Tag: Advertising

The COVID-19 outbreak has been the toughest challenge most organisations will have ever faced. With no clear end in sight, many are wondering how they can preserve their business in the long term.

In times of uncertainty, it’s important that you make a plan to secure not only the health of your staff and customers but also that of your brand as well. Here are BLCK BRND’s 5 tips for protecting your brand’s reputation during COVID-19.

Protect Your Employees

Protecting your brand starts with protecting your employees. Now more than ever the public is concerned with how big businesses intend to safeguard their staff. So if your business is still operational, posting regular updates on the precautions, policies or training you’ve set in place for employees can go a long way to putting your customers’ minds at ease. Aim to be calm, sincere and open with any messaging, you want to communicate your care, concern and commitment to the safety of your team and customers.
Be Prepared

By now you may have a basic communication strategy in place, but you should continue to prepare for any changes in the coming weeks and months. With the lock-down in Ireland extending by three weeks at a time, having a contingency plan for different scenarios is vital for meeting customer demand. By maintaining an updated social media policy that includes a crisis communications component, you can effectively manage any negative fallout or changes to Government policy. It’s important to keep an open dialogue with your customers to protect your relationship, it will also enable you to listen and adapt to their changing needs. Outlining channels of communication and roles of responsibilities now will help you act quickly and confidently tomorrow.

Monitor Client Concerns

In the next few uncertain weeks and months, your business will experience an influx of customer concerns and queries, this is normal. To stay on top of it, it is important that you have a team responsible for monitoring and responding to customer questions quickly and efficiently. Comments and reviews can quickly mount up if left unattended, so giving your staff guidelines on how to answer everyday questions can help. Alternatively, investing in a social media marketing partner or ChatBot supplier can ease the burden. At BLCK BRND, we can help you engage with your customers and deliver your message and products to your target audience.

Coordinate Your Service Providers

If your brand works with local vendors, delivery services or any other partners in conducting day to day business, it’s important that you check in on their changing policies. Finding out whether they plan to close or limit their service can help you adjust your policies, seek alternatives or inform your customers of any changes in advance. Being upfront with your customers on how changes might impact your usual service is the key to preventing negative fallout.

Most customers are now willing to accept closures, delays or no contact drop-offs if they know it is to protect their own safety, so don’t be afraid to be open and honest in your communications. If your business is forced to close or operate part-time, remember to update your business listings. These simple steps will help protect your reputation by offsetting negative customer reviews.

Create Helpful & Relevant Campaigns

The biggest risk to your brand reputation is insensitivity. It’s natural that your immediate advertising will have undergone changes due to the outbreak, but that doesn’t mean it has to stop entirely. A study conducted by Kantar in Marketing Week found that 92% of the 35,000 consumers surveyed thought that brands should continue to advertise. That said, there was a clear focus on what kind of advertising they wanted to see; 50% believed brands should market as they always have, while 78% expected businesses to market only ‘how they would help customers in their daily lives’ and 74% wanted ‘information on their changing policies.’

What is evident is that consumers are looking to brands for help and information. Our Social Media Team are well versed in designing, segmenting and producing effective campaigns. We can help you connect with your audience and maintain your reputation throughout COVID-19. Get in touch today to benefit from lasting customer relationships. Protect your brand’s reputation by offering help and information where you can. Put in place control measures and a strong communication plan with the help of BLCK BRND. We can protect your brand reputation so you can continue to achieve your long term goals.

Need Some Marketing Advice?

Marketing for your own business can be difficult at the best of times, and marketing during the current circumstances adds another layer of complexity. However, it’s more important than ever to keep building your presence and moving forward, and BLCK BRND is here to help. From branding, to digital marketing, email campaigns, and design, our team of creatives can help to make sure your brand is far from forgotten about during this unprecedented situation.

Get in touch today.

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The world is a very different place right now so ensuring you have reviewed your marketing plan is crucial and BLCK BRND is here to help you and your brand.

Are you considering creating a marketing plan? If so, read on…

While life post lockdown gradually becomes a reality for many businesses, a ‘return to normal’ is just not going to happen. Instead we all need to adjust to the new normal – people are still scared, social distancing is here to stay, the economy has shrunk, many customers and suppliers have been hurt financially and, for many budgets are severely restricted.

