovery comes, you are ready to move on. So the next thing you really have to do is really look at your budget priorities again. It makes a lot of sense when you're in a downturn, like were in right now, where people literally are not buying to not spend money on marketing. When you start to get ready to market your products and service is again. I think it's extremely important that you analyze what's working and what's not working. Too often, we fall into the trap of just doing what's easy or what we've done in the past. Say, for example, that you do trade shows and that you know, once twice, three times a year you have events that typically fall in the same month on the calendar, and you start to plan your marketing schedule around these big stakeholder events that happen at a regular intervals. Maybe your business. It's seasonal. And so you do a lot of holiday promotions or what not Your marketing bit can become very routine because you tend just to do the same things that you did last year. And so I would take this opportunity to really evaluate your marketing effectiveness. To really look at the R A y of your campaigns and say, Hey, what's working and what's not working? Take online advertising. If you're running Facebook ads or you're doing AdWords, it's so easy to set up a budget, launch those campaign and then just let them go to town and in the background there burning through your budget. But are you really taking the time to see what's working and what's not? You know, there's so many good tools out there that allow you to do a B testing to see what works to do a lot of, ah, you know, minor tweaks to the ad layout, to the copy to the pictures and what not to see what grabs the most attention. Are you really taking the time to use those features to see what works to maximize the r A. Y of your efforts? It's just too easy to have too many things going on in a marketing shop to really pay attention. And then what happens is the money just burns away without really an understanding of what's effective or not. So I would take this time to really look at what your budget priorities were prior to this pandemic. Look at what the priority should be as you enter into a recovery mode and adjust your budget accordingly. It's not a time to say we're gonna pull back. We're not gonna do any marketing because our business is hurting. You need to get your business running, and marketing is the engine for growth. So there is, ah, appropriate investment that should be made in marketing. But what you don't want to do is just go back and do the old things because they worked for you in the past. This is going to be a new environment. It's gonna have new challenges. And you are gonna have to be very, especially attuned. Toe how customers air receiving your messages Because trust me, everybody is going to be out there trying to make some money. Everybody is gonna be out there trying to rekindle sales. You know, businesses are lifelines right now, and people want to see money start coming in. So having the right message is having the right offers. Having the right promotions and really understanding the needs of your customers is going to be important. The next thing I really want to focus on is your top customers. So in this environment, you know, your cop top customers want to know that that you missed them, that you're paying attention to them, that you're thinking about them. And I think this is such a critical time for businesses to really show empathy to really show an understanding of the situation. That's that the business climate that exists out there, that people are having to work their way through and just being a helpful resource, make sure that you're contacting your customer. Make sure that you're using your social media tools. Make sure you're reaching out and asking how you can help and make sure that you're acknowledging the fact that you understand that they're having problems and that you know you're having issues, too, and that somehow everybody's going to get through this if we all work together. But I think it's very important to really focus on those top customers because chances are many of them are hurting in this kind of an environment. And I think the more that you can do to build those relationships, to strengthen those ties, to show that you're really a company that cares The Maur You're going to be able to pick up those relationships in the recovery and start to build new ones and start to build new sales with those customers as well. I think you also have to think very differently about how you market your products and service is one thing that's very easy to do in an environment like this is when business is down, so many companies are going to be looking for revenue. And so I think the temptation is going to be to push very aggressively towards getting new sales. And I think the problem is, is that many businesses. They're going to be in the same position where they simply don't have a lot of money to spend right out of the gate. You know, it's not going to be like 0 to 60 here. You know, we're going to have to slowly ramp up. You know, sales are gonna have to start, and then everybody's gonna have to get a little piece of the pie to slowly start to get this engine moving again. It's not gonna be that there's gonna be a flood of business in most sectors. I'm sure that there will be some exceptions to that, but I think as a business you have to think about your market. You have to think about what their needs are, and you have to think about how those kind of businesses or consumers are going to be engaging in the buying cycles again. You know what is really gonna be driving them to start purchasing these products as well. The further you are up the spectrum of nice tohave versus need to have, I think the harder it's going to be because it's going to be more challenging for people and organizations to spend on the niceties on the luxuries. They're going to need to focus on the things that really drive their own business. So for some, it's going to be inventory for some. It's going to be, um, you know, rehiring people and getting the right sales tools. But I think that many are going to be focused on efficiency. They're gonna be focused on the kinds of products and service is the drive efficiency. Because if they've had to let people go, if they've had to downsize, if they've