During financial hardships and economic downturns, marketing budgets are often the first cut. For businesses that have the time and resources to continue their marketing efforts, now is the time to focus on you and building your core values.
We’ve reached out to our clients to see how we can support them over the next few weeks, including crafting graphics around their brand values to communicate to their customers how they are handling the crisis, updating their websites with similar graphics, and creating emails. We are volunteering our time to help our clients in need, and asking our clients to instead donate to a local charity. Within two days we surpassed our first goal, and we will continue to raise money for different charities throughout this time. We want to be creative in how we use our skills to support our community.
Examples:
https://mailchi.mp/id8agency/covid-19-update-200313
We are also taking this time to focus on our website. A lot of times we as marketing professionals don’t spend enough time working on our own marketing efforts, so we are taking advantage of this slower period to fine-tune our brand presence.
Challenge for Attendees:
Take these next few weeks and months to work on your marketing, and take your time doing it. Consider revamping your outdated website, building messaging around your core values, and using your skills to support others.
Sources:
A great article was written in the Harvard Business Review back in 2009 during The Great Recession, and explains the importance of marketing in a downturn and how businesses can effectively adjust their strategies. The main takeaways from this article are: first, the discipline around marketing strategy and research they developed during the recession—and the ability to respond nimbly to changes in demand—will continue to serve them when the economy recovers. And second, they should prepare now for a possible long-term shift in consumers’ values and attitudes. How can we help our clients succeed in these areas?
https://hbr.org/2009/04/how-to-market-in-a-downturn-2
Relevant hashtags:
#Volunteer #GraphicDesign #COVID19 #Coronavirus #SupportOneAnother #ComeTogether #CommunityStrong