Today’s topic is a timely topic and it’s one that sadly continues to come up all day, every day over the last week. And that is the coronavirus.
So I wanted to just give you some insights in terms of what I’m doing, not just with my team and the whole hand washing stuff, but rather how you can continue to keep momentum during a crisis. How can you continue to pivot your business on an as needed basis? And what do you do? What should you be doing and all that good stuff?
This isn’t going to be talking about where I envision the coronavirus going or anything like that, because I don’t really think anyone seems to know. Like I can’t remember the last time that Walt Disney World in company, for example, closed down their theme parks. It’s just insane for me to even think about it, it just doesn’t seem real.
Now, there’s a couple different things that you can look at doing with your business. I’m not saying any of this should be capitalizing the coronavirus, but at the same token, if you have some type of play or some type of tie in, and I’ll give you some examples in a second, I would recommend that you do continue to talk about how you could potentially help.
So one example are chiropractors. There’s a lot of data, it’s all scientific data that visiting a chiropractor can help with your immune system. It keeps everything kind of in balance, so to speak. You don’t have to come out there and say come visit us, because we’re going to help keep you safe from the coronavirus. But you could talk about some more health benefits to chiropractic. Same thing with IV therapy, all these people are starting to talk about vitamin C and things like that.
So why not mention that and kind of play that out a little bit more? Well, we’ve got the corona virus cure and come in and get your vitamin C drips. You’re at least continuing to talk about things during a crisis. What I’m finding that a lot of business owners are doing is they’re actually retreating. This is not when you need to be retreating at all.
What we’re doing internally is building strategies around the following:
- How we can make sure that our clients are well taken care of
- How we can make sure our team is well taken care of.
- Update people on what we’re doing.
- What we’re anticipating from a marketing standpoint.
Rather than just kind of trying to avoid the topic, you want to make sure that you’re getting out there front and center and actually putting a stance and letting people know what you’re up to and what you’re doing.
You need to make sure that whatever you’re putting out there, you’re taking a proactive stance, you’re reassuring them that you’re taking the precautionary measures, and it’s going to vary based on the business that you’re in.
So If you’re in the event business, this is a disaster for you for conferences and things like that. But if you’re in the restaurant industry, what I’m encouraging you to do is why not look at pivoting a little bit. Rather than saying, the sky is falling, rather than talking about the corona virus and how you’re going to capitalize on it, why not look at offering meal service, why not capitalize on it in some capacity that encourages you to kind of change the way that you’re thinking about things a little bit that it’s one of those where a lot of businesses are they’re saying, well, we’re doomed.
I go back to the event space. What I want you to do is to look at how you can potentially pivot your marketing a little bit. How can you potentially pivot your product or service?
So again, if you’re a restaurant, nobody wants to come and be around other people. Why not focus on meal delivery, like heavy heavy meal delivery? If you’re in that event space, why not look at doing some virtual events, doing some other training and things like that to allow people to continue to sharpen their axe.
Now is not the time to kind of go in a cove again and hide. I want you to get creative. I need you to get creative with what you’re doing. Now on the flip side, a lot of people are asking “what do I do with my marketing budgets?” This is the best time to increase your budgets.
I’m already seeing a lot of businesses looking to scale back even if they’re flushed with cash, they’re going into panic mode. If you want to surpass your competitors, scale up your marketing, start putting branding ads out there, design some videos even from the comfort of your own home, get those videos promoted on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, start to put out more content when your competitors are kind of going into that hole and hibernating. Whether it’s the next two weeks, the next two months, the next two years. This in my opinion is going to be the golden opportunity where it’s going to put your business in a completely different league than the rest.
If you’re a smaller business, in terms of local smaller business compared to some of the other companies that are local to you, this is the time when you can surpass them without having to invest 10X. You’re doing half a million dollars a year and the closest competitor is doing $2 million a year, for example, they’re going to be pausing or scaling back. I want you to grab that market share. Don’t necessarily leverage the whole Coronavirus name. Leverage what it’s doing to the economy, leverage what it’s doing to your competition. Get out there and establish your stance.
But again, remember that you might have to play with your business model a little bit. So we’re taking our stance, we’re talking about what we’re doing. All of our team largely already works remotely, so that’s already taken care of. But we’re going to start preparing some more training courses and things like that and focusing on E learning. So we’re pivoting as well.
Get out there. Take a stance but do not not scale back your marketing. take some action today.
