Our third of four 30-Minute Marketing Cardio sessions on May 6th focused on staying nimble and developing strategies to propel your organization forward.
Digital Marketing Strategist Nathan Steinmetz offered these suggestions.
Take advantage of digital advertising’s flexibility. You can literally start and stop your digital campaigns with a couple of clicks. Even if you’re not advertising online now, you might begin again once your company resumes normal operations. Use any downtime to create digital ads so you'll be ready to place online media buys at a moment’s notice. Having your digital ads ready to launch may also allow you to take advantage of lower-priced media as soon as it becomes available.
Use digital advertising to promote specific locations or times. Do you have stores open in some areas but not others? Run ads targeted only at audiences in those markets you’re currently serving. And if you’re open again but just for a few days a week or during limited times, schedule your ads to run only during your business hours.
Use digital advertising to test different messages. Your message to a younger audience might focus on the fact that you’re back in business, while your older, more cautious audience may be more interested in what you’re doing to keep customers safe. Digital advertising provides many targeting methods that let you reach specific audiences based on demographics and psychographics.
Digital advertising provides instant feedback. One of the most powerful features of digital advertising is that it allows you to see how your ads are performing in real time. You can then adjust your content, your target audience and your ad spend based on those results.
Digital advertising has never had a more engaged audience. With so many people forced to stay at home, the level of online traffic is higher than ever. And since many businesses are pulling back on their advertising, there’s more inventory available. That means you may be able to pick up some deals on media.
If you want to rocket past your competition once the economic climate improves, consider digital advertising now.
Steve Evert is our VP of Business Development. He shared these thoughts on how you might look ahead.
As you consider how to generate new sales from existing customers, it might be tempting to lower your prices or reduce your margins. You may think you need to be cheaper now, so your customers don’t defect to your competitors.
Historically, though, that approach hasn’t been as successful as you might think. If the need or desire for what you sell has been reduced, lowering your prices is unlikely to drive enough volume to offset your lower margins. In fact, there is significant academic and applied evidence that shows customers are far less motivated by a price decrease than they are deterred by a price increase.
In the long run, the healthier alternative is strengthening relationships.
Encourage your sales and marketing teams to use this time to secure ties to your customers. Those relationships are all that insulate you from losing current or potential buyers who are presented with lower-priced alternatives.
By adjusting your focus, your organization will likely have to change its expectations of sales results in the immediate and short term.
So, are there activities your sales and marketing teams would normally be engaged in now that don’t make sense anymore? Are some of their tactics no longer a priority?
If so, what can those teams be doing instead to strengthen relationships? A few ideas:
• Enroll customers in your online services and/or email lists.
• Start reaching out to individual customers for one-on-one conversations about their pains and needs. Provide insight on how you’ve solved similar problems.
• Grow customer interest with offers that begin at a future date.
• Take a deeper dive into your client base to find unknown connecting points between clients.
For help with any aspect of your digital marketing, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him directly at 419/724-7311.