No doubt, it is going to become harder to attract business. So, sales and marketing departments need to work smarter to understand their (potential) client’s new requirements in the Covid-19 world.

The biggest issue that many companies will face is the fact that their focus has not been on creating a marketing plan for when we come out of lockdown. And so, those early days / months may be a confusing, worrying and frustrating time for any business who hasn’t properly prepared.

But, if you have not yet planned your marketing relaunch, don’t panic – there is always time to do so.

Create Communication

It is crucial to let your customers know that you are / how you are there for them post lockdown and what they can now expect from you.
Let them know that you understand their concerns.
Let them know if you are implementing new measures based on government guidelines.

Let them know if there are any differences in your service offerings (services, products, costs, lead times, approach, terms).

However, communication is a two-way street. You need to speak with your customers and understand how their requirements may have changed and what they may now require from you. The more you know, the better positioned you are to react to any changes in customer demand.

Set Goals

So, what are you short & medium-term goals?

Write a list of them and share this with the team for their input. Are they realistic? If so, draw up a staged plan regarding how you are going to reach them and think about what you can put in place to measure that you are on track to hit them.

Develop Marketing Collateral

Ask yourself:

• How are you going to communicate your message to your customers?
• What resources (time, people, budget) do you have in place to do so?

It is imperative that businesses are aware regarding which marketing routes work best for them, their clients and their budgets.

At the moment, there is certainly an issue with certain types of marketing, specifically live exhibition marketing, printed publications and print advertising. Because of this, it is not unsurprising that most businesses are focusing on digital marketing.

Live exhibition marketing will eventually bounce back in 2021 but, the short-term future does not look so bright for print.

There will always be direct mail in the marketing mix but, for many companies, the additional costs of print and distribution fees has limited its appeal. Add that to the fact that consumers are now wary about handling brochures that others may have touched, and you can see why printed collateral is no longer a go to solution.

But, digital marketing is certainly king right now and so it makes sense to ensure your website and any PPC campaigns are up to date and optimised effectively

For online retailers, they will have noticed a shift in behaviour – not surprisingly, online ordering throughout the lockdown was significantly higher than ever before and the good news for them is that this is not expected to drop significantly immediately after lockdown is over.

Over the lockdown period, consumers have embraced digital shopping and so, if you want to keep their business coming in your direction, you need to focus on client retention activities including regular communication: eMarketing, social media posts, social media advertising, etc.

Planning your digital marketing now will help you cut through the noise of the increased competition.

Consider E-Commerce

During the Coronavirus pandemic, there has been a significant shift in consumer behaviour. With the majority of people cooped up at home, buying online quickly grew to be even larger than it already was. The online retailers who experienced this sudden increase in demand often couldn’t keep up with orders leading to delays or temporary closures. 

This of course varied by industry, but what we learned is that devoting major resources to e-commerce was the best way to stay relevant, operational, and even to grow despite the unprecedented turmoil. 
Now that lockdown restrictions are lessening, this change in consumer behaviour is unlikely to dissipate. Anxiety around the coronavirus and social outings is expected to persist in the coming months. Many customers will still be hesitant to venture out into busy public spaces, and others may be advised not to due to being considered ‘at-risk’, which means e-commerce may continue to boom after brick and mortar businesses reopen. 

For this reason, e-commerce will remain to be the best course of action for B2C businesses. It is important to remember, however, that there will be increased competition with many businesses coming to realise that they can’t afford to not be online. Planning your online marketing now can help you stand out from the crowd, and BLCK BRND’s creative marketing and design can help you make an impression in noisy competitive business environments. 

Can You Handle It?

If there is a marked increase in demand for your products & services, then can you handle it. Of course, the last thing you will want to do is to turn business away so the more flexible you can be, the better.
When you are creating a marketing plan, start thinking about this best-case scenario, how would you best handle an increase? Do you need to change your terms (longer lead times perhaps)?

Let BLCK BRND Show You The Way…

Marketers have a saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will never know if you have got there.”

A good plan will help preparing for your future: establish the destination, the best route and the number of steps to get there. All to ensure your brand and business objectives may be achieved.

If you would like some support in creating a marketing plan to get you set up and on track for success, we would love to hear from you.

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