Crank Up Your Marketing NOW!

As the world continues to cautiously distance and isolate in the time of COVID-19, now is the time for companies to ratchet up marketing efforts, as many of your competitors are hiding under a rock, laying off valuable employees and hoping to weather the storm. Not only is this a poor time to reduce your marketing effort, it is actually the best time to spend more and make even more noise!  Call it your “noisy recovery”!  We have ourselves practiced what we preach in past slowdowns – and it works!

DOUBLE UP ON YOUR MARKETING

Think of it this way: If your marketing investment last year was 100 clams and your competitors spent a total of 900 clams, in the end you made about 10 percent of the noise in your marketplace. Today, some of those competitors have gone dark and the rest have reduced their investment. If you DOUBLE your investment, you can now make more noise than any of your competitors — perhaps more than all of them combined!

The positive tack is apparent: Get more creative in your marketing plans. With more innovation, prospect touches, awareness building, industry initiatives and partner programs, your NOISY RECOVERY strategic plan will enable you to gear up and be ready for engagement in the new economy when it returns.

THINK AHEAD

A downturn is also a time to rethink your company’s long-term strategy and prepare to move fast to get your good-time marketing programs up to speed quickly. With the right talent solidly in place (is that hint subtle enough?), the marketing department can execute a marketing plan implementing competitive strategies and business models for the next growth cycle. This era will allow companies to evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and identify unique opportunities to change the game. Plan for the economic rebound before it even begins. As the pendulum swings back to prosperity, will your company be ready?

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE LULL

Now is also the time to take advantage of the relatively quiet marketing environment. Remember when you were running 100 miles an hour just to keep up? Today, you are cruising at 50 (at best), so what do you do with your “free” time?

• Know your customers better! You thought you knew your customers — and you probably do — but take some time to get to know them better. What are their needs today? Do they anticipate having different needs tomorrow?
• Understand your competition better! Peek out from your hibernation a little. What were your competitors doing in prosperous times?  What are they doing now? Are they shrinking? Expanding? Have they launched innovative programs or services that you should emulate? Remember, Microsoft didn’t become a giant by inventing everything; they got big by observing what others had invented and developing better ways to accomplish the same thing.
• Take a dispassionate look at your previous marketing strategies! Take a look as though you didn’t have any ownership. What could have been done differently? What really worked well? What worked OK, but was barely worth the headache?
• Get out of your comfort zone! Understand what your company is capable of implementing and do the unexpected. Pursuing a new strategy could change the playing field in the next growth economy.

What’s the common thread here? Take action! Your efforts now can empower your company and reinforce the perceived value of the marketing team. If your company leaders see the marketing team taking leadership to actively prepare for the coming recovery, they will see you as more valuable to the company for the long term.

Seize the opportunities of the “noisy recovery” approach by being innovative, prepared, capable and impactful. This will enable your company to go beyond what’s expected and surge into the future powerfully — today!

What do YOU think about the “noisy recovery”? We always enjoy feedback!