Author: Brad Johnson

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The only discussion in business circles these days is, “how do we survive in this coronavirus crisis?”

Understandably, this is a confusing and unprecedented time. But the answer to the question is actually fairly straight-forward (not to be confused with easy!). Let’s use my blog as a very simple example of a coronavirus pivot.

I put a ton of work into my blog. Every week I create content that is timely, relevant, and entertaining. Here is a list of the posts I had scheduled to publish in the coming weeks:

• The best way to jump-start your speaking career
• An updated formula for content that stands out
• Top 5 reasons why marketing leaders won’t change with the times
• Social media essentials for your next event

These are really interesting and helpful posts. My audience will love them.

Someday. But not now.

This content is no longer as relevant as it once was due to the consumer psychology of the coronavirus crisis.

Let’s look at what’s happening, and what you and I need to do about it.

Upside-down psychology

You’re probably familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Some psychologists suggest we need to tweak this model, but for today, let’s use the tried-and-true Pyramid for our discussion:

Think about your own business in the context of this model. Where would you place the type of products you’re trying to sell right now? Are they at the top of the Pyramid?

But where is the psychology of our world right now? At the bottom.

Everybody I know is locked-in at home and concerned about running out of food or essential living supplies. Many have had a dramatic loss of income — millions are without employment. Many others are sick, or fearful of getting sick. I have friends who are isolated, bored, and lonely.

This is where most of the world is psychologically residing today. We’re trying to attend to our basic human needs.

Unless you’re David Geffen. Then all bets are off …

 

So if you’re still in the business of yachts and caviar, you’re good with David Geffen.

Me? I’m locked-down with illness and I’ve run out of fresh fruit and vegetables. Like most people all over the world, I’m dwelling at the bottom of the Maslow Pyramid.

The psychology of marketing now

I see a disconnect among my marketing friends right now. They seem to be in stubborn denial about our current situation. An actual quote:

“People are still buying like always. Content and social media marketing is more important than ever.”

Buying like always?

Obviously this is a quote from somebody who SELLS content and social media marketing services!  And of course, in some circumstances, that might be true. But in general, in this moment, people are trying to STAY SANE after the 150th game of Chutes and Ladders with the kids.

Is your social media and content marketing relevant right now?

This is an easy question to answer. If you’re marketing products that serve the top of the Maslow Pyramid, the answer is probably no.

If you’re marketing products for the bottom of the Pyramid, the answer is probably yes. In fact, double down on your marketing.

The content pivot

So let’s get back to my problem. What do I do with all this content I had prepared to publish on my blog?

Again, a simple answer. Becoming a better leader or event manager is important, but probably not right now. I applied the brakes and I shifted to topics relevant to the bottom of the Pyramid.

For example, here are five recent bottom-of-the-Pyramid posts that I published:

• A post about courage in the face of crisis: The coronavirus. A love letter.
• Ideas on what matters to businesses now: Seven non-obvious marketing implications of the coronavirus
• Practical advice for struggling businesses: How do sell in a coronavirus crisis?
• Providing comfort and encouragement: Five ways to battle the psychological disorientation of coronavirus
• Inspiration to move beyond shock and depression: This is your war and your story.

I’ve also been creating a series of Facebook posts called Embracing the Chaos (also on YouTube) where I try to provide sympathetic, rational advice that is relevant to this moment in time.

On one level, you might be wondering … why would I do this? I don’t sell psychological consulting services. I’m not selling courses in motivational speaking.

Right now, the long-term relevance of the brand is more important than short-term sales. Read that again, please.

Almost every business needs to send their social media and content marketing to the bottom of the Pyramid … immediately.

I made a pivot to my content because my mission is to teach, and the subject matter I need to teach about has suddenly changed in a dramatic fashion. I need to be relevant at the bottom.

The good news

Watch what the biggest brands are doing with their marketing and messaging. With breathtaking speed, all the best-managed companies have stopped in their tracks, ended the “normal” selling, and re-directed their advertising to the bottom of the Pyramid.

