If you’re looking for unprecedented times, then you’ve come to the wrong blog post.
With over 192,000,000 results available when you Google ‘unprecedented times’, it seems like the internet is completely saturated with lazy crisis communication.
If you work in marketing and you’re desperately trying to figure out what to say to your audience now that many of the planned campaigns, events, adverts and emails have been cancelled, postponed or have needed to undergo major edits to keep them relevant to the communication-altering impact of Covid-19, then we’ve got five practical tips to help you get back on track with your messaging.
Audit What You’ve Got
No matter what language you talk to your customers in, tone, style and voice are essential to a successful campaign rollout. If it’s possible, audit your planned content with your marketing team, and reassess if your content is still appropriate to share or promote given the challenges your audience may be facing.
Is there a more sensitive or ‘crisis-friendly’ way that you can word an upcoming campaign?
In countries or cities with on-going lockdowns, this could look like encouraging people to shop responsibly online instead. Reminding your customers of recent changes to health and safety guidelines is another way to enhance and add to your existing messaging; caring for your customers is ALWAYS cool.
It’s a good time to show up with compassion, and as a business, gauging the mood of your audience is a content-adjustment worth making if you want to connect empathetically with your customers' needs.
Be Helpful
During times of uncertainty, we all want as much reassurance and knowledge about our situation as we can get. Helpful content can present itself in many ways, but here are a few ideas to get your brain juice flowing.
Ecommerce: ensure your customers are kept up-to-date with crisis-related product/service delivery delays.
Education: share homeschooling advice and resources for parents who are adjusting children to learning remotely.
Healthcare: share tips and tricks for staying safe and healthy for people worried about getting sick. Include easy to make lifestyle changes that’ll provide a healthful boost.
Entertainment: provide an alternative to Covid-19 news updates in the form of light comic relief, a funny insight or a recommendation for something to watch/read if you’re feeling stressed.
Be Accurate
Check your numbers, dates, times and any other instructions and prompts you may need to share. A pandemic is stressful enough without the typos!
Now’s the time to diligently check your content and ensure that any new store opening-times are correctly listed. If you work in the hospitality sector, update your website or business details to include any changes to laws or rules and restrictions (maximum party number, face mask requirement, and if pre-booking is needed).
Review Your View
Remember that creating good content is part of a great marketing strategy. Calendared content is only as good as its relevance and importance to your audience, so get used to reviewing planned content more frequently, and get comfortable with tweaking messaging in accordance with the fast-paced changes that crises often bring with them.
With no idea when we’ll be back to ‘normal’, this is a chance for all of us to cut through the unprecedented sameness of poor crisis marketing and practice conscious community building with our customers.
Let’s get back to serving our audiences what they really need!
Struggling to communicate with your customer? Need some help wording your marketing? Visit e-arabization.com to see how we help companies word their offerings, or drop us a message.