SURVIVING THE STORM
Marketing In Tough
Economic Times
By Janet Sudi
With the current information
age, advancement in tech
and innovation, millions of
companies across the world are equipped
to be able to work remotely. Medical
professionals are all hands to the pumps,
managing a tsunami of patients.
On the other hand, companies whose
services are not on the frontline, have
established or still are in the process of
establishing their new normal. No doubt,
departments have been putting their
heads together to establish their renewed
delivery model. Boards of Directors have
been overworking. New strategies are
being chartered, others deprioritized, and
trial and error is the new gear to engage in
driving the companies’ direction.
While in departments like marketing
and sales, pushing sales is continually a
mirage, the finance team is realizing the
numbers are not adding up while the HR
is dreading to draft the dreary emails
explaining the bleak future for weeks on
end. The situation is dire as your workers
are members of families which might be
suffering the competition with company
time for example through home-schooling
while working.
Your company could be in a quagmire
similar to this. How can you continue to
reach out to your customers? There are
some tips you can employ to continue
being on top of the game as opposed to
being a sitting duck.
Welfare of your employees: Genuinely
show care and concern for your employees,
they are your greatest ambassadors.
Give them flexible working hours as
they balance between office work and
homeschooling or nursing young babies.
Welfare of your community: Repurpose
your company’s CSR budget towards
the fight against the pandemic. Your
generosity will be etched in the minds of
your customers and it will come in handy
in the long-run.
Welfare of your customers: Have a
favorable price list for your products, ease
the burden of your customers accordingly.
You can revisit your leasing agreements
for example by reducing a percentage on
payments for a couple of months. You can
also reduce the pricing of your products or
add incentives like free delivery.
Consider services to meet pandemic
needs: Globally, we have seen car
manufacturers shifting their efforts to
start manufacturing ventilators and others
facemasks after governments called for
help in managing the pandemic. You
can donate such supplies or sell them at
reasonable prices.
Align your messages to current
reality: For those in influential roles
like politicians, it is not the time for
mudslinging your political rivals. Your
constituents’ need you to show leadership
on issues that matter to them most. For
example are you providing them sanitizers
or hand washing facilities? In these
uncertain times they care less about the
political landscape and they need support
to contain the pandemic.
Automate: Automate as much as possible.
If you have a general enquiries email and
you currently cannot handle the scale
of enquiries you can send automated
messages redirecting the customers to
particular actions. As you do this for your
enquiries email, mirror the same in your
social media channels like Facebook and
Twitter. Automate and redirect but do not
ignore.
Re-strategise your outreach: If you used
to employ strategies like cold-calling, you
need to re-look into genius ways of how
to go about this. Given that people are
working from home and most probably
are dealing with a lot including childcare
and health burdens, the least they want is
bombardment by a sales pitch.
As Robert H. Schuller aptly put it,
“Tough times never last, but tough people
do.” These tough people are the key
contributors to either loss or profitability
of companies. So making it or breaking it,
is your direct responsibility.
Janet is a Communications
Consultant and Lead Brand
Strategist at LCC Africa, a boutique
PR firm that offers 360 degrees
Communications Services. You
can commune with her via mail
on [email protected].
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MAL36/20 ISSUE