We’re seeing this pivot occur with almost every television and digital ad. This is especially impressive since almost all advertising production shoots have been canceled due to the coronavirus crisis. Nevertheless, the best brands are using simple stock images or words over music to tell people that they care and they’re relevant at this moment.

Why are we seeing this dramatic change? You guessed it.

The long-term relevance of the brand is more important than short-term sales.

I could have kept on publishing my blog posts as planned. That would have been the easy thing to do!

But when I adjusted the theme of my content to focus on my near-term customer needs, the traffic on my site increased by 50 percent over the normal level. How will that impact me in the long-term? Who knows. All I can do right now is be relevant and helpful. We are in uncharted territory.

I totally understand why some small businesses are desperate right now and might feel compelled to sell, sell, sell … even if it’s not relevant. Our dreams have been dashed by an invisible enemy.

But no amount of advertising, discounting, or content marketing will matter if your audience is at the bottom of the Pyramid and you’re still selling at the top. You’re irrelevant. You need to stop.

Winning in the coronavirus crisis

I have a friend who has a real estate company. Buying a house right now is a top-of-the-pyramid aspirational activity when you’re locked-in and laid-off. Sales are way down. There is no Sunday open house right now.

During this time, she has started an effort to rally people in the community to sew masks to meet hospital shortages. Her coronavirus mask group now numbers 800 people.

Now, when we get to the other side of this coronavirus crisis, nobody is going to remember her for any house she sold. But nobody will ever forget her (and her brand) for what she doing for our community right now.

A local cattle rancher who provides steaks to high-end restaurants is offering to deliver his meat to our homes. He is moving from the top of the pyramid to serving the un-met needs at the bottom of the pyramid.

There are probably hundreds of examples like this in your community, too.

One other observation: Several marketing gurus have pointed out that the explosive increase in web traffic is evidence that this is the very best time to pump up the content marketing jams on whatever product you’re selling. Again, this advice is wrong and misleading.

What are people using the Internet for right now? Bottom of the Pyramid activities. And Netflix, of course!

This crisis will pass. The world will come back. But for now, tune your marketing to the power of the Pyramid. Head to the bottom to survive.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

The post For business to win in the coronavirus crisis, head to the bottom of the pyramid appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-linkedin-conversation-ads-for-better-conversions/

Wondering how to improve your marketing results on LinkedIn? Have you heard of LinkedIn Conversation Ads? In this article, you’ll discover how to use LinkedIn Conversation Ads to automate Messaging conversations that pre-qualify your leads and prospects for specific offers. What Are LinkedIn Conversation Ads? If you’re struggling to get engagement on social media, it’s […]

The post How to Use LinkedIn Conversation Ads for Better Conversions appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

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Coronavirus has changed just about everything, but you still need to connect to your customers, prospects, partners, and team members. And now more than ever, social media may be the best way to do so. 

But you cannot just continue with your regular social media strategy, content, and cadence. What works is different. What people want is different. 

You must consider these 11 changes to your social media to continue – possibly even accelerate – your social media success during the pandemic. 

The strategy team here at Convince & Convert has been working closely with our world-class clients to develop these approaches. We shared this advice on the 11 changes to your social media strategy during Coronavirus on a live webinar. 

Access the video – including our answers to more than SEVENTY audience questions – below. Feel free to distribute widely. We want to help as many people as possible. 

On that point, we have developed four new consulting packages. They are faster than how we usually work, and more affordable. If you are interested in a no-obligation call with one of our strategists, please fill out the form below. 

The packages are:

• Social Media Strategy and Tactics Quick Wins 
• Content Marketing Quick Wins
• Digital Marketing Quick Wins (website + email + content + social)
• Virtual events/webinars production and training (we do dozens of webinars each year for large companies)

Also, if you are in higher education, you might be better served by our webinar on marketing and communications shifts among college and universities. 

