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Richard Jaggs

MD | Resolution Design

  • March 20, 2020
  • 5 minute read

Not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s a bit of a bug doing the rounds. The scientific community has spoken, plus Boris, and it’s all about flattening the curve, steering clear of other people, and not stockpiling industrial quantities of loo roll.

We’re all in this together and we’ll get through it, but to forecast a year of sunny skies would be disingenuous. Plain sailing it will not be.

Diligent contingency planning and sensible work from home policies are a given. What about your marketing, though? Is it time for a total lockdown, or time to pedal hard and emerge stronger on the other side?

The Resolution take

What’s clear is that there’s going to be a massive shift in behaviour…fewer friendly coffees, more digital interactions. We’ll all be experts in video conferencing, intimately acquainted with Netflix’s newest releases, and be popping online for pretty much everything, from hand sanitiser to fresh vegetables.

You may guess what I’m going to say next…

Now, more than ever, you need to ensure your digital marketing is a lean, mean, COVID-19-fighting machine.

‘He’s the MD of a creative marketing agency,’ you’re thinking. ‘Of course he’d say that.’ But the fact remains: increasing your digital marketing activity is an opportunity in the coming months. It’s a good idea to increase your marketing in times of recession, but this current crisis is something else again. The time has come to go large, increase your online presence, embrace the digital opportunity and grow customer engagement.

Here are 5 top tips from the confines of my isolation pod…

1. Make your website sing

Events, exhibitions, and meetings are going to be restricted – notable conferences such as Adobe Summit have already been shelved. As audiences everywhere turn to their screens, you need to optimise your website and ensure it works as hard as possible for you.

Aside from being a polished, super-speedy work of art, it needs to provide accurate, pithy, and up-to-date information, brought to life by clear, vibrant visuals. Most importantly of all, it needs to deliver a satisfying user experience.

2. Create and share content

A holistic content marketing strategy helps to ensure your communications with customers and prospects alike remain effective and generate leads.

There’s going to be plenty to talk about, so get busy crafting and promoting content that educates, entertains, and inspires – blogs, videos…you get the gist.

Remote working can turn the best of us a little stir crazy, so why not start some interesting conversations with new and familiar faces on social media?

3. Reach out…via email

In a pandemic that diminishes the merits of face-to-face encounters, how do we keep in contact with our customers? We go digital, of course.

Make sure you frequently touch base with existing contacts via email marketing, letting them know what’s going on. Just a few well-chosen words and images have the power to reassert your brand identity and values, reminding everyone you’re here to help – even in a crisis.

4. Take your service or product online

No surprise that supermarkets are seeing a significant spike in online grocery shopping – no-one’s keen on crowds right now.

Ocado

Why not lean into the moment? If you can, why not sell online or give people the option to book and pay via your website? Today’s brilliant tech can act as your virtual sales generator, making your life easier by automating parts of the buying process.

5. Don’t be invisible

High visibility on search engines has never mattered more. When it comes to boosting your organic listings, quality wins out nearly every time, so it’s well worth investing in a long-term content marketing strategy to keep things ticking over.

If you want to stand out, you should also fine-tune the technical elements of your site, make pages SEO-friendly, and consider Google Adwords, along with other PPC.

We’re here to help

Want some advice (or simply to hear another human voice)? We’re always happy to share our thoughts and offer guidance, just drop us a line.

Take care of yourselves, one and all.

Let’s get the

ball rolling…