Publisher: SullivanPerkins | Series: SPotlight
Traveling to where your customers are, looking them in the eye, handing them a piece of marketing collateral, making that personal connection that communicates the benefits of working with you – all these things have been curtailed by the pandemic and may be for a time to come. So, how do your best sales people make the best case for your company today?
One way is to maximize the effectiveness of your virtual presence and all the ways people learn about you when you are not there in person with them. That means websites, webinars, Zoom/Microsoft Teams/Skype meetings, email campaigns, social media blasts, PowerPoint presentations and more. It’s more critical than ever to improve these aspects of your marketing and fine-tune them with a message that’s right for this moment.
To get started, here are 5 quick things to consider improving.
Key Statistics
- Business travel declined by as much as 90% after the start of the pandemic. (Source: TravelPerk.com, 20 Business Travel Statistics from 2020, January 21, 2021)
- Houzz, an online home remodeling platform, reported a 58% annual increase in project leads for home professionals in June, 2020. (Source: Houzz / CNBC, August 7, 2020)
1. Reassure Customers
In times of uncertainty, customers crave reassurance. Chances are, you’ve added a message about how Covid-19 is affecting your operations to your website. That’s good, but some current customers will appreciate you proactively reaching out to them, with messaging that reassures them you will continue to meet their needs. Consider adding that messaging to social media and email blasts.
If your business has put in place protocols that protect your customers or your employees, communicating those protocols is a good way to reassure your customers that you care.
Case Study: Lake Austin Spa Resort Email Campaign
Our client Lake Austin Spa Resort continued an email campaign in early 2020 even while the spa was closed, reassuring customers the spa would be back and that ownership was using the time off to remodel and renovate. Personal messages from key spa personnel offered advice to help improve the well-being of their customers, a core benefit of the resort. And the spa formulated and publicized its rigorous new protocols to ensure guest safety. Now that Lake Austin Spa Resort has re-opened, many guests have mentioned how reassuring the emails they received were to them – and how those messages encouraged them to book a stay as soon as the resort re-opened.
Email subject line: “Lake Austin Spa Resort reopens July 1”
Email header: “Where Wellness Meets the Water”
Email body copy: “To you, our loyal return guest, we can’t tell you how much we’ve missed you, and how much we appreciate all of your calls and messages checking in on how we’re doing and when we’ll be open again. We know the world has changed. Now more than ever, we offer our guests a safer haven, where you can relax and rejuvenate with peace of mind. All aspects of your stay, from our conscientious cuisine to our programming and spa treatments, have been re-thought with your safety in mind. We have, for instance, made it easy for you to dine al fresco, in locations such as the Lakeside Arbor or on your private porch, with customized picnic baskets. As you know, our intimate hideaway has only 40 rooms, all offering a private canopied front porch and/or private walled garden. More important than ever, we continue to allow only our guests and employees on the property. While it has been a challenge not seeing and serving our guests, we have attempted to use the time off constructively. You’ll find that we have enhanced our cleaning and safety practices and protocols to align with the highest standards and latest recommendations from healthcare authorities. And we have completed an extensive beautiful two-year renovation and refurbishment of all our rooms and public areas. So now it’s time to welcome you back to where wellness meets the water! To see our special ‘Welcome Back’ offer, please click below.”
Navigation elements: Special Offers | Resort | Spa | Wellness | Culinary | Activities | Groups
Pull quotes from email: “We know the world has changed.” and “All aspects of your stay, from our conscientious cuisine to our programming and spa treatments, have been rethought with your safety in mind.”
2. Rehearse Your Message
If you’re used to pitching your company’s services during in-person settings, you need to realize that switching to virtual settings will not necessarily be a seamless process.
We are all becoming adept in the technical aspects of running Zoom meetings, but the dynamic of a virtual meeting is much different than a personal one. It is much harder to “read the room” or pick up visual cues about how your message is being received. If there is more than one representative of your company, it is much more difficult to know when to “jump in” to reinforce a point, without interrupting.
Thus, you need to familiarize yourself with the medium you are using. And you may need to practice. Your pitches may need to be much more scripted and much less improvised, so you can be sure the key aspects of your current messaging are communicated.
3. Retool Your Website
With more of us spending more of our working hours at home, working from our laptops, your web presence is more important than ever. Your website is the flagship of your digital branding. It needs to be up to date, in its look, its functionality and its messaging. If your website’s design is not responsive for mobile viewing, you need to address this issue. And because of the need to update customers more regularly and to provide more reassurance messaging, you may want to switch to a Content Management System like WordPress that makes updating content as easy as possible.
Key statistic: To improve site performance, the top technical SEO tactic used by marketers is Optimizing Mobile Performance. (Source: HubSpot, 2020)
4. Represent Yourself Professionally
With all the virtual meetings, have you learned a lot about the personal lives of your colleagues and clients? While getting a glimpse of people’s parenting and pet-ownership and decorating skills can be fun and cute at first, eventually it’s a distraction. When conducting business, you need to represent your enterprise professionally, not yourself personally.
One simple, but effective tool to help you present a consistent, professional brand image in virtual meetings is to use “branded backgrounds.” We’ve provided them for many of our clients, for use in Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Skype meetings. Employees can choose from a suite of options, from logos to images of operations, all of which presented well-designed, on-message, professional branding.
Example: Branded virtual background created for BNSF Railway, featuring the BNSF logo and railway imagery.
Zoom Growth Statistics
(Source: BusinessofApps.com, March 10, 2021)
- Zoom Daily Meeting Participants in March 2020: 200M+
- Zoom Daily Meeting Participants in April 2020: 300M+
5. Realize the Opportunity
These are times that present unique opportunities for resilient, forward-thinking enterprises. In times of changes, you have the perfect reason to reach out to customers, to tell them how you can serve them. Many companies are using this window to launch new digital marketing efforts, such as regular webinars hosted by company leaders, email campaigns highlighting new services or social media campaigns that show the company operating effectively in a “new normal.”
Lead Generating Webinars
More than half (53%) of marketers say webinars is the top-of-the-funnel format that generates the most high-quality leads. (Source: Demand Gen Report, 2021)
Engaging Email Campaigns
Roughly 80% of marketers have reported an increase in email engagement during 2020. (Source: HubSpot, 2020)
Consistent Social Media Publishing
The most common publishing cadence for social media marketers is three-to-four times per week. (Source: HubSpot, 2020)