Marketing 101 during the Covid-19 crisis

With Covid-19 set to spark the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, new research by the World Federation of Advertisers says 89% of large international companies have put their marketing and advertising campaigns on hold.

There are a multitude of reasons as to why maintaining your marketing presence during this period is so important, and how to most effectively do so on a reduced budget.

Failure to market yourself at all during this period may lead to the assumption that you have folded. By continuing to produce content and output – even just the absolute bare bones – you are letting your customers know you remain open for business.

It must be assumed that your competition will be continuing to market themselves throughout this period. Ultimately, after Covid-19, it is the brand that has maintained a marketing presence throughout that consumers will remember and be drawn too.

For those SMEs whose current budgets may limit them to only one method of B2C marketing during the pandemic, social is the way forward. Social media engagement has increased by 61% over normal usage since Covid-19 broke out – making it the best possible means of communicating with and marketing to your customers right now.

Influencers and Instagram creators are losing on average 33% of their revenue due to Covid-19. Coupled with the loss of revenue for influencers is the increase in numbers of those scanning Instagram during lockdown. This is the time to take advantage of influencer marketing at lower-than-usual cost to a larger-than-usual audience.

Time to reflect

From a B2B perspective, many businesses will be taking this time to take stock of current operations and plan ahead. This current period of reflection is therefore a golden opportunity to be marketing yourself, in the knowledge that many businesses may be looking to shake up the way they do things.

It is remarkably cheap and simple to continue marketing your company or product – even with no budget at all. All you need is a camera phone. The content doesn’t need to be ground-breaking – you could simply talk about what is going on in your business, the current state of the market or what you are doing with staff. Doing so will ensure all key stakeholders are kept up-to-date with developments.

When producing content for your customers, don’t be afraid that your marketing efforts during Covid-19 will appear budget and low-grade in comparison to your usual set up. Those you engage with will understand that it is a lot harder to produce slick content under the current circumstances.

Diversity is key. If you have a slightly larger business (in SME terms), take advantage of your staff and their creative offerings. Ask your staff to create their own marketing content for your channels – this will empower them to get creative and take the pressure off you. It will also offer a great insight into not only the makeup of your workforce, but also into how they are being supported and adapting through this period.

Even if your creative juices have run completely dry, there are ways in which previous marketing campaigns and assets can be rehashed and given a new lease of life. By revisiting a previous campaign to explore how it developed and worked out, who it benefited, what the outcomes were and what has happened since, you can add a new angle and perspectives to old content.

Nobody could have predicted Covid-19 and the knock-on effects for SMEs, but this period has served as a reminder to always plan ahead in business, including marketing content. Building up a bank of content in advance is one way of ensuring that you always have a supply for a rainy day.

Lewis Hackney is founder and CEO of Etch’d, a bespoke marketing agency. He is an entrepreneurship and marketing expert with a background in marketing and financial services across Europe and Asia.