Advertising and marketing aid for emerging from the crisis as a winner

When times are good, many companies do not have a plan in place for bad or even very bad days. Just when most slam on the brakes, it is time to hit the accelerator, to be the first one out of the bend. Even modest investments in correctly targeted channels and well-thought-out services help to maintain business.

In today’s confusing times, many companies have stopped advertising or turned their marketing budgets all the way down, even if only temporarily. Success and awareness are guaranteed for a brand if it follows a long-term strategic marketing plan that combines campaigns and quick/dynamic advertising. Just when most slam on the brakes, it is time to hit the accelerator, to be the first one out of the bend. Here are some points in a nutshell, from Häk’s article in Delfi Ärileht:

Find the channels that people follow during quarantine, to get maximum attention at the most favourable price.

The consumption of social media has drastically increased. The stock prices of Slack (an internal communication tool of companies) and Zoom (video call and conference software) have multiplied. The viewership numbers of video lectures, trainings, home training exercises are off the charts! Become more social – every employee is a marketer of your company. The friends of Swedbank’s Head of Marketing often ask them for information about home loans or car leasing. While not involved in issuing these, they must be up to speed with things, to provide an overview and help the company increase sales. Tell your customers about your activities even in times of social isolation and quarantine. For example, create Instagram stories about working from home. Involve your customer, ask them questions to better understand how to improve your products or services. Right now, you have the time to ask and the customers have the time to answer. Selling online and digitising product catalogues: today, we can get the simplest e-store solution up and running in less than a week. If it is necessary to react quickly, to put some products on sale online, it is possible to use existing platforms that can be tailored to your brand. This is how we prepared the websites of Stowsen and Omar and Klaus, for example. If an e-store is too big of a step, it is possible to design PDF-files that can be attached to emails or uploaded to the issuu.com platform. It is important that the content is relevant and well-structured.

Take a critical look at whether any changes have occurred in the actual target group of your product or service, or in their consumption patterns.

If your customer cannot come to you, would it be possible for you to go to them? Now is the right time for customer surveys. Customers have time to answer, and their answers currently hold the most value. Classifying a target group has moved from being demographic-based to being emotion-based. Who will avoid all but the utmost of necessary expenses, who lives a day at a time, and who would be willing to spend, if it weren’t for uncertainty holding them back? Influencing the latter of these is the most important.

Creative people at agencies are able to find interesting solutions for the success of your business even during times of crisis. Ask for a consultation and confer, because a good agency can find creative solutions for transforming your business processes and services so that they work in the new situation as well. For example: video lectures and trainings – today, your trainings can be broadcast live via Facebook or Instagram. You can collect the participation fees in your bank account or issue invoices to all participants. There are several possibilities. It is possible to immediately begin providing paid or free trainings via social media and, at the same time, develop a website for the trainings, as we did with Emakaru. We have an effective model for quickly generating income by providing online trainings.

Don’t forget: if you have a problem, there is certainly a solution for it.

If today, people are unable to show up at your car dealership to have their car serviced, then create a contactless service for delivering the cars to the dealership and returning disinfected cars to the customer. Customers aren’t coming to your car wash? Visit them yourself and wash their cars.
Customers don’t want to pay for a car wash right now? Fine. Create a video training on how to make a car shiny and spotless or remove scratches. Have a courier transport the required products conveniently to the customer’s home. Couriers are overwhelmed or unable to transport the products? Taxi companies could easily transport small packages from one place to another, or grocery bags from the store to people’s homes. There are numerous opportunities. No progress takes place when standing still and aggressively waiting for the customer; rather, this will lead to regression!

I sincerely hope that both COVID and the economic downtime caused by it will come to an end. We are all in this together and must help each other. Use your agencies to be the first one out of this bend. The fact of the matter is that life will not come to a standstill. The customers are still there, people still consume and need products. There’s simply less purchasing power, and it takes more effort to reach the customer.

Read the full version of the article from Delfi Ärileht