- SHOUT! …. even louder
Although you are battling a storm right now, your customers and suppliers are also fighting…keep in contact with them, update them with your plans and any changes in routine work and most importantly TALK to them – don’t slide off their radar!
Those who make it through the hard times together, forge closer bonds and your contacts will remember you on the other side. Keep adding value to your audience across all your brand platforms with useful, relevant and supportive content….digitally, vocally, visually … make yourself seen and heard!
- Adapt and conquer
Marketing may be required to take a different direction for a short while. Typical priorities may change to suit what your customers need from you right now. The hard sell can be put on the back burner, taking the opportunity to mould and build your brand into a focus for reliable, trustworthy industry advice and offers of assistance.
Offer factual information on how your company is adapting to the uncontrollable changes, with useful pointers relating to ongoing work and upcoming projects; manage the situation rather than let it manage you!
Customers and suppliers will take comfort from your lead and follow suit, developing a new, and temporary, way of working to benefit all concerned, allowing industry groups to emerge, stronger than ever.
- Know your strengths
You know the success behind your brand and what factors make it work. Be consistent through the crisis, offering help in the areas you know your business can fulfill. In times like these, people search for something familiar and if that something is the consistency of your work, your reliability, your exceptional performance or your coping mechanisms in a crisis – play to your strengths and share them with the people in your industry circle. Everyone will bring something different to the table and through working cohesively, each party shall come out of the other end stronger as a brand and stronger together.
- Tie-off loose ends
The sometimes frantic and changeable nature of a typical day in business, doesn’t leave much room for planning and dealing with those little jobs which always fall to the end of the ‘to do’ list.
Use your time wisely, clear your head of the clutter caused by smaller tasks, which can be completed in a short time frame. We all need to regularly experience that feeling of achievement; when the direction of your business changes to accommodate outside influences, redirect your purpose and finish those jobs, so when the smoke clears you are ready to face the challenges with a renewed clarity.
Planning is key and in times of crisis, little is more important than having a strategy, which demonstrates a clear path forward, based on multiple scenarios. Lock your plans in place with room for variation and clear targets, which are achievable, giving you focus and allowing you and your business to ‘hit the ground running’ when the world returns to normal.
- Moving forward
In the midst of a crisis, it is hard to envisage business and life in general returning to normal.
But it will…it may be a different kind of normal but keeping your brand on target and true to message, will get your business through the rough seas into the calmer waters ahead.
Support your customers, talk, share experiences, find solutions, communicate and navigate through this together – remember this is new to us all and those who demonstrate flexibility and are accommodating of clients’ needs shall retain their customers, based not only on a strong brand but on trust and integrity.
Adapt your sales message, pick up the phone, voice your concerns, listen to perceived issues and offer a solution, as that is what everyone is looking for in an uncertain time- something they can control.
- Want to chat?
We all have a part to play and we are committed to helping businesses through the coming months and beyond, to create a plan, display a clear message, make your voice heard and navigate your brand through the uncharted waters ahead.
So give us a call, send us an email or start up a conversation on social, we would love to hear from you!
