A question I get asked all the time is: "How do you market your business amidst this crisis without sounding too pushy or insensitive?"
As I've said before you need to do marketing right now, but especially when everything is just so crazy, how do you continue to market and sell without sounding too salesy? Look, the tactics that you're going to use haven't changed but your message has to adapt.
Hi, I'm Tom Malesic, founder and president of EZMarketing, and you're watching Ask EZ. This is where small business owners go to get real answers to their marketing questions.
Focus on HELPING
You can't just keep doing business as usual marketing. It's going to come across insensitive or tone-deaf. Instead, I want you to focus on how you can help. How you can genuinely and honestly help your customer right now in these challenging times.
Be empathetic
The key here is to be really empathetic. We want to acknowledge the difficult and tough situation they're in and recognize that -- well -- they may be completely overwhelmed and scared. People will feel when you're being authentic and recognize the difference when you're not just another pushy salesperson.
Be relevant
The key to this is to make sure that your offer is really relevant for what's going on right now.
'm going to give you two examples.
My first one is a negative example, and I got this email from SurveyMonkey a week or so ago. And the headline is: "Learn how surveys can improve business outcomes."
Now, I don't know about you, but business outcomes probably isn't the most important thing that's on my mind right now.
They could have had a headline that was about your employees might be nervous
about getting laid off or getting fired. You could use surveys to help with that.
I'm sure they could refine that message, but I'm probably more concerned about my team right now than I am about business outcomes.
A positive example that I want to show you is through Martin Insurance
Now, I don't know about you but I watch the news probably a little bit too much
right now, and every day they're showing me what the death toll is.
So what am I thinking about right now? You got it: I'm thinking about dying, and I'm thinking about my life insurance. And if you're like me you might have picked up the
phone and called your insurance agent to check on your life insurance policy, just
like I did a few weeks ago.
So Liz Martin of Martin Insurance is running ads around life insurance. It's timely and it's relevant to what's going on.
Make Special Offers
Also, don't hesitate to make special offers.
Yes, people are still buying and in fact, in some areas, people are buying more than ever before -- well -- because we're home and are thinking about things to buy. But sometimes people just need a little special offer to push them over the edge to make that buying decision.
Right now, we're even seeing businesses that normally don't do any kind of special offers, discounts, or promotions starting to use them, just like our business.
In 24 years I've never had a blanket special offer discount, but I know that right now your cash is really precious, and you need to do marketing.
So we're offering 50% off on all of our marketing services such as: SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads and that discount applies from now through the end of July. Then in August things will go back out for the regular price, and hopefully by August we're through all this.
So think about what kind of special offers can you use in your business to entice people and push them over the edge, so that your cash flow stays healthy in your business.
If you'd like more examples of creative messaging, we did a seminar with the
Chamber of Commerce recently, and we've got the recording listed here on this
website. So please, take a look at that - it gives you lots of ideas.
>>WEBINAR: How to Market Your Business to Survive the Coronavirus Crisis
And if you need any help with your marketing, please don't hesitate to give us a call. Even if you just need some free advice we're here to help. And of course, don't forget
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