had to cut back, it's gonna be very difficult for them just to go back to where they were. They're gonna ramp up slowly, and they're gonna be looking for ways to do more with less. And so I think as you market, you have to think differently about your market. You have to put yourself in your customer shoes and think about what is it going to take for them to start buying again, and how can you offer products and service is that are going to be of value to them in this kind of an environment? I think it's tremendously important that you're consistent in your outreach during this time, you know, with many companies literally closing their doors, people going home toe work or being laid off for furloughed, I think is a company as a brand. It's very important that you consistently put messages out there, not sales messages. You don't want a harp on people toe by something when they have no ability to do that. But what you want to do is you want to be a thoughtful leader. You want to say here some helpful resource is Do you want some things about small business loans? Here's something that our local government is doing here is something ah ah grant that a company is offering if you apply for it here, put out useful, helpful information, and this is especially true if you serve a very targeted industry or Nietzsche vertical. You can understand your market, understand those unique needs in that marketplace and then provide information that your customers will find a value that makes you a trusted source of information that makes you a trusted partner. And when business is ready to start buying again when business is ready to start undertaking big purchasing cycles and invest in new technologies and invest in new products, they will think of you because they will say, this is a company that was with me during the down time. This was somebody who was with me while I was struggling, and I think you really need to have that consistency of messaging out there. Be sensitive to what's going on, but be consistent. Don't go dark on your customers. I think this is a huge opportunity as well for marketing departments to take a look at their infrastructure. So I see one of two things happening in many companies. In one case, you have companies who have invested in a lot of tools. They have a tool for social media. They have a tool for Sierra Um, they have a tool for their marketing automation. They have ah, tool for their content management, et cetera, et cetera. And what happens often is many of these tools don't integrate their separate. You have people within the office who are specialists in one tool, but not really that familiar with another. And this puts you in a kind of a risky position, because if that person leaves the company or they move on in the company, then you literally have tools within your group that not everybody understands how to use and maximize its very easy to get tool creep because there are so many marketing tools out there, and so many of them are really good at very specific tasks that it's easy just to keep adding one after another after another. So I think this is a tremendous opportunity for you to take a look at your stack. What is it that you're really doing? What do you want? People spending time and effort on and then start to get rid of things that don't make sense? I know that many tools over time tend to expand what they do, and so often you can consolidate. You can say what we have three tools to do these three different things, but now one of these tools does all three of those things. It didn't at first, but now it does. It's an opportunity to get rid of some things, which helps you cut cost. And it also helps facilitate the learning curve for your staff so that more people can be involved in a fewer number of tools. I think the second environment that I often see especially at smaller companies, is they have very few tools. What they tend to do is they tend to use the free tools that are on the market or they have one main tool, and, ah, and they branch off that with some of the freebies. And the problem is, is that they don't have the automation necessary to really streamline a lot of processes. They're doing things that take too long. Consider AH, company that may do a lot of work on social media. You know, if you have a tool like a buffer, for example, where you can post to multiple platforms at the same time, that is it much, much easier than if somebody was going in and doing a post on instagram and doing a post on linked in and doing a post on Facebook, etcetera. It's a much more time consuming process, or if you're managing her ads through a single tool versus having to go into each platform and do add separately, Thes airways. That automation can really help. So I think during this downtime, it's really good to look at some of these tools and what they might do, especially look at a marketing automation platform. I have said before I'm a huge fan of Hub Spot, but there's L Acqua. There's Marquette. Oh, there's part dot There are a lot of great marketing automation tools and C R M platforms as well, and I think these air critical for any shop. Many of these have free versions are very low cost versions for smaller businesses, and you know they go up in price based on some of the functionality. But it is absolutely worth your time. An effort to take a look at these marketing automation platforms If you don't have one in house today, this is a tremendous opportunity to be able to really clean house and make sure that your tool set is right for the coming recovery. You know, I was watching an ad the other day on TV and it was for a naughty and it was ah group of women who had spent the day skiing. And after skiing they came down to their car and they took off their snow gear. And I think they popped open their bottles of water and drove to the village and had their operate ski. And it was very nice. But the problem was, is that ski slopes air closed. Right now, people aren't spending new money on cars, and everybody is a little bit stressed out. They're not happy at sitting in a chair drinking, operate, ski drink. It was a rather tone deaf message, and I understand, you know, media buys air done well ahead of time. These commercials are usually put together months in advance. It's not out. He's fault, per se, for having this commercial ready. It's poor timing, but