11 Social Media Changes to Make in a Coronavirus World

1. Change Your Bios

If your operations have been impacted in a meaningful way, your social media bios should reflect that reality. For example, even though all Best Buy locations in the United States are now pickup only, their Twitter bio doesn’t reference that information:

Also, if you have key updates for your audiences, a good place to keep them front and center are pinned posts on Twitter and Facebook, and Highlights on Instagram.

2. Listen Harder

In times like these, everywhere you exist in digital is a potential customer service channel. You simply must expand your efforts to find, engage, and answer customers everywhere online. In fact, in our webinar, more than half of the 500 attendees said that customer communication via social media had increased since the Coronavirus outbreak. 

3. Only Post with a Purpose

This is not the time for frivolous posts that are sent because they are “due” per the social media editorial calendar. That doesn’t mean you can’t be lighthearted, or even funny. It does mean, however, that you must carefully consider WHY you are posting in social media.

For whom is this post intended? 

How does it entertain, inform, educate, or benefit that audience?

What specific behavior change or thinking change are we trying to effectuate with this post? 

I love what Cardinal Spirits is doing in this regard. Located in Bloomington, Indiana where I live, it’s a small distillery run by some very smart friends. 

Each day, they post on their Instagram exactly what they need in carryout sales to support their new mission, which is to make as much hand sanitizer as possible. 

And then, when they reach that goal for the day (they’ve made it almost every day) they immediately add a new post that says “We’ve reached out goal for today. Please go support a different local business.” Spectacular. 

 

4. Make it About People, not Logos

This was true before coronavirus, but it’s especially true right now: 

We care about and trust people more than we care about and trust companies or organizations.

Every business and every organization is comprised of exceptional PEOPLE and now is the time to showcase that. Use humans in as much of your social media as you possibly can right now. It’s the one problem I have with the Cardinal Spirits post above: I’d rather it show their team (although they do so in their IG Stories).

And even better, spotlight your customers! 

This effort from the Getty Museum is brilliant. They asked their fans to find three household items and use them to recreate famous artworks. They received thousands of submissions, many of them AWESOME! 

 

5. Expand Influencer Marketing

On a related note, influencers and influencer marketing can be more effective than ever before. In times of uncertainty we rely upon people we trust and believe in, which is why a recent study showed a 75% uptick in clicks on Instagram posts that included #ad in the first two weeks of March. 

If you have an influencer marketing program already, don’t be afraid to activate it right now. If you don’t have a program, this is a great time to set one up. (we actually do this for our clients)

6. Make Sure Your Visuals are in Context

Social distancing has changed our perceptions (and reality) about a great many things. It’s easy to rely upon your repository of brand imagery for social media, but in doing so you may unwittingly be sending a message that’s not wholly appropriate. 

I love the differences in how Schwinn Bicycles spotlights their products. These posts are just a week or so apart, but you can see how they’ve adapted the visuals for a coronavirus world. 

7. Try New Formats and Publishing Times

You know how you’ve experimented and optimized over and over to figure out what social media content formats and publishing windows work best for you? Well…..you can unfortunately cast that aside. 

While social media usage in society overall is way up during the pandemic, people’s life routines are massively altered. No commutes. No treadmill. Having to oversee your kids’ Zoom homework during the day. It’s all a tangled ball of yarn.

Consequently, we’re already seeing big shifts in WHAT works, and WHEN it works. 

Amongst our group of large clients (not a statistically valid sample, but directional), we’re seeing a huge increase in engagement rate for video posts, but an even larger increase for posts that include no photo, video, or link of any kind.

Further, for our financial services clients – as just one example – the “best” time to post before coronavirus became the world’s most unwelcome guest was 10am. Now? 10pm. In fact, we’re seeing a pretty strong pattern toward mid to late evening posts being disproportionately successful during pandemic, as people catch up on social media after dinner and maybe after the cherubs go to bed. 

Again, this is not data you should use to modify your own program. But you absolutely must dig deep right now to figure out how your own social media success equation has changed. 

