Empathetic Marketing Communications for Effective Lead Gen During the COVID-19 Crisis
Don’t know about you, but I have about 100 emails with “COVID-19” in the subject line. To add to the chaos, $25 hand sanitizer, price gauging household and food items… the list goes on. Whats B2B and B2C customers alike are currently experiencing is truly unprecedented in our lifetime.
From a personal standpoint, many of us are practicing social distancing by staying inside, canceling plans, and avoiding crowded spaces.
Professionally, most of us are working from home with an indefinite timeline of when we’ll be returning to our offices. If you’re working in ecommerce, you’re likely experiencing interruptions to your day-to-day operations due to supply chain issues, changes in demand, and retail closures, to name just a few of the many challenges businesses are currently facing.
We are all faced with some pretty dramatic changes in the past few weeks, and no one knows how long they will last. In a crisis situation subject to rapid change, Marketing professionals need a proactive plan to adjust and adapt how they lead their teams, speak to their customers, and move the business forward by way of pipeline generation.
Taking the right actions and finding the right message can be challenging, especially in a fast-changing situation. All companies should operate with integrity and trust even as they come under pressure from a swiftly evolving situation.
The next three to six months will bring many societal changes that trickle down to the marketing plan. Marketers must be as proactive as reasonably possible at anticipating possible and likely changes and take alternative actions. Some areas of focus include:
Event-based programs. Restrictions on large gatherings are cutting into the businesses that serve these events and the marketers that theme their campaigns around them. Develop alternative marketing ideas now for physical events planned for spring and summer. Sports events may move to streaming delivery; conference expos may move online, and so on. Don’t wait until an event is canceled to develop a plan. Learn instead from the experience of HIMSS20, a health IT conference usually held in early March: The organization canceled and promised to hold a virtual event at some point in the future; one day later, 1upHealth announced its own virtual event for the following week.
Deliver compelling content. More people will be spending time at home over the coming months. Brands can provide lighthearted and uplifting or informative and encouraging content to people looking for support. Those with a product or service well-suited for difficult times must, meanwhile, tread lightly, lest customers think they’re exploiting tragedy. Deliver compelling content. More people will be spending time at home over the coming months. Brands can provide lighthearted and uplifting or informative and encouraging content to people looking for support. This may also be a good time to relaunch direct mail campaigns and digital programs.
Listen. Now more than ever, it’s important to know what customers feel and do, and why. Set voice of the customer (VoC) programs to listen for references to COVID-19 or other shifts. Use social listening to monitor customer discussions about health concerns or information needs relevant to your brand. Ask sales and account management teams what they hear from the front lines. Monitor customer care emails, phone calls and service chats for changes in concerns or sentiment.
Balance your response. Marketers must support customers and protect customer relationships while staying honest about what the firm can and cannot deliver at this time. Be careful about taking actions that provide short-term stability (or gain) for the firm at the expense of customer trust. Invest in your customers by sending them care packages or a thoughtful, useful gift.
In summary, marketing must not rely simply on the high-level corporate scenarios, however, but must go further for their department and brand. Marketers must drill down to identify the specific challenges that customers, the brand and the marketing organization could experience in each scenario, and identify actions to take. For example, if in-person events are canceled, identify alternative ways to reach customers (i.e direct mail, virtual user groups, virtual happy hour).