Sales and selling never stops. What you are doing today impacts future sales the next quarter and beyond. Recently, we have heard of companies and non-profits pulling back on their marketing based on success to date, cash flow, lack of resources and/or business leader fatigue, among other things.

We know it is the end of another very long year, and you may be tired and lacking in energy and resources. But going dark isn’t the answer. There are ways to continue marketing efforts with less cash, less effort or less time. Build momentum and keep it going.

Be smart about what you’re doing today – impact future sales tomorrow.

Get the most out of your marketing efforts in a consistent, strategic way.

For instance, if your busy season is Q1, use Q4 to set your strategies, and get your ideas and materials ready so all you must do is hit “go” when you’re at the peak of utilizing your manpower in other areas throughout Q1. Have your plan for next quarter all ready to work for you.

As an example, we have already approved plans and strategies, are securing paid media schedules, and developing creative assets for Girl Scouts Texas Oklahoma Plains’ (GSTOP) Q1 initiatives. Doing this now means they can simply hit send when they are at their busiest time in January – gearing up for Girl Scout Cookie Sales time!

Here are six other ways to market now and help yourself later:

1. Run a brand campaign. You can keep it simple or gear up for a big push. Just make sure you do something to get and keep your name out there. Always remember that new clients or customers take time to make a decision and do research before buying.
2. Make a list so you can check it twice. First, create a list of prospective audiences to whom you can market. Then, build on this base list. This can include:
   a. Past customers / clients
   b. Prospects or past website visitors
3. Check Google trends. Find out what main keywords may be trending that relate to your business. Spend now to get noticed and included in these trends.
4. Develop or redesign your website. Do not wait for Q1 to jump back on this task. Get it done now so it is ready to launch in Q1. 4th Quarter is the perfect time to refresh and update the content on your website.
5. Send those emails. E-mail marketing is cheap and easy but halting your monthly communication will affect results when you start back up. Don’t lose momentum. Don’t rest and count on past success to continue. If you’re not consistent, your sales won’t be, either.
6. Stay active on social media. Your audience is listening, even if passively. Be consistent and engaged. Build your audience now, so they’re with you when all your big news hits next year.

So, when is a “safe’ time to put the brakes on marketing your brand? Around a quarter to … never.

Building and maintaining a successful brand requires continuity. Consistent marketing creates and sustains trust with your audience. Don’t stop marketing your brand when cash and/or resources are low. Don’t stop marketing your brand based upon success to date.

Your brand doesn’t wait while you’re tired. Your brand deserves continuous marketing effort, in some way, to make an impact both now and in your future sales. Don’t ever stop.

Stop and start marketing is not an option for successful brands.

Get out there and keep rocking your brand. Call us to help. The Porch is always ready to roll.

Starting a business in 2021 is hard. You have to have the right product, shown at the right time, to the right people, and have everything executed properly. Not to mention you have to compete in an ever-growing marketplace. It’s a tough world and you have to have real mental grit to be successful. Startups have a 90% failure rate according to Investopedia.com. One of the main reasons as to why these startups failed was due to poor marketing. We’re going to go over some of the top marketing strategies that will aid your start up, to get you going in the right direction. 

1. Make a Marketing Plan

You can’t have successful marketing strategies for a start up business without a marketing plan. This means coming together with metric-driven marketing goals, creating user personas, coming up with a budget that supports how you will achieve these goals, and researching your competitors, for starters.

2. Post on Social Media

Posting on social media is crucial to gaining exposure for your business. Around 2.4 billion people use social media. It’s important for you to be seen and heard, and for people to know who you are. Not to mention this helps reach a younger generation. Make sure you’re posting engaging quality content consistently.

3. Make an Email List

Email marketing can attract customers if done correctly. One way to build a list is by having a subscribe page on your website. Make sure when you send these emails out that they aren’t too advertising based – answer questions, be helpful. Help potential customers solve their problems. For example, you can post guides, infographics, or videos. 

4. Don’t be Afraid to Try Some New Marketing Strategies

Don’t be afraid to voice your ideas! If you never try something new you won’t grow as a company. You never know who could benefit from an idea you might have. You don’t have to always stay inside what everyone is comfortable with. Innovations come from questioning the status quo.

