Everyone’s got marketing advice about what to do in the current crisis, haven’t they? As though it’s easy and obvious what you should be doing in this “first-in-a-lifetime” situation we find ourselves in?!

I don’t think it’s easy and obvious at all. But if you work in marketing, now is the time to earn your keep – do you really care about your customers and want what’s right for them? There are some hard choices to make, about how you react in the current situation – and those choices could have significant impact on how your customers view you after this is all over.

NB: Context is everything – really this post is targeted at orgs that are still doing good business. For some, the current situation has seen their revenues disappear overnight, and those companies are in operational survival mode, particularly if they don’t have the necessary cash reserves to weather the storm. So this post isn’t for you – good luck of course if that is you, and hope you find innovative ways to keep going.

But if you still have reasonably strong revenue streams coming in – this is the first of two blog posts about strategies for dealing with the crisis. This one is about the guidelines I’d recommend for your external comms – how you’re talking to your customers. The second will be about internal comms, helping your employees and company through the current crisis.

Of course there’s been a great deal written about how marketing departments should change their outbound comms during this period – what’s in your emails? What are your sales reps saying? What are your offers?

It’s interesting watching how companies are responding – from watching these for the last few weeks, I feel there are three different types of company, and that each should, ideally, respond in a different way – I try to give examples below of these three types, some with good responses, some with not so good. The three categories are:

1. Orgs that can directly support the fight against the virus
2. Companies that have a product relevant to the crisis
3. Companies that don’t have a relevant product

Organisations that can directly support the effort to fight the virus

This doesn’t just mean companies that make ventilators, looking for a vaccine, or similar – it also includes organisations that are supporting the community directly: supermarkets and takeaway firms; delivery companies; hotels/travel companies that can provide free housing and logistical support, and so on.

There are so many great examples here of companies who are stepping up and doing the right thing. For some of these organisations, the pandemic has increased business (supermarkets for example), and for some it’s seriously impacted revenue (restaurants and pubs). Really the task here is to focus on the good you can do and put your business behind it. Just a few examples I’ve seen:

Deliveroo

I love what Deliveroo have done here. Essentially, they’ve hacked their app to allow you to easily donate to an effort to deliver free meals to NHS workers. They have the capability (through their food delivery network) to genuinely help out with a specific problem – NHS workers being so overrun they can’t get meals easily – and they’ve made that easy for their enormous customer base to contribute. A great quick turnaround, directly helping those on the frontline.

Chocolat Chocolat

On a smaller scale, Chocolat Chocolat (an amazing Chocolate shop in Cambridge) have raised money to donate what they can – chocolate – to workers at Addenbrookes (NHS hospital in Cambridge). Sure, it’s not sustenance, but it’s something that will bring some Easter joy to people who are working flat out to save lives.

Hotel Football

Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs are giving up hotel rooms in their hotels free of charge to NHS workers during the crisis. Again, a situation where they didn’t have to do this – yes, the rooms are empty otherwise, but the hotel will still need upkeep and servicing, and it’s an innovative way to do the right thing, using what capability you have.

These are just a few of the many many examples of great deeds done by organisations and individuals to directly or indirectly support the fight against Coronavirus, and all should be lauded for this work.

Organisations with a relevant product or service

And “relevant” is the key word here – it’s the distinction between this category and the next. Do you offer a product or service which you can genuinely say is beneficial to the general public at this time? Zoom is an obvious one – with so many people remote working, there’s a real need for video conferencing software to help colleagues work together effectively. There are lots of providers of course, but there’s no reason at all why Zoom can’t reach out and market its product in this time – they are genuinely helping people out. It’s the most obvious example, but there are a couple more I spotted that were also doing a great job.

Ikea

Ikea ran a great campaign during the pandemic – they also have content about setting up a home-schooling environment, and plenty of great practical ideas for making “WFH work for you”. The point is that this is a genuine problem people are facing – “I’m now sat at home in my tiny flat, with two others, trying to work effectively for perhaps three months or more, I’ve got no space, no proper desk, no decent chair – I need help!” I also really like the tone they use in emails and the content they’re producing – “Make WFH work for you”, “Reach home-school serenity”, “Win at staying in this weekend”, “How to create a hobby-hub for the whole family”. Such a strong example of how to help out when your customers need you.

Decathlon

In a similar vein to Ikea, Decathlon are running a great content campaign about helping people out with a second big concern – staying fit and healthy whilst locked down at home. Again, the key point here is that they sell products which are genuinely relevant to customers’ needs right now. It’s not a fudge or a sleight of hand – people are really struggling with fitness when most of their usual avenues for exercise have been closed off, and Decathlon are finding innovative ways to help.

But, what do you do if you don’t have a relevant offering? The vast majority of us, particularly if you work in B2B, don’t have something that can directly impact the crisis right now – at least not if you are completely honest with yourself. What do you do in this situation?

Organisations without a directly relevant offering

Of course this is where most mistakes have been made. We’re all being inundated with messages from companies trying to use the current crisis to generate leads. Just in the last week I’ve had messages from sales reps suggesting “In this time of crisis, should you be thinking about your marketing agency?” and “Hope your family is well. Have you thought about benchmarking your paid search?”. It’s not that there’s no link between the crisis and these offers – it’s just that it’s tenuous at best.

But, what should you do, if not crude lead gen? The strategy being taken by most decent orgs right now, is to give away your content for free. There are so many examples, but the two I wanted to highlight are Pluralsight and my own employer, Redgate.

Pluralsight

It’s a simple strategy really. I can’t directly or indirectly help the effort against Coronavirus, and, chances are, my business is suffering a little. So what can I do? You do what you can do, and that’s to help out in any way you can – help customers take this opportunity to help themselves, fill some time, try and use this home-time productively. That’s what Pluralsight are doing by offering all of their incredibly valuable content for free for a month. And hopefully, in six months time, when people look back over this period and think “Who were the companies that acted with integrity, that I’ll go back to for my training needs?” – then Pluralsight will be at the top of that list of brands.

Redgate

In a similar vein to Pluralsight, we’re taking this opportunity to support the community in the best way we can. There are other things we’re doing to directly support the COVID-19 fight, but for our customers we’re starting a new section of our site where we’ll be providing previously paid-for training content, and creating brand new training material, all just to help customers out during this period. Again, when this is all over, we want our customers to look back at Redgate and think “Yes, they did the right thing – they did what they could to help me out, even if only a small way”. We’ve also trained our sales teams to offer this material where relevant as well as a number of other activities, all with the same aim: look after customers, many of whom are going through a very tough period right now.

So the real question is – which category do you fall in to? And be honest with yourself – if you’re not one of the very few who can directly help, then you have a simple choice: is my product or service, genuinely something which could help people right now (video conferencing, new desks/chairs, gym equipment), or is this just spin? It’s the time to do the right thing by your customers and make decisions that will impact how customers perceive and judge your brand in the next 6-18 months. Will you be on their blacklists, or will you be that company that, next time customers are thinking about who they want to work with, you’re at the top of that list?