06 Apr The Workplace Has Shifted, Have You?

The likelihood is that like our team, you’re currently working from home and have access to more communication channels than ever. For us, this includes conference portals, social media channels, Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, emails and good old fashioned phone calls (the best by far).  

Combine this with the typical distractions of working from home, which for many will include their school-age children, and the conditions become hard. 

However, with all of this considered, it presents an excellent opportunity to improve on your marketing, create new content and build meaningful connections, remembering that they are going through exactly what you are right now and have the same frustrations. 

At a time of crisis like the current COVID-19 pandemic, people are seeking value and trust from their suppliers, contracts and contacts. Use this time to build on and develop existing relationships, a friendly non-sales voice at the phone is far more powerful right now. Adding value to their current situation is crucial for the long term.  

Adapt your approach now. 

Sales teams who can adapt their approach without even thinking about it and become genuinely helpful and supportive in this time of uncertainty, are extremely valuable. 

This should be the basis of your entire marketing communications strategy – asking ‘how can we support and be more helpful to our prospects and customers during this difficult time with the knowledge and experience we have? And then communicate that to them’. 

You can’t pretend to solve all of their problems in a day. What you can do is help them right now to address the critical issues your business is already set up for. Become recognised as the person they know, like and trust in your respective field. Become their go-to when the time is right for them to buy. 

You already know that your products and services add a tremendous amount of value to your customers. However, now is the time to think outside of the box. Explore the core value you can add, the problems you can help solve today, and (if appropriate) how and why your product and service is perfectly positioned to help people and businesses get through this and thrive out the other side.  

If your product or service doesn’t directly solve a need right now this second, or you can’t deliver due to the lockdown, consider other ways your knowledge and experience can be of service. Alternatively, consider spending some time developing your marketing strategy for the second half of the year and expanding your understanding of critical components. The support of the training and the educational market has been incredible, with many companies opening free courses and learning portals. Outside of these the big platforms, including LinkedIn Learning, HubSpot and Google all offer free training courses and certification. 

Investing your time wisely now into adding value to your relationships immediately and developing your own skillset when and wherever you can, will help ensure you have everything in place to continue growing. You’ll build lasting relationships with prospects and customers who will think of you first and trust you the most when the time is right to purchase the product or service you offer. 

That, of course, maybe now or it might be in a month or even in a year. Whenever that is, the relationship is formed, you are top of mind; that’s the purpose of successful marketing.