5. Use More Than One Channel for Promotion

This builds off of tip #2. Once you have your social media set up, it’s important to diversify your brand. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and even TikTok can be a channel for you to connect with your audience. These are amazing tools to get your brand out there. They each hit different audiences and you should change your approach depending on the socials you use, and who your audience is. 

6. Know Your Audience

You must find your target audience. Find what age group is going to be interested in your product. What type of topics are they into? Don’t try to be too broad and play to your strengths. Once you’ve identified your target market make sure you cater to them.

7. Create and Maintain a Blog

Blogs are important to driving traffic your brand. They make you a source for information. Did you know that businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads than those who do not have one? Make sure you’re publishing blogs that you know your audience would read. Quality over quantity.

8. Sponsor an Event

Sponsoring events can gain massive exposure for your business. It’s a great way to get the right people looking at your company (investors). All you have to do is pay a fee to the event organizer and then you market your business with marketing materials like signs, stickers, etc. Try and sponsor events that are related to your business. For example, if you sell comic books maybe you can sponsor a comic book convention.

9. Give Away Small Things as a Marketing Strategy

Everybody loves free stuff. What do I mean by free stuff? Stickers, t-shirts, merchandise, or gift cards. These help people have a positive association with your business. It makes your company look very friendly and is great PR.

10. Use Paid Search Advertising

Paid search is a way to purchase focused traffic on popular search engines like Google. They use a system called cost-per-click. Which means you pay when someone types a specific word you have listed in your ad. You only have to pay for when people click on the ad. This can be a great traffic driver to your website.

Marketing Strategies for Start Up Businesses Can Take Many Forms

Don’t fall behind when running your startup business. It’s very competitive out there and if you aren’t doing everything you can to stay ahead of the game you may fall behind your competitors. However, if you follow at least half of these strategies your startup will be headed in the right direction.

The secret to business success for 2022 is to start planning for it now. Many of our clients are reviewing their business plans, marketing plans and strategies for achieving their goals. Planning ahead for next year is a valuable way to invest in your business. You can know ahead of time what to do next and be proactive – not reactive. Making and having plans helps you guide your actions with efficiency and effectiveness.

Planning Ahead for Next Year, Now

Rounding the corner on Q3 2021, now is the time to plan for business success in 2022. So dust off your business plan. Does it still resonate with your goals for success? First, take the time to review the foundation of why you started this business in the first place. Make sure it still makes sense for you, for your time and energy, and for the market. Update it if you need to.

Next it is time to draft your marketing plan for 2022. Where to start? Look at your business revenue goals for the year. That number helps guide your marketing spend. Companies in 2021 spent 8.6% of topline revenue on marketing. Whatever your percentage is, don’t let this number be subjective. It is black and white.

Once you have your number, create a marketing plan. Without a roadmap, the squirrels and shiny objects will be your focus. Don’t let that happen. Staying on track to business success is much easier with a plan. Build your plan around repeating and expanding around prior success points, and adding new tactics that make sense. The plan you create can be annual or quarterly, but it can encompass many things: creative campaigns, paid advertising, PR, content or a new product or services launch. A solid marketing plan will create focus and executional excellence around several tactics working together toward a common goal. This approach will ultimately save you money, by getting you more bang for your buck.

Invest in Your Business Success

Invest in your business the smart way – and we don’t just mean monetarily. Your focused thoughtfulness and the time spent on your plan will be repaid. First, focus on your business successes by continuously improving your plan and your execution of the plan. How did your tactics for a specific campaign fare? Track and measure your results each quarter, and implement your findings into the next quarter’s plan to continue success and build momentum. Invest in the things that work. Pivot toward the successful strategies. Experimentation within the framework of your marketing plan can help you home in on insights that will get you to your revenue number for 2022.

Define Your Goals So You Can Reach Them

Define messages, targeted audiences, goals, strategies, tactics, timeline and budget. How can you reach your goal if it is not clearly defined? How detailed you are is up to you. What we have found on the Porch is that the partners that have defined their marketing budgets and plans have been successful. Being thoughtful upfront about your goals in all areas of marketing your business can set you up for business success in 2022 and beyond.

Working for a Woman-Owned Business is a Career Changer and a Life Changer

To quote Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” Specifically, the business industry has been changing and that’s a good thing. We aren’t in the 1950’s anymore. Women are achieving and climbing the corporate ladder like they never have before. However, sexism is still a prevalent problem in America’s workplace and economy. According to Business Insider, women were paid 17.7% less than men in 2019. From pay gaps to glass ceilings, women continue to be withheld from their full potential. We, as men, need to help bridge these gaps and break these ceilings for women worldwide.   