8. Recalculate Your Paid Social Media Assumptions

The story is much the same with paid social media advertising. 

Data from SocialBakers shows that cost per click and CPM for social ads is falling, as more and more advertisers stop their campaigns. 

At the same time, overall click-through-rates for social ads are falling too, meaning that less expensive ads (yay) may not be working as well (boo). 

And simultaneously, we are seeing clients in particular industries have incredible success with paid social media ads, more so than in those good ole pre-pandemic days. 

In summary, just like with your organic social media, whatever math you’ve been using to figure out your ad spend and likely results is most likely borderline irrelevant right now. You’ve got to retest all of your data and projections accordingly. 

9. Elongate Your Sales Funnel

Maybe people don’t want to (or cannot) buy from you right now. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want inspiration and education. 

Try to become the Pinterest of your industry. How can you spotlight previous customers and how they use your products and services? How can you help your customers and prospects think about what and how they are going to do with you when they are allowed to do so?

For travel organizations, for example, this is a perfect opportunity to let people dream and stay motivated for the future. 

But for all categories, helping customers create “wish lists” during quarantine can be a terrific social media content approach. Our client, David Weekley Homes, is doing this with their series of home trends, by region. This one is about kitchen trends, etc. in new homes in Austin. 

10. Repurpose Your Winners

You already have winning social media content. Maybe it was from last month. Or last year. Maybe it’s a big piece of content like a report or video series. 

One of the best ways to succeed with social right now is to deconstruct, repackage, and republish those winners (assuming the content is still valid, and contextually appropriate). 

We have a whole guide on this you may want to download (no cost). It’s called:

8 Ways to Extract More Value From the Content You Already Own

11. Focus on Helping, not Selling

Several clients have asked us if they should “stop selling” right now. And while our answer varies a bit by industry, in general we’d tell you this:

Helping Beats Selling

I wrote a best-selling book about this principle. Youtility says that the best way to sell is to provide as much value as you possibly can – for free – and that as a consequence of your munificence, a percentage of the people you assist will become customers eventually. It’s never been more true. 

Overt sales campaigns may be tough sledding right now. But if you can help your prospects, they’ll remember and reward you. 

And if that’s the basis of your social media – to help – then if you sell a little along the way, you’re in great shape. 

As my friend Rory Vaden from BrandBuilders Group says: “there’s no need to be nervous if your heart is on service.”

Wrapping Up:

In some ways, it may be harder than ever to be responsible for social media in your company or organization. But it may also never be a more vital job. You can continue to communicate and inspire and education and assist your audiences. You just need to make some changes to do so. We wish you great success in that journey and hope it’s truly a short-term scenario. 

Meanwhile, do watch the webinar replay. The 70+ questions we answered from the live audience is worth your time. 

Also a reminder that we are helping people like you and organizations like yours put these new social media and digital marketing best practices into place. If we can help you, please do fill out the form below for a no-obligation strategy call. 

The post 11 Social Media Changes to Make in a Coronavirus World appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

https://econsultancy.com/marketing-in-the-coronavirus-crisis-how-are-enterprise-organisations-adapting-to-the-new-normal/

The initial survey, carried out on 16^th March, revealed how marketers felt about working remotely due to the pandemic, the potential for delays to product and service launches and digital transformation investment, the major concerns of large enterprises versus SMEs about the impact of remote working, and much more.

As we all know, events have progressed extremely rapidly since the crisis began to unfold, and what was true a fortnight ago probably doesn’t hold true any more.

A follow-up survey, carried out on 31^st March, starkly illustrates just how much has changed for businesses in two weeks, with demand for products and services, marketing campaigns, and marketing budgets severely reduced – but with some surprising bright spots in the way that companies are innovating on their products and processes.

A blow to product and service demand, marketing campaigns and marketing budgets

While it comes as little surprise to anyone that businesses are experiencing lowered demand as a result of the coronavirus crisis, it is still sobering to note how much this has escalated in the space of just two weeks.

