Every business expert and guru is yelling "Pivot!" but what if it's making you dizzy?
Perhaps all this pivoting has left you hungry for more ways to engage with your customers.
As we slowly emerge from underneath the rock that is quarantine and stay-at-home orders, you may be groggily rubbing your eyes and wondering what to do with all that pivoting that you were told to do to keep your business afloat during the pandemic. Trying to maintain a business, keeping in contact with customers and adapting to a bigger online presence is hard work. But what you may not realize is that much of what you were doing to pivot in the name of the Rona, is exactly what you needed for your business all along - only this time it was forced upon you.
Hopefully, if you weren’t accustomed to having such a large online presence, perhaps all this pivoting has left you hungry for more ways to engage with your customers. So where do we go from here? To cook up some content marketing takeaway snacks and tips that if you haven’t already put into your daily to-do’s, there’s still time to add it in there.
Relationships: Focus on continuing to build relationships with your audience (that is THE key to effective marketing) - They are human after all. Also, be willing to accept that you may need to redefine who your audience is. Remember those buyer persona tips from our first blog? This might be a good time to revisit that.
Tools: Use the tools and resources that are available to your business such as Zoom, YouTube videos, Shopify, IG Live and Facebook Live, etc. to bring your audience closer and build your community - EVEN after we go back to our regularly scheduled program.
Data: Read your data - your audience will be on the Internet more frequently and at different times than you may have previously been used to. Take this into consideration as you post on social media and send email newsletters. If you were in the habit of posting to Facebook on Mondays at 11 A.M. before the pandemic, this may no longer be reaching your biggest audience. Even if you are opening your business for in-person customers again, the days and times you post need to continue to adapt.
Empathy: Be helpful! No one wants to be sold - ESPECIALLY now. Consumerism is going to continue to see changes - at the very least, over the next couple of quarters. Maybe think of your products or services in terms of what will be the most helpful or relevant to now, not the “now” you envisioned last year when you planned your sales goals. Also, keep in mind that most of your customers may be on furlough or recently unemployed. Offering up loyalty rewards at a higher rate of return, special discounts for those who are not working, or even innovative marketing campaigns that involve your audience-created content could really inspire communications.
Remember that all of this is temporary, but will forever change how you engage with your audience, what content you will create and the marketing messages you want to send. Use these past couple of months as a testing ground for new ways you can reach your primary target audience. Bring that to the table next year when you plan your marketing and sales goals for a hybrid of pre-pandemic and post-pandemic marketing.
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