Customers’ priorities have changed – has your marketing strategy? Here Jill Willis explores how Covid-19 has shifted customer behaviour and how business owners can adapt.
In my previous blog ‘COVID-19 Marketing Communications’ I outlined why, in the early days of the crisis, it was vital to keep communicating with customers and the importance of demonstrating intuition during challenging times.
Since then, lockdown measures have eased, and many businesses have been able to re-open their doors and begin the process of building back.
While the threat of a second wave leaves us all feeling a little uncertain, what we can be sure of as business owners is that we’ll need to continue to adapt marketing and keep generating sales leads if we’re to survive.
A CRITICAL TIME FOR SMEs
Some SMEs we have spoken to are nervous to invest in marketing right now. They are considering tightening their belts and riding out the storm.
We warn against this.
The health of your business will become vulnerable if you stop marketing. Do this for longer than six months and you run the risk of destroying both short- and long-term health. The sales pipeline will dry and getting the wheels turning again will demand herculean effort.
Instead we advise business owners find ways to adapt marketing. Make sure that investment is only made into communications customers are most interested in. Consider how budgets can be spent even more effectively to maintain a presence and drive sales performance.
You should be thinking about:
- What is important to your customers right now?
- What are you doing to provide the support / things people need?
- How can you be better at capturing customers attention?
Which leads me onto…
THE POWER OF POST
Digital marketing is great, and certainly delivers a cost-effective way to reach your target audience. But there are many reasons why SMEs should consider adding printed mail into their marketing toolkit right now.
Printed mail (flyer, brochure, letter etc) gives your audience a tactile, physical reminder of who you are, and there is no better way to communicate a performance offer (i.e. get your audience to do something!). That is because printed mail is responsive, meaning it motivates behaviour and encourages your reader to act.
In a recent survey 65% of people said they were more likely to give mail their full attention, versus 35% for email. And 70% said mail made them feel valued vs 30% for email.
MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
As our client campaigns show time and time again, printed mail marketing is most effective when integrated with other media. For example, a LinkedIn prospecting campaign designed to generate more B2B customers is amplified if you also invest in email marketing and printed mail to the top 50 prospects on your list.
The beauty of an integrated approach is that brain response to social media is increased if the viewer has received printed mail too. It’s a case of repetition, and the more times you can reach out to your audience, with the right message, in the right places, the more likely your business is to stay front of mind during this challenging time.
Want help growing your sales? We’ve helped a ton of businesses do just that. Schedule a call and let’s talk.
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