2020 will go down as the weirdest and most disruptive year for business in recent history. Organizational leaders and business owners are managing massive changes and looking at scenarios that seem to alter on a weekly basis. While many are looking to completely revamp their marketing strategy, mostly everyone is looking to modify their marketing plan and budget for the rest of the year. We’ve put together some practical ideas for getting your marketing going in the coming months. 

 1. Take Care of Your Customers

Communicating with your customers is more important than ever. Take a proactive approach and let them know how your organization is dealing with reopening, how you are adapting to keep your employees and customers safe, and how you can continue to provide them with phenomenal products and services. Be available to help them solve their problems in any way that you can and communicate that over and over again. Avoid clichés and overused statements and focus on being sincere and authentic.

Even with a thinning budget, figure out creative ways to provide extra value and strengthen relationships. If you take a true customer-centered approach you will strengthen the value of your brand with your clients.

2. Don’t Bury Your Head in the Sand

If your organization has suffered severe disruption, it is not the time to be paralyzed with fear over your marketing. Even now, we’re working with clients on new marketing strategies and tactics to help them take advantage of the current situation while also identifying future opportunities. For many of our clients, that means developing webinars, creating social media web videos, updating neglected websites, designing digital advertisements, and implementing automated marketing and email marketing campaigns.

3. Develop the Right Messaging

We are not at all advocating for changing your corporate identity or engaging in sleazy marketing tactics, we are suggesting it is time (for most organizations) to develop clear messaging about your differentiating factor and unique value. We’ve implemented this principle ourselves by developing a new website that more accurately communicates the problems we can solve for certain clients and beginning inbound marketing practices and digital advertising for the first time in our company’s history. It’s important that your marketing quickly and concisely tells people who you are, what you do, and why they should care.

4. Take Advantage of Free Marketing Platforms

If your organization has not taken a massive hit during this pandemic, you should be investing even more money in your marketing. Research has shown that this tactic yields success during economic downturns. But if you need to tighten your marketing budget there may be free marketing tools that you can utilize while you get your organization back on its feet.

• Canva is a free graphic design solution that you can use to design social media graphics, posters, and more.
• Unsplash and Pexels are great resources for free professional photographs you can use on social media and your website.
• Vidyard allows you to set up a free account to create videos for your marketing.