Every man should work for a woman-owned business at some point in their life. It will help you be more comfortable with the growing and changing workplace environment. Sometimes men have a specific mental picture of what it’s like to work for a business in the corporate world, i.e. lots of men in black suits barking orders at each other while submitting to their superiors without question. This is what I thought.

But now, working for Front Porch Marketing, a certified woman-owned business, has proven the opposite. Everyone I’ve worked with has shown me nothing but compassion, patience, and respect. Along with these values, I’ve learned how to become more detail-oriented, collaborative, and inquisitive. In summary, working for a woman-owned business has helped me grow personally as well as professionally.   

Woman-Owned Business: A Better Work Environment 

Front Porch Marketing treats me as an equal and makes me feel valued. One of the key aspects I’ve admired the most about a woman-owned business is the empathy they share. They care about how you’re doing and your well-being not only professionally but personally. As an example – on my first day of school as a junior in college, Front Porch Marketing sent me a box of cookies just to thank me for my work this summer. It put a huge smile on my face and made me proud to work for the firm.  

In regards to patience, I can tell you from personal experience that Front Porch Marketing has been very forgiving with me as I learn the ropes. They are very persistent in pushing me to reach my full potential and make it clear that I can always ask for help whenever I’m struggling. This learning atmosphere is rare to find in a business, especially one owned by men. In my experience, most of the time in a man-owned business they want you to figure things out quick and expect you to handle it yourself. 

Empathy, patience and understanding are not just the right things to do, they pay off. Not only are woman-owned businesses more understanding but they statistically tend to make more than those run by men. According to Sable International, women led companies “generated 10% more in cumulative revenue over a five-year period,” compared to men. Even when facing bias, woman-owned companies are still rising above men.   

Another bonus for me of working for a woman-owned business is the smoothness of the internship process. They gradually increase my work load once they think I’m ready for the next assignment, which is highly encouraging. They set me up to succeed. Additionally, I love having the opportunity to take on projects that make me feel like I’m making an impact. Lucky for me, Front Porch Marketing isn’t afraid to hand those out!  

This is an Experience That I Would Recommend to All Men

Overall, as a young man entering the workforce, where diversity and inclusivity is growing, working for a woman-owned business has helped me grow as an individual. It’s given me perspective on what it takes to be a marketer in today’s industry. For example I am learning multiple marketing strategies and tactics: how to write blogs, how to put together reports, how to conduct project research, and I am designing retail line cards. Working with the amazing staff here at Front Porch Marketing has opened my eyes on how a successful remote business is run and operated. From the emails, the coaching, zoom meetings, and most importantly meeting deadlines – a business works best when the team works together. 

Front Porch Marketing has been very kind in letting me join their team and held no judgement to the fact that I’m a man in a women’s business. It’s humbled me and made me proud to work for a group of strong, talented, independent women.  It’s an experience I’d recommend to all young men.

Broadening your skill set is the key to success. That is what I have learned as an intern and college student so far. Success in your career depends on being skilled in more than one discipline. Graphic Design is something that I hold very dear to my heart, so I started college thinking this would be my path. My father is a graphic designer. Thus I have a personal connection to it and I’ve been practicing it for over four years.

Start With Something You Love and Broaden Your Skill Set for Success From There

Since I was a kid I would always look up to my father’s work as an artist. He graduated from UNT with a degree in Graphic Design and immediately got picked up by a respectable design firm. Throughout my life I would observe his work, how he brainstormed, his rough sketches, and then the final product.

Some of his work includes the live theater company called Kitchen Dog Theater and the Green Light to Greatness logo for The University of North Texas, that you can still see today on busses. He’s even done work for BNSF, the largest freight railroad network in North America! As a kid growing up I really looked up to him and thought he had the coolest job in the world. Being able to permanently leave your mark on the world and potentially change a company’s look sounded amazing. So, I decided at a very early age that I wanted to be a Graphic Designer.

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Learn a New Skill Wherever You Can

I started by taking every art class I could from elementary to high school. When I reached high school, I decided it was time to start learning Graphic Design. I started by taking Graphic Design I, and Graphic Design II. Once I got confident enough in my skills I joined the school newspaper The Sidekick, and worked for them providing writers with illustrations.