I'll contrast that toe What I saw from Cadillac Cadillac also ramen ad. But in this ad, they said, Look, we know that this is an uncertain time. We're going to be offering our customers free on star with some WiFi capabilities. If you need help with your monthly payments, please give us a call. We're here to help you and oh, by the way, if you are in fact, looking for a new car. You can look and make your purchase online, and we'll have a dealer deliver it to you. I thought that that was perfect because what it was saying is we understand what's going on. You're thinking about payments right now you're thinking about how are you gonna make your payment if you've been laid off? Refer load. You're not thinking about an operate ski drink. The Cadillac message just hit home, and I'm sure the ad was put together very quickly, using some stock footage and what not? But it did the trick, and I think you have to be so sensitive to that in this kind of an environment so that you don't appear tone deaf. I bumped into my mailman the other day and he was saying, There's hardly any mail to deliver. And he said that what's happened is all the junk mail has stopped, he said. People just aren't investing in it because you know all the coupons that restaurant send out and flyers and everything. Most of these businesses are closed, and so these things have just stopped. It's the reality of the situation were in, and I'm sure that you have seen other businesses advertise products and service, and you're like, Who is buying this right now? This just doesn't make any sense. And again, I know not every come company is nimble enough to be able to change their marketing, produce a new ad. They purchased this ad time ahead of time, and they're sort of stuck with it. I understand that that happens, but were weeks into this now and by this point, company should be more aware, and I have seen many companies change the tone of their ads. But make sure as you're doing your outreach as you're being consistent. As you're talking to your customers, you're not tone dead. If you're pushing them to do something that nobody in their right mind would be ready to do with this point, you will come across is being tone deaf. You will come across is not really understanding the magnitude of the situation or how it's affecting your customers. And I think this gets to the next point, which is really about empathy by being empathetic. You were showing on understanding of your customers needs of your customer situations. I do believe that there is going to be an opportunity to sell. But I think empathy first cell later and what I've seen a number of companies doing already, and I think this is a great strategy is what they're doing is that they're either extending products. So it maybe if it's a subscription based product, they're tacking on a few extra months to the subscription. Um, some are saying, Okay, here, we're going to give this stuff away free. We're gonna make it free for the next four months, and then, you know, we're gonna have this special pricing because they realize that people aren't gonna be willing to spend a lot of money even a couple months from now. They're trying to do the best with the situation that they've been given, and that's offers something of value. At the same time, they're communicating that we understand that you don't have a lot of money to spend on this right now, but we think we've got something that could be of value to you. And I think that's empathy with a sales message because, you know, we all know the reality. If you start to use a product or service even if it's on an extended free trial. If you really come to like it and you think it's valuable, well, then you're gonna look at how you can purchase that, how you could make that part of your tool set. And I think these companies understand that. But it's a very soft pedaled approach to sort of saying, Hey, we want to help you Help Is the number one driver here? We're trying to do things to help you, but yes, you know we're in business to make money to, and at some point where are we are gonna have to charge for some of this, But let's worry about that later. Let's help first, and then we can worry about the sale. I think that's a great strategy. And I think the final point that I really want to drive home is just be open and honest about your own situation. You know, we're all struggling in our own ways. They're very few businesses out there that aren't even a company like Amazon who has seen a tremendous uptick in business. You know, they're struggling because they don't have in a warehouse workers and enough drivers. You go to your food store. Their shelves are bare because they don't have enough product. Even companies who were actually selling a lot are struggling because they're faced with a different kind of problem. Everything is out of whack right now, and I think being open and honest is to your benefit. If people understand that you get it, and if you can help them understand that, hey, you're being impacted as well. I think that goes a long way towards building goodwill with your customer base. You know, put some faces to it. Talk about the people that are working hard. They're coming into the office that are working from home. Don't be afraid to, you know, show the reality of the situation. Somebody in their genes with their dog next to them or what not. I think it's that reality that people can relate to. It's the realism. It shows that you are being true and authentic. I think a brand that tries to put too much polish on it and try to say everything is fine. We're not going through any problems. They're not being genuine because it's hard to imagine a business anywhere, really in the world. It isn't somehow affected by what's going on right now. So my advice to you is be open and honest. So there you have it. Those air, my tips for crisis marketing and how to rework your marketing plans for the recovery. I really hope that you found this valuable. And this is the kind of thing that you can do in your own companies to help rebuild your marketing strategy for the coming recovery. You know, I'm a huge believer in marketing. I think that we are the growth engine for businesses. And I'm so glad that you were here for us today on the virtual CMO podcast. Can't wait to talk to you again on the next episode. Have a great week, everyone.