Up is down, down is up, and not a whole lot seems to make sense in our currently crazy, mixed up world. That doesn’t mean we get to take the month(s) off or hide under a rock. Here are a few thoughts on ways to respond to a vastly different sales and marketing landscape.
Don’t Social Distance
No, I’m not encouraging you to flout the safety of hunkering down, wearing PPE, and staying a minimum of 6 feet from others to help flatten the curve. I’m telling you that going silent in your marketing is not the way to come out of this crisis as strong or stronger than you went into it. You almost certainly will need to adjust your message and tone, but there way to communicate effectively right now, even if it takes you some creative thinking to find it.
Invest In Your Own Marketing
Since you need to think creatively anyway, now is a great time to re-evaluate your own marketing. That may mean adjusting to rely less on the hard sell and more on relationship building, drip marketing, and providing value to prospects at every stage of their buying cycle. Note that this may not mean adding to sales and marketing budgets; a redeployment may be more appropriate.
Identify Metrics and Measurement
It’s easy for me to tell you to invest in ongoing marketing, but that investment may not be easy if there’s less money coming in than usual.
Even if your revenue is still strong, now is a great opportunity to make your marketing investment more likely to pay off by gaining an understanding of what’s working and what’s not.
You may find it difficult to track the ROI of every marketing dollar you spend, but you should be moving toward a place where you can. Obviously, this will pay dividends even in less challenging times.
Expand Your Brand
Examine what you’re offering now to find ways you can adapt What do you do now that could be adapted to the new needs of your clients in the current climate? Don’t guess at this — take an educated guess and then ask your clients whether what you were thinking is on the mark. You’ll gain valuable insights into where do focus your marketing energy and your firm’s creativity.
(Also, it’s amazing how often fact-finding missions like this can turn into paid projects.)
None of these things are easy and none are guaranteed to work for you. All are better than the alternative. Refusing to change while the world around you undergoes revolutionary change is rarely a path to maintaining or improving on the results you’ve grown to expect.