Among global businesses with annual revenues of more than £50 million, 35% noted in the first survey that they had experienced lowered demand for products and services – but this figure has since leapt up to 64%, almost two-thirds of respondents.

As a result, marketing campaigns and budgets are being severely impacted. Just 12% of respondents to the 31^st March survey say that marketing campaigns are “going ahead as planned” – down from 42% on the 16^th March, a drop of 30 percentage points. A similarly dismal 13% say that marketing budget commitments are going ahead as planned, down from 36% two weeks ago.

New hires, product or service launches, technology and infrastructure spending and planned strategic initiatives like digital transformation have all taken similar hits, although in slightly more encouraging news, the largest percentage of respondents – 28% – say their businesses are still going ahead with planned strategic initiatives like digital transformation or restructuring, while 23% say they are still going ahead with technology or infrastructure spending.

In the wake of the previous survey, I wrote about how digital transformation investment is more crucial now than ever before, as usage of products and services shifts from the physical world to the digital one – requiring many brands to get creative about how they deliver their product to consumers, and/or rely more heavily on their digital infrastructure than they ever might have expected to.

However, investment in marketing will also play a crucial role in businesses’ ability to reach consumers in the midst of a global crisis – and their ability to come through it, which makes the slim percentage of large enterprises going ahead with planned marketing budgets all the more concerning.

How are organisations adapting to the changed environment?

How have organisations’ processes and the way they deliver to customers changed to accommodate the ‘new normal’? On 16^th March, less than three-fifths (59%) of respondents from large enterprises said they had changed employee policies around things like remote work, travel and bonuses to accommodate the situation. Now, an overwhelming 95% say they have.

A similarly high percentage – 88% – of enterprises report that they have created a dedicated team to deal with the impact and implications of COVID-19, up from 61% two weeks ago. And just over two thirds (67%) of global enterprises report that they have changed their marketing strategy in some way – through discounts, messaging, partnerships, or similar – in light of the situation, a 41 percentage point increase from the 26% who had done so a fortnight ago.

More than half of global enterprises (52%) report changing customer policies regarding things like cancellation terms, or by waiving fees; just under half (48%) also report having changed their policies for vendors, by extending timelines or terms of payment. This is up from 24% and 22%, respectively, two weeks ago.

With 95% of large organisations globally having changed their policies around things like remote work and travel, what impact has this had on employee productivity? Encouragingly, the percentage of large enterprises reporting that their productivity has been affected by travel restrictions and new processes has gone down slightly, from 60% two weeks ago to 58%, as teams settle into the new way of working. Respondents from large enterprises also reported a drop in absenteeism, from 21% two weeks ago to 13%.

The majority of respondents from large enterprises also report being at least as efficient (34%) as they were before the crisis, if not more so (22%), with 44% of respondents reporting that they are “less efficient than normal”.

It seems that these ways of working may well be maintained even after the outbreak has passed, with 73% of large enterprises saying that over the last several weeks, they have observed new ways of working in their organisation that they might use post-outbreak. Forty-four percent have also observed new processes that they might use post-outbreak.

More than three quarters (76%) also reported some kind of innovation in response to the outbreak that they might use afterwards, whether it be in marketing messaging or branding (30%), customer communications (24%) or product or service innovations (22%).

Under the circumstances, it appears that marketers are doing what they can to adapt and even innovate in response to the unfolding global crisis, and many of the results are encouraging, particularly in terms of teams changing their approach to work, maintaining efficiency, and even managing to find new ways of delivering their product, messaging or branding.

The main point of concern is just how much marketing budgets seem to have dwindled amidst the crisis – even among large, well-resourced organisations. And while it’s unsurprising that cuts are being made to spending, now more than ever companies need to focus on building their brands, putting out positive and worthwhile messages into the world, and finding ways to reach customers with the new innovations they’ve developed.

The post Marketing in the coronavirus crisis: how are enterprise organisations adapting to the “new normal”? appeared first on Econsultancy.