Balancing short-term value with long-term strategy

Magic Johnson once said that when you face a crisis, you know who your true friends are.

And if anyone knows how to give an assist it's Magic!

To say we’re in a crisis right now would be a bit of an understatement but like every time things go bad, you look around and find yourself surrounded by people ready to stick with you and help you out.

In marketing, we’re fond of quoting the stages we go through to attract audiences, convert them into leads, close them into customers and then delight them once they’re in the door.

But now more than ever, it is that final stage (the delight stage) that we have to focus on to help customers or businesses in search of advice and guidance so they can navigate the next few months, at least, and come out the other side.

Every business is facing their own challenges right now and there is no “one size fits all solution” (to borrow a clichè) to problems being faced, but there are a few common things most, if not all, companies are going through, particularly when it comes to their marketing budgets and plans.

Changing priorities

If you’ve stuck rigidly to your pre-corona-crisis sales and marketing strategy then you are making a big mistake. (If, on the other side you’ve tried to use the crisis as a hook to promote a sale or flog your products, then take a look at yourself).

Priorities have changed, businesses are focused on different things and the messaging you had before is likely not relevant to today - and isn’t useful to your customers.

As we explain in this blog the importance of agile marketing, you need to be able to adapt your messaging and always be adding value to customers.

On the flip side, scaling back your inbound marketing budget completely would be a huge mistake right now. It’s backed by research that companies which “go dark” during times of crisis take longer to recover than those which stay the course with comms.

Plus, if you stop putting out useful resources for your customers, you’ve stopped helping them at precisely the time they’re looking to you for help.

The balance is to be found in building a strategy that adds to long-term value but remains efficient and viable in the short term.

All the “19 ways to deal with corona” content you’re creating might help you increase your traffic in the short-term but when this is all over (and it will end eventually) your content is immediately outdated and no longer useful.

Look for specific ways you can be helpful to customers now but don’t forget to take some time and plan for what you’re going to do on the back end of this crisis.

Impact and optimisation

As we’ve said, you can’t carry on with the plans you had in place before this crisis kicked off.

Not only is the plan probably no longer relevant, but restrictions on gatherings and movements mean you physically won’t be able to do some of the things you’d planned - like events.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t happen.

Instead, reach out to your customers and prospects and hold online webinars or talks. People are working from home and crying out for the chance to talk to someone or distract themselves from what’s going on.

Holding online events is a great way of adding value, can have a big impact and make the most out of the budget you would have spent. Similarly, instead of relying on guides and text, try creating some videos to send to customers with advice or offers of help.

In the short-term you continue to provide value to customers, and in the long run people tend to remember the people who helped them out when they needed it.

Focus on what’s helpful

Rather than walk around the living room pulling your hair out at the thought that all your grand marketing plans for next quarter have gone out the window, you should take the time to reset your focus and concentrate on how you can provide tangible benefits to people.

There are still prospects out there, and there is still business to be won, but right now you have a base of actual customers who are concerned about how they’re going to get through the next few weeks and months.

And you can, and should, help them through it.

You might not be in a position to offer them a free subscription to your software or product, but if you have expertise they could use, share it with them.

Instead of focusing on “big picture” things, what are the small benefits that can make a difference right now? Free information and advice can be crucial to your customers right now if it helps them figure out how to change the way they work and adapt to the way things are for now.

How about doing some personalised videos to customers offering your help and advice?

For us, HubSpot has rolled out a range of measures to help its customers navigate some choppy waters and keep growing.

Whichever way you look at it, things are pretty challenging across the board right now for most businesses and everyone is trying to find the little things that can make a difference and help them do what they’ve done, just in a better more efficient way.

As part of our current plans we’re running a series of webinars with some of our key partners to help customers and businesses figure out how to optimise their sales and marketing processes and find the opportunities that are still out there.

Last week we held a webinar with Vidyard when we discussed how to make video a central part of your sales and marketing to make better connections with prospects and customers in today’s contactless world.

We were recently joined by Steve Vaughan from HubSpot who chatted with our Business Development Manager Charlotte Utton about how HubSpot can help customers put their business online more effectively and adapt to the new remote ways of working.

Watch the recording below: