7 ways to strengthen your digital marketing before the crisis fades
Marketing plans on hold? Leverage this time to set your business up for future success.
It's safe to say that the past few weeks have been a wild ride. Thanks to the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the way we live and work has changed completely, seemingly overnight.
And we’re likely in for a potentially long stretch of this new reality, with entire companies shifting to remote work, projects postponed or canceled, and even business models disrupted.
Crises have a way of shifting our focus from the everyday and urgent to the lasting and important.
Hitting pause on “business as usual” has created an opportunity to reevaluate the way we do business entirely - and for some of us, it’s also opened up the space to make the big changes we dream up.
As marketers and business owners, it’s also important to recognize that, just like compound interest, what we do now will impact our success when the crisis passes.
How we leverage our time now can help us emerge from this stronger than ever.
Following are a few ways that marketing teams and leaders can leverage these unusual times to set themselves up for post-pandemic success:
1. Document your crisis communications plan
This one is a no-brainer. We’re literally in a crisis, so it’s all top of mind (and top of inbox).
If you’re still putting out fires, start with the one you’re in. Make sure you have a way to very easily document and save everything that’s happening so you can refer to it later.
If nothing else, create a “Crisis Comms” folder and keep a copy of everything happening in there for future planning.
If you can, think about what’s worked so far and what hasn’t. Ask yourself and your team:
What have we, as a company, learned from all of this?
Who are the media trained spokespeople in our company that we’ll turn to again when something else unexpected happens?
Who will decide what to say to the public, and how to say it?
What language do we have drafted for the future as early holding statements?
How will we respond on social media to questions and comments from the public next time a crisis hits?
These will make up the pieces of your new (or updated) crisis communications plan for future disruptions, emergencies and natural disasters.
There are no guarantees, and it’s always a good policy for your company to be prepared.
2. Beef up your content marketing arsenal
Chances are, you’ve been too busy over the past few months (or years) to actually create, publish, and distribute all of the content you’ve brainstormed and queued up for future marketing campaigns.
Blog posts. PDFs and free guides. Infographics. A library of evergreen social posts.
Even gifs, slideshow videos and animations — any kind of video that can be produced remotely and doesn't require a physical set.
Now is the time to produce it. All of it.
Even if you can’t use it now, or wouldn’t want to.
When we emerge from the other side of this, you’ll be so busy getting back into a normal routine that you won’t want to even think about creating new content.
So do your future self (and your business) a favor and create it now.
3. Tighten up your brand guidelines and messaging.
Somehow, I’m always still surprised when I learn that a medium to large corporation doesn't have a comprehensive, documented set of brand guidelines.
And by comprehensive, I mean a document that includes at least the following:
Creative guidelines: approved and disapproved logo(s), logo usage instructions, color palettes, fonts, and other visual brand standards
Voice and tone guidelines: copywriting style, do’s and don'ts
Photography guidelines: style and standards for stock and original photography
Vision, mission, positioning, key messages: who we are, how + why we’re different, and how we express that publicly
Maybe you’ve survived so far with only an internal understanding of your brand, or a set of informal documents floating around on various computers.
But without all of these elements combined into a central place, you’re flying blind. Different teams or vendors become out of sync, presenting a disjointed image of your company to the public.
And consistency is key to being remembered by those who matter. That consistency must come from a single source of truth: your brand guidelines.
Though it might seem counterintuitive, “business as unusual” is the perfect time to undergo an exercise like this.
It might spur more honesty from your team. It gives you the opportunity to look at everything with fresh eyes, and with an eye toward an unknown future.
A future that your brand will stay steady throughout.
Because brands, when well-crafted, are not about reacting to the outside world. So, what about your brand makes it stand it the test of time?
And purely from a logistical point of view, consider this:
Distilling the essence of your brand into a set of key messages and creative guidelines takes time and focus.
It also requires a lot of 1-on-1 conversations — interviews that ideally can be recorded to allow for true conversation and not note-taking.
Perfect, then, for the way we’re all communicating now: via Zoom.
(Or, your video conferencing tool of choice.)
4. Finally (finally!) redesign your website.
Here’s another project that can be time- and focus-intensive: a new website. For that reason alone, it often gets the back burner.
But that mentality is a mistake.
Your website is the center of your brand’s digital ecosystem. All roads lead there.
If your website is outdated, clunky, provides a poor experience, or is just generally stuck in 2015, guess what?
