Page 48 - Print21 Nov-Dec 2020

Business
Stay calm and
Update your database
If you work in B2B, use the phone call to update your database. Most companies have retrenched staff, so your database is now out of date. Ask your customers to share the changes at their organisation, so you have current data on file. If you have made staff changes, advise your customers so they can update their files.
Mail a branded
Covid-survival pack
Direct mail is the perfect channel for communicating with your customers right now, as they are craving real contact. Design a branded package that reflects your company’s personality or the relationship you have with the specific customer. Make it fun. The mailing can include food, alcohol, branded merchandise, a whitepaper, or a book. Most importantly make it personal – write a letter, add personal post-it-note messages to the contents.
The best results for direct mail come when you combine digital technology with the mailing. Add
a QR code or a Purl that link the recipient to a personalised landing page. Ask recipients to complete a survey or poll and offer to send them the results. Ask for their tips and publish a collective ‘Covid survival tips’ section on your website, or in your email newsletter.
use common sense
Marketing guru Malcolm Auld says common sense is the secret to marketing in the pandemic. He says whatever you do during the crisis, make sure you do not go dark.
There is nothing like a crisis or development of new technology to bring the bandwagon-jumpers out of their caves. And the
Covid crisis is no exception. Definitive Covid-marketing guides, secret sauces, and new rules of Covid-marketing
are now being offered aplenty by fake marketers and jargon monkeys.
They ply their trade using Fomo – fear of missing out – and the implied message they alone have knowledge known only to an enlightened priesthood of which they are a member.
Yes, these are unusual times
in which we live, but the purpose
of marketing has not changed; in simple terms, marketing is still defined as selling goods and services profitably. Ignore the pivot-pundits. Supplying products or services you have not supplied before is simply good business sense, it doesn’t need a jargoniser to define it.
So, to paraphrase a famous phrase, stay calm and use common sense. Remember, the rules of thumb that have always applied still apply, albeit with some adjustments in physical delivery and face-to-face selling.
consider for your business. Your marketing messages must do at least one of the following, otherwise you are wasting your money:
• Acquire new customers
• Get current customers to spend
more with you more often
• Keep customers spending with you
for as long as possible
• Talk with your customers
Given so many people are isolated from their place of work and their colleagues, being forced to endure meetings via conference call technology with minimum social contact, there are some simple things you can do to stand out.
The first is to call your customers. Pick up the phone and have a conversation. Make it a video call. People enjoy one-to-one video calls. It’s the drawn-out mass conference calls that drive them nuts. If you have a sales team, make it a priority for every sales person to call each of their customers.
You don’t have to deliver a sales pitch. Ask your customers how they are coping with the situation and share your own thoughts. You may discover opportunities for business, possibly delivering goods and services you have not supplied previously.
“If you are forgotten while times are tough, you will not be remembered when the good times return.”
Encourage the recipients to post selfies of them receiving their packs and post them on your social channels with a #hashtag you supply in the mailing. Use these posts to invite others to register
to receive their pack or ask your customer to tag a colleague who should get one.
More importantly make an offer(s) – deals linked to the current situation. Anything that could encourage commercial activity.
Just don’t go dark – stay actively in touch with your customers. The reason is simple: if you are forgotten while times are tough, you will
not be remembered when the good times return.
To connect with Auld directly go to www.themalcolmauldblog.com 21
Here are some tips and ideas to
48 Print21 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Communication: Key to keeping customers
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