 |
| Image credit: blog.squaretrade.com |
Make your brand messages relevant
You should consider changing your brand messages to be
relevant. The last thing you want to be doing now are having messages that are
insensitive and lack empathy towards the situation. For example, if you’re an
airline or from the hospitality industry, it’s probably not a good time to be
having promotions on your services. Instead, change your messages to give
assurance to your customers on what the brand is doing in these trying times.
If you’re in the digital space, it would be relatively easy
for you to tweak messages on your ad copies on banner ads and search results so
that it can be more relatable to current situation. Also consider changing your
imagery on your display ads to suit your ad copy. Avoid using images of crowds,
groups or people touching for this current period, just so that your brand is
sensitive to current situations.
Use this time to build brand equity
Unless your product or services are deemed essentials, most
people during this time are not exactly in the mood to make purchases,
especially of high valued items and services. People will tend to prioritize
what are “must haves” and what are “nice to haves”. If you have an e-commerce
store, great! But be mindful of what you are actually offering to your
customers. Do they need it now? Can they live without it? Not to say that if
you are not providing essential products and services it will mean all doom and
gloom, but instead, take the time to build brand awareness and brand equity.
Instead of focusing advertising budgets on campaigns that was meant to drive
conversions and sale numbers, which everyone know will take a hit in these
times, why not use this time to actually talk about the brand?
Take the airline example above. The brand can highlight on
ground stories of their staff and crew, how the brand is doing humanitarian
work to help people, what extra safety measures are taken during these time.
All these do not directly lead to someone into purchasing a flight ticket
straight away, but instead, it builds affinity and love for the brand with your
customers. Once the lock-down is over, people will have stronger confidence
toward your brand.
Make everything virtual
Given the situation, majority of events or transactions that
require physical intervention has been cancelled or postponed. Again, all is
not doom and gloom. While it might be weird to have meetings and presentations
online, we might be forced to recognize that this will be the new norm post
lock-down. Schools, gym classes and church services are good examples of how
something that traditionally requires you to be physically present are now
online. Yes, it’s not the same, but at the same time, it forces one to innovate
and venture into the online space.
For car brands, why not create a virtual showroom with
virtual cars and virtual sales assistant? For FMCG brands, why not create a
virtual mall, with virtual promoters (or via online chat) to talk about the
product as well as to give product demos online? Can’t smell or taste the
product before purchase? No problem, get your customers to fill out a form and
send them samples! You’re indirectly collecting leads at this point as well.
The sky’s the limit actually. It all depends on how innovative a brand can be
and what they can do during this period that would make them continue to grow
post lock-down.
Change your digital marketing strategy
If your brand has presence in the online space that uses
contextual targeting, please “negative match” anything that has got to do with
the pandemic situation if possible. There is a saying, “leave if you’re not
here to help me!”. In this case, if your brand cannot offer a solution
(like essential products or services) it would be best to avoid showing your
ads in those spaces. The counter argument is that there is no need for such an
action as it is still creating brand awareness in the minds of consumers,
right? Well, while that is true, awareness is one thing, but brand affinity and
relevance is another. You would be wasting your ad spends and impressions where
your ads become a blind spot in the online space, just because you’re not
relevant to the user.
Don’t make fun of the situation
Finally, if you absolutely need to run promotions for your brand, please avoid having headlines like “Special Covid-19 Promotion”, “Corona Sales!” or “Beat the Covid-19 Deals”. Yes, it may sound elementary, but you have no idea how I have across some cringing promo and headlines that brands are using in hopes to capitalize on the situation, but are instead damaging the reputation of the brand. Major fail here.
** This article was picked up by Advertising + Marketing (A+M) and republished with my permission here