During this time, I also did a lot of work with Reese Bonneau, a local artist. I designed his album covers on Spotify and created multiple T-shirts for him to sell on his website. Now he has over 3K monthly listeners on Spotify! Through him I met other local artists and designed even more album covers. I like to help musicians and small companies just starting out. It allows me to get more experience, learn new things and grow.

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You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Once I started college at The University of North Texas, I decided to major in Graphic Design like my father. It was a really tough program, but I was growing so much as an artist. But after one semester though, I decided that even though I love graphic design, I wanted to expand my skillset to a more business-oriented role. Being exposed to Marketing and Business caused me to pivot in my aspirations. I decided to switch my major from Graphic Design to Marketing. One of the most important things I learned in college: trying a bit of everything, meeting all kinds of people related to your industry, and taking new classes can help you discover your true path!

Now, my goal is to become a Marketing Manager for a big tech company. Currently, I still doing Graphic Design on the side. In addition to being an intern at Front Porch Marketing, I’m also the Graphic Designer and Social Media Manager for a start up Manga publishing company. Their mission is to provide a platform for up-and-coming manga artists and writers. We’re growing little by little every day and I think we’re off to a great start considering we started in January during a pandemic.

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It’s OK to Change Your Mind and Try Something New

Even though I originally went to UNT to become a Graphic Designer, I have broader marketing and business goals now. I still love and practice it on the side when I can. But my focus is learning more about marketing and getting as much experience as I can with all aspects of marketing before I graduate.

There are so many different disciplines involved in marketing and I’m learning so much working as an intern at Front Porch Marketing. Every time I get an assignment I learn something new and grow in my confidence. Although I’m very focused on learning the digital aspect of marketing, I want to have a broad understanding of all the different branches, especially in the business management of marketing. I would love to learn how to create effective ads, do SEO, and email marketing. So I really look forward to growing with this company, as well as learning more at school this fall!

Marketing meeting must-haves. What are they?

If you’ve ever sat through a meeting and walked out wondering what its purpose was or why you were there, then you know you don’t ever want to be the host of such an event. The must-haves must have been missing. Must-haves are important, and this is especially true in marketing where people expect you to get their creative juices flowing from the start of the meeting. To help you avoid being a bad host, here are eight must-haves for hosting your next marketing meeting – and making it successful.

Meet only when necessary.

If something can be easily covered via e-mail, it should be. 

A prepared – and shared! – agenda is the best start.

An advance agenda helps set the tone of the meeting, lay out the goals, and allows people to budget their time, as well as prepare responses. Be sure to include time for brainstorming!

Begin with the end in mind.

Know what you are trying to accomplish during your meeting. This is not a status conference. The goals need to be clearly defined so that they can be addressed and accomplished.

Keep meetings small.

The smaller the group, the better the collaboration. Amazon’stwo-pizza team rule for productive meetings is well-known and highly successful. The idea is that the group must be small enough that two pizzas can feed all attendees. This keeps ideas from being drowned out by too many voices.

Keep your marketing meeting short.

Be respectful of people’s time. No more than an hour – half an hour is even better.

Keep it simple.

Use pictures. Charts. Demonstrations. Content is king in marketing meetings too so make them compelling and focused, but not overwhelming.

Keep distractions out.

Set a no-computer rule and declare phones emergency-only devices.

Keep it interesting.

You don’t want a boring, tedious marketing meeting.  For instance, kick off the meeting in a fun way to grab their attention.

At a kick-off marketing meeting, for a client in the concrete industry, we needed to explain to the team that their audience didn’t know the difference between cement and concrete. How did we capture their attention? Cake batter. We demonstrated the difference in simple, relatable terms – without using engineer-speak.

Cement was represented as a box of cake batter. Concrete was then explained as the combination of the box of batter plus all other ingredients – resulting in a cake. This simple demonstration of making a cake in the meeting got the team’s attention, engaged their imaginations and helped them understand how their audience thought of them. Plus, CAKE!

Marketing Meeting Must-Haves are a Must

Well-organized marketing meetings can be great for productivity, team building, and brand development. Keep these marketing meeting must-have tips in mind so all you have to worry about is getting those creative juices flowing to rock your next marketing meeting.

Do you think you need a marketing audit? We’ve said it before, and we will say it a million times over – consistency in marketing equals recognition. You have to be consistent in your branding across all channels and materials. You also have to be relevant to your audience in the current marketing climate. 

