The Best Tactics to Market and Thrive During a Crisis

The world has changed whether we like it or not, and many small business owners have been thrown into a world of transformation.

During this time, it’s important to plan out your short and long-term goals and make changes to your marketing where appropriate. In trying times, a significant part of running our businesses is listening to and observing our customers in order to find out what they really need.

As someone who owns a digital marketing agency and who is a partner in other ventures including retail, I have seen the unique challenges businesses such as ours are facing during this time. 

In this article, I will cover specific tactics you can use to successfully market your business through these difficult times. But first, we have to ask the big question:

Should you stop marketing and advertising during a crisis? 

In time, the market will recover. If you’re seeing a decline now, search traffic will pick back up. When it does, will you be there when your customers are looking?

It’s easy to be reactive during stressful times when there are a lot of unknowns. The problem with reactive marketing, though, is that you’re typically jumping from tactic to tactic without a plan, as well as making decisions based on fear. 

Instead of letting that fear control you, it’s time to plan out what the business realities are for your business in 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, and a year out from now. Ask yourself, “What will my market look like in a year?” and “What do I need to do to get through this time”? This is how you can develop and align your short and long-term goals. With this in mind, you can develop an action plan based on strategies that will help you meet your goals. 

While relying on your past strategies, it’s likely that you will also need to consider tactics you haven’t implemented before and even consider marketing more during this difficult time. 

Some business owners will be faced with cash flow crunches that require more extreme measures. But this is not the time to give up. Rather, it’s the time to slow down and focus on what matters most to you. 

Start by clarifying your message

If you’re a traditional brick-and-mortar retail store, it’s possible that you have had to pivot your operations to stay open during this time.

If this is you, it’s important that you share this information with your clients along with the fact that you’re open. 

The content you share during difficult times such as these will be remembered, so it’s important to stay away from self-serving content and instead practice empathy. 

Tactics every business needs right now

Before you can spread the word, it’s important to know where you need to spread the word. Depending on your business type, these channels may vary.

Start by making a list of these channels and sharing the list with your team. They can then use this to update and promote your brand message.

You can start with the most obvious ways people find your business such as:

• Your website
• Google My Business
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn

But if you want a more comprehensive approach, make sure to look at your analytics data, too. You can look at your referral data and sort that by conversions to figure out if there is anywhere else you should update your customers. 

1. Let your clients know if you’re open for business

There is so much uncertainty right now, and many states, counties, and cities have different orders ranging from nonessential business shutdowns to social distancing.

If you’re not telling your clients you’re open for business, they probably don’t even know. Practically, this means that even if they find your website, they may not contact you because they don’t know if you’re open. 

Some potential clients might also check if you’re open on social media. Have you posted an update? Are you active? If not, they might take that as a sign that you’re closed.

If you are temporarily closed, you need to let people know that, along with an expectation on when they can expect to hear back from you if they do contact you.

2. Add a website banner or pop up

I have hated these things for years. But now there is a great need for them. Potential customers might land on any page of your website when they find you. A homepage message just isn’t good enough.

Here, using a simple and lightweight bar or pop up with an empathetic message is a great solution.

Check out this example from Vanderginst Law below:

You can customize these popups with videos instead if you’d like. 

If you implement pop-ups, I recommend that you only show it once to each website visitor. If it pops up on every page after a visitor has already seen it, they could get annoyed.

If you don’t have a website but you do have a Google My Business listing, you can create a free website there and put your message on the homepage.

3. Update your contact forms

If you use contact forms or a contact page on your website, I recommend updating this with expectations for your customers. For example, if you have limited staff, tell people and inform them of your expected response times.

Setting the proper expectations will help prevent frustration and keep customers.

4. Update your Google My Business hours and posts

I have to give credit to Google for implementing changes to Google My Business since they’re likely facing the same staffing issues as other companies.

First, they have rolled out a Covid-19 update option under Posts, which allows people searching for your business to see your current status.

To implement this, simply login to your Google My Business account.

After you’ve selected your business click Posts > COVID-19 update button, as shown below.

Make sure to tell clients everything they need to know. If you have new information like offering delivery when you were traditionally a sit-down restaurant, you can add a different Google Post to make this information readily available.

Second, there is also the option to update your listing as temporarily closed (shown below).

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