Some sectors of the country are slowly reopening, but rebounding from COVID-19 is not going to be an overnight achievement. Printer’s digest walks you through some short and long term marketing strategies for print businesses to help reach out to customers as they emerge from the crisis which is still ongoing.
Whether you’re a large global or a small independent corporation, you are trying to figure out how COVID-19 will impact your business in the weeks ahead. Now, more than ever, your marketing, PR, communications, and crisis management teams are working around the clock to ensure your staff and customers are taken care of during this global pandemic.
Amidst the uncertainty, companies are re-thinking their marketing efforts and investments putting campaigns on hold until things settle down. Now things might not settle down easily as we think as some health professionals in the health sector has said COVID-19 might last for two years; what we need to do is learn how to survive and still live amidst this horrific situation.
Below are points to keep in mind while marketing during this time of the Pandemic
Keep Your Marketing Alive as You Navigate the Short Term
While focusing on marketing campaign, communicating relevant information with customers, prospects, partners, and employees is a priority. Companies large and small are walking a fine line between capitalizing on the current global health crisis and helping people adapt with products and services that meet the needs of today’s isolated and ever-changing workforce.
COVID-19 is a global human health crisis. If you have a solution that helps people through this time, choose your words wisely or you will come across hard faces as you trying to make quick money. Knowing who you help and how you help them has become more critical than ever.
Buyer Needs Have Changed
Business is not as usual right now even as different parts of the country start reopening. In fact, over the past two months, your inbox has likely been flooded with advice for working from home, dealing with distractions, easing stress, the importance of routines, and how to manage your business during times of crisis (to name a few). Solutions that connect machines, work pieces, and systems can gain self-awareness and self-productiveness.
Your clients needs before the lockdown might have changed totally or has slight change. During the lockdown a lot took place that is enough to change the interest of a person, so you will be doing yourself a huge favour by finding out the exact need of your customer and meeting it. This period many people will lose their clients for no other reason but because their client need changes and they meet their need anymore.
A New Normal Has Set in
Some industries embraced remote-working in the 90s, while others steeped as time goes on. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the number of people who work from home had increased extremely.
Sales personnel, cut off from traditional face-to-face relationship-building tactics, are cleaning up their CRM contacts, polishing their LinkedIn profiles, engaging with prospects and influencers—and offering help. Marketing teams have cleaned up a backlog of unwritten case studies, blogs, and whitepapers. And they’re finally getting a chance to analyze, test, and revel in a playground of data.
The data gathered helps build new buyer profiles that go beyond the company information, purchase history and contact information stored in your database. It becomes the single source of truth for how needs have changed, what current challenges your contacts may be facing, and new ways you can help them with print services and solutions that reinforce why they should keep doing business with you.
Direct Mail Has a New Role
The customer communications industry has been laser-focused on data and data mining before many printers implemented a CRM. Not only do they speak the language(s), literally, but they are also well-versed in matters such as compliancy, security, data management, archiving and quality control.
From highly regulated statements, bills invoices, and critical mass mailings to highly personalized and customized direct mailing integrating direct mail with digital campaigns boost attention spans. People spend 39% more time engaging in direct mail vs. digital campaigns alone, impacting brand experience, recall and results.
Designers are looking for ways to transform their digital vision into a long-lasting and memorable physical one. Marketers are mining data to provide a hyper-personal customer experience. Print and marketing services providers are helping every one of these buyers get what they want by exposing the power of direct mail.
Listen More. Talk Less.
This is a time to act with empathy and kindness. As businesses struggle to tightly manage cash flow, think about what you can do to support your community, your industry and your employees. Care and consideration of the people you work with will be remembered long after the dust of this crisis settles.
We are in the month of May already. The sun is always shining, the weather is always warm, and it is my sincere hope that we will have trampled the arc and are prepared for business whether it’s the old normal, the new normal or somewhere in between.