There is a simple solution to ensure your marketing materials are current, accurate, and consistently following your branding guidelines – an audit of your marketing materials.

What is a marketing audit?

A marketing audit is designed to make sure your materials are aligned with your goals via a review (or creation of!) your brand’s marketing plan. It is a fabulous way to keep you on pace in the marketing marathon.

Here are five reasons you may need a marketing audit:

1. It has been a hot minute. Maybe you’ve never done an audit of your marketing materials or perhaps it has been a long while since your last one. If it has been a year since your last audit, it’s time to rock one!
2. Demand shifts. Products and/or services routinely go in and out of style. Your offerings need to be effective based on current supply and demand fluctuations.
3. Products or services have changed. If you’ve added or removed products and/or services, your marketing materials need to reflect those changes.
4. Competitive changes. This is one area you absolutely want to make sure you’re keeping up with the Joneses. You don’t want stale messages to hold your brand back while your competitors offer fresh and inspiring marketing.
5. Contact information updates. If your address, phone, website or e-mail has changed, your marketing materials need to as well. If you’ve added – or need to add – a social media presence then your marketing needs to reflect that, too.

The market is constantly evolving and changing. Don’t let the materials designed to boost your brand get behind the times. A marketing materials audit gives your brand the boost it needs to keep rocking. Give us a call – we’re always ready help your brand reset and refresh.

Business growth is always top of mind for me. Bringing it to the forefront is the fact that I am 2/3’s of the way through my Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Back to the Classroom program. Back to the Classroom is an opportunity for 10KSB alumni to reconnect with the lessons and concepts of the 10KSB program as we navigate the current economic situation and our next business opportunity.

Each week of the four part series addresses the key learnings from program modules. For each session, we are required to attend webinars and growth group meetings.

In between sessions, we have homework. We continue to refine our new business opportunity.

And, unlike my last 10KSB experience, this one is national. Every section of 10KSB Back to the Classroom includes alumni from across the country. I engage with small business owners from Alabama, Maryland, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oklahoma every few weeks. This is probs my favorite part.

Key Takeaways Thus Far From Back to the Classroom

1. Networking, even virtual, is a good. Even though this group might not be my buyers, they are inspiration. They know people who may be buyers.
2. Brainstorming with other small business owners who work in other industries is priceless. This group is energized and excited to help each other. The ideas shared and problems solved big and small help refine and shed new light to the strategy and execution.
3. Run the numbers. Work the scenarios. It is painful, like stick a needle in my eye, torture for me. However, with help from my business advisor, the time spent doing this was invaluable. The financial exercises are proof of my concept. The numbers less daunting than I expected.
4. Keep reading. Even if you don’t have the time, make time. I have four new books on my desk suggested by this group. Three I have never heard of.

Lastly, don’t undervalue the power of collaboration. I collaborate with my team on the daily. And, for that, I am blessed. But, collaborating with this group reminds me how valuable that is.

For business growth, you need lifelong learning. You need motivation. Small business owners are equally interested in positive outcomes for other small business owners. Keep calm and collaborate on.

2021 moved consumer shopping from brick and mortar to eCommerce – most likely for good. Increased demand for online shopping turned retail into an Omnichannel experience over night. Right at the cusp of experiential retail taking over, many retailers pivoted to eCommerce. So online was the only experience in shopping last year for many. Some stores and services even stayed exclusively eCommerce for the better part of 2021 – and remain so still.

Moving a brick and mortar business to eCommerce – like a restaurant, a doctor’s office, a clothing boutique – isn’t easy, and in 2020 many retailers moved their businesses years into the future in an instant. How exactly did they do that?

Pivoting from bricks to clicks

While planning to add the services of tele-health such as video sessions and text therapy, our client Apple Counseling sped up their timeline when 2021 presented them with a situation where their services were more in demand than ever. Yet, in-person brick and mortar was not the preferred method for experiencing mental health services.

By putting the infrastructure in place to accommodate many types of digital health services, and a robust new website, Apple was able to pivot quickly from exclusively brick and mortar to ecommerce. Going forward, they’ll keep the digital services they’ve added as they open their offices back up to in-person sessions. This new hybrid model is one that is being replicated all over the world of retail.

