Guest Post: Do’s and Don’ts for Marketing in a Pandemic

By Peggy Bekavac Olson, President & CEO, Strategic Marketing

As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, it’s important not only to protect and run your business today, but to figure out how to emerge from this crisis even stronger. Here’s some marketing do’s and don’ts to help your company find the way forward and recover more quickly and successfully when things do improve.

DO:  Continue to Invest in Marketing
Investing in marketing and promotional activities during times of economic uncertainty can be significantly more important than at any other time. It enables you to increase merchant loyalty and market share to drive superior long-term profitability. Decades of research from Bain, McKinsey & Company and others backs this up.

Continued investment in marketing positions your company as a beacon of strength in this chaotic environment, not only with prospects, but with merchant customers, employees, investors and the payments marketplace as a whole.

Investing now, during COVID-19, can have greater benefits than spending during periods of economic expansion. With less competition and market noise, your firm is sure to stand out, commanding a greater share of attention from prospective merchants and a bigger return on investment at lower cost than during prosperous economic times.

DON’T:  Go Dark and Do Nothing
Marketing is frequently one of the first business functions to face budget cuts when times get tough. However, the long-term risk of severe cost cutting or doing nothing at all most often outweighs short-term bottom line benefits.

Going dark by eliminating marketing makes it even more challenging and costly to regain lost ground in brand awareness, lead generation, revenue and market share once things turnaround than it is to continue marketing, albeit with a more modest investment.

DO:  Reconfigure Your Marketing Mix
Mask wearing, social distancing, large gathering restrictions and travel constraints are making all kinds of in-person marketing activities tough to pull off. As a result, your marketing mix likely needs adjusting, with more effort and spend allocated to digital versus traditional offline efforts:

• Strengthen your brand image and messaging, leaving no doubt as to who you are, what you do, the value you deliver and how your different from the competition

• Ramp-up email marketing as it continues to deliver the best bang for the buck for lead generation

• Build awareness and authority, establish trust and generate leads by creating and distributing valuable, relevant content on a consistent basis via videos, podcasts, blog posts, white papers, case studies, infographics and social media posts

• Drive more traffic to your website via paid search engine marketing (SEM), organic search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) text and display ads, retargeting services and other online display advertising

• Use video conferencing, webinars and virtual events to replace in-person sales calls, product demonstrations and tradeshows

DON’T:  Get Stuck in a Rut
Marketing the same way using the same tactics over and over again and expecting different results during the pandemic can be particularly costly. Reinvent your marketing to take advantage of new opportunities and abandon those that no longer make sense or are ineffective.

Now is the time to get your creative juices flowing to come up with new and exciting ways to reach prospective clients. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The ability to learn and overcome failure to find better and more effective ways to market your business is what ultimately leads to success.

DO:  Seize Golden Opportunities
Making inroads in booming markets is a whole lot easier than trying to make something happen in verticals hunkered down in Coronavirus survival mode. Focus on market verticals experiencing significant pandemic-era growth, like e-commerce, medical, digital entertainment, home improvement, technology, logistics, e-learning and more. They can become a real boon for your business.

Concentrate more of your efforts in thriving markets where you’ve previously had success and enter a few new hot verticals as well. Swiftly put together tactical marketing plans. Then execute, execute, execute to capitalize on golden opportunities before the competition does.

DON’T:  Neglect Your Merchants
Every merchant interaction is an opportunity to nurture relationships by communicating business value. Organizations proactively communicating with their merchants on a regular basis and helping them survive are more likely to emerge from COVID-19, or for that matter any crisis, with trust and reputation intact.

Decide how often to contact merchants via telephone, email, surveys, mailers, social media and more, and then stick with the plan. Honestly addressing merchant concerns and communicating solutions and updates on any actions you’re taking is the best way to preserve, and even strengthen and grow these vital relationships.

Mine your portfolio for potential Coronavirus-fueled upselling and cross-selling opportunities. Help your merchants pivot from brick-and-mortar sales to e-commerce, m-commerce and self-service revenue channels with new hardware, software, gateway services, mobile apps, kiosks and more.

Aiding customers in times of need and truly helping them come out the other side, as a partner and not just another vendor, is a realistic means of both protecting and increasing revenue from your existing merchant base. And it improves loyalty and retention at the same time.

During a crisis, there are always things that happen beyond our control and it’s incredibly easy to get wrapped up in the doom and gloom. Heeding these do’s and don’ts to retool marketing efforts may just be the thing to help your company navigate the realities of today more successfully and emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever before.

 Peggy Bekavac Olson is President & CEO of Strategic Marketing. The company provides fractional CMO and marketing department services to the electronic payments industry. She can be reached at [email protected]. Information about Strategic Marketing can be found at smktg.com.