That’s how its visitors will think of your business: out of touch, slow to innovate, not responsive to customers and market trends, and uncaring about its customers and their experience.
As your business works to recover from this crisis, you can’t afford to have this be the image your customers have of you.
When all of this is over, think of how much more ahead of the game you’ll be with a visually striking, brand new website that perfectly positions your business to lead the brave new, uncharted path before us.
If this is an area you’ve long neglected — and if you feel any resistance while reading this, it probably is — make your brand’s digital home a priority over these next few months.
5. Reset your social media strategy.
Are your social media platforms really driving the results you know they could? Is your content truly resonating with the people you create it for? Is your brand creating genuine connections and fostering loyalty online?
If you’re not making the impact you want to have on social media — or you’re not sure how to even know if you’re making an impact — you need a strategic reset.
It’s time to map everything you do on social media to a broader business or marketing goal — and only then define tactics and performance metrics.
Why now? Because you can no longer afford to do anything that isn’t working.
Not only could certain social media posts or activities be an inefficient use of time, you could be spending money on efforts that are actually counterproductive to your goals.
It’s time to trim the fat.
But how do you know what to cut and what to focus on?
Enter: the Social Strategy Playbook™. At the heart of this data-driven social media marketing plan is a unique framework that creates a custom, high-impact, long-term, and actionable plan for social media.
The result: Complete clarity about how to achieve your business and marketing goals with social media, today and as the digital world evolves.
Whether you hire an expert or go it alone, take stock of the way you’re using social media to win and keep customers, and be ruthless about focusing on the 20% of content, campaigns, and channels that drive 80% of your results.
6. Show up for (and listen to) your customers.
The true value of social media lies not in branding your business or marketing and promoting your offers (though it’s great for that, when done right).
The deeper power of social media comes to life in the real two-way conversations it allows you to have with the people you serve.
Never has this communication been more important. Never before has the way you show up online been so indicative of the way you show up for your customers.
This pandemic is already changing our online behaviors and increasing the time we spend online. In quarantine and social isolation, the online world is all we have.
When we can no longer access the brick-and-mortar world beyond our own four walls, the internet becomes not just a utility but a lifeline.
Just like The Salvation Army has been using Twitter for years to notify tornado victims of the location of its mobile canteens, down to the cross-street, moments following the passing of a storm, your business has a duty to share information about how to access you.
Even if you’re not providing lifesaving or sustaining goods and services, all it takes is one out-of-date social media profile or unanswered question on a post to convince someone to choose your more proactive, responsive competitor instead.
This is what it looks like to do business online in a pandemic.
So rather than going dark or quiet, use this time to go deeper with your customers and show up for them online in ways you never have before.
(Need more convincing? Read “Why now is not the time for brands to go dark on social media.”)
Not sure where to begin? Start by listening.
Research what people are saying about your brand online. Devour your reviews. Understand sentiment and trends.
Figure out what people care about so you can intuit what they need to hear.
And go straight to the source - ask them! It’s easier than ever before to interact with customers. You don’t need anything fancy - even an Instagram Story inviting feedback with questions and poll stickers can garner value feedback.
This kind of social listening will uncover things you can apply to improve not just your marketing communications but also your customer service, and products and services.
7. Revamp your internal processes + tools
There’s nothing quite like the entire world shifting to working from home at once to make it glaringly obvious what’s working and what’s not in your internal processes and resources.
Maybe you realized you’re not really set up to collaborate remotely on marketing campaigns. Your files aren’t all on shared drives, organized in such a way that everyone who needs something can easily find it.
Or you’re shifting to using more contractors after a downsize, and suddenly you need tools with special permissions and approval workflows.
Or maybe you’ve found that the social media management tool you’re paying for doesn’t really give you the data you need to understand customer perceptions and sentiment.
Maybe your team needs more support or expertise in certain areas of marketing than it did before.
We all have an unprecedented opportunity to stop doing what doesn’t work in our lives and our businesses.
We don’t even have to shake up the status quo, because it’s already been obliterated.
So don’t forget to take a fresh look at your marketing, too.
Ask yourself what you’d do if you were starting from scratch:
What (or who) would you invest in? What tools would you buy? What kind of marketing machine would you build?
None of us have a roadmap for this.
But we do know that with the right strategic and creative foundation, your business can position itself to emerge from this crisis stronger than ever.
Need a strategic partner for your digital marketing?
From creating your strategy to bringing it to life, Evoke + Engage can support your business in all of the areas discussed here.
Click here to learn more about how we can work together.