How to incorporate brick and mortar to ecommerce into your business model

Making ecommerce part of your long-term strategy is a smart move. eMarketer estimates that ecommerce sales grew 27.6% in 2020. Start by assessing how your customers use your business. For instance, if you are a restaurant, what percentage of your business is already take-away and to-go orders? What are you doing to maximize this experience for your customers already, and how can you streamline it or plus it up to make it better? Increase your eCommerce sales by adding new ways to order like website, social, text or 3^rd party apps.

A consumer Incisiv survey  indicated that 80% of shoppers expect to continue to use contactless and curbside pickup this year. Can you repurpose part of your brick and mortar space to make it easier to fulfill your eCommerce orders? Instead of a clothing boutique, can you make your merchandise accessible on-line?

Our client GNB, a women’s clothing retailer, quickly built out website and Instagram last year to showcase her customer’s favorite brands and fulfilled orders in a new way. Now that she has opened her brick and mortar up in a new space, she is keeping the online store in place to continue to cater to the wider audience she developed when she was exclusively online.

Your Business Strategy Pivot

When you move from in-store to on-line you’ll need to perhaps rethink your business plan to accommodate a regional versus local audience. Rely on your social media analytics for demographic information to guide your choices. Cater to the right audience. Think about the yoga studios that pivoted to teaching class online, or the wineries that now offer Zoom tastings with professional sommeliers.

Your “physical” space might become an order fulfillment center, or a showroom only. Showrooms are a growing choice for retailers (like Sephora) to show off a smaller portion of their total inventory. Customers can then place their orders in the showroom. Or, return to pick them up in a few days or have them sent to their home. But the customer will have had the chance to interact with your retail brand in person to some extent.

Your New Brick and Mortar to eCommerce Product Mix

Products that factor into an eCommerce retail business versus an in-person retail business may vary. Consider shipping, logistics and storage when rethinking your product or service mix. Think about what consumers are looking for – the needs of the market. How your brand can make your customers’ lives easier in some way?

Marketing for a digital-first business

With an eCommerce-first model, more of your budget will go to digital improvements in your website, digital marketing and social media. Upgrade not just the look of your website to really give customers the feel of your brand – upgrade your SEO. Search engine optimization can help the right customers find you on search engines. Use a combination of keywords, content marketing, targeted digital marketing and social media. Optimizing how you talk about your business online can help new customers find you faster.

When your brand transitions from brick and mortar retail to eCommerce, you can reinforce your brand’s benefits with your current customers while growing a new audience online. Then the convenience of online retail opens up a whole new world of potential business. With some thoughtful strategy and a digital marketing plan, your retail business can capitalize on this trend, and you can double down on your brand smoothly and successfully moving from brick and mortar to eCommerce.

It’s time to evaluate your marketing strategy for the second half of the year. With Q1 in the rearview mirror, and thick in the midst of Q2 now is the time to plan what comes next.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

My kids hear Benjamin Franklin’s quote about planning often. They are teenage boys and the simplicity of “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” strikes a chord. In October we talked about 2021 marketing planning – and it is absolutely crazy that the second half of 2021 is right around the corner. May is the perfect time to plus-delta your marketing plan to rock Q3 and Q4.  

We wax the marketing plan lyrical often, if you want some additional reading search Marketing Plan right here on Off Your Rocker, because it is a topic we keep coming back to because it is that important. Running through your activities, business, leisure or really anything without a plan to evaluate often leads to a failure.

Who could have planned for 2020!?!

For real. If you had pandemic marketing plan – ROCK ON! Many threw out the 2020 marketing plan and went into crisis or survival mode. Is it safe to say most everyone was scrambling in the unchartered time. Now that we are well into Q2, what lessons can we learn? Should we all write pandemic marketing plans? No! Should you have crisis plan? Maybe. Should you have a stop-gap strategy at-the-ready if everything falls apart? Yes.

Plan to evaluate a pivot

It was easier for teams to pivot from a plan versus starting from scratch in 2020. Existing plans guided and grounded activity for some, for others it gave a communication channel for policy and operation updates. We were reminded of the importance of staying positive in all marketing efforts and staying true to your brand. We celebrated the entrepreneurial spirit of our network and were honored to be a part of several brand launches in the back half of 2020.

Now is the time to look at the 2021 plan to evaluate what stays in, what stops and what needs to be added. Let’s get ready for the second half and move forward with purpose and intention to flourish the rest of the year.