New perspectives can be uncomfortable, disruptive, and generally unpopular. However, it’s often the act of looking at a situation from a new angle that can provide unique and valuable insight into what’s needed to keep an operation productive and efficient over time.
Embracing an Adaptive Mindset in Times of Trouble
Everyone’s familiar with Plato’s classic line “Necessity is the mother of invention.” It underscores a simple reality that most humans face on a regular basis: adaption to our surroundings. When one’s environment changes, humans the world over react to the shift by adapting their current behaviors.
This applies to marketing as much as it does to anything else. There are few disruptions, historically speaking, that have been as massive as the global quarantines that took place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While this has led to panic and fear, though, a measured response should really focus more on adaptation than trepidation.
Marketers, in particular, must use the new perspectives provided by the coronavirus to shake up the existing order, root out any rot or disfunction within their departments, and then create new, efficient marketing strategies aimed at surviving and thriving in the “new normal” that awaits.
How Marketers Can Use COVID-19 for Good
There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has touched the lives of virtually everyone on the planet. As the dust settles from the first wave of reactions and companies begin to look towards reopening and returning to regular business operations, here are some of the lessons can marketers learn to hone their marketing efforts going forward.
Cutting Out the Excess
It can be challenging to find the areas of your company where waste exists. One of the silver linings of a shake-up is the fact that it forces you to change the way that you’re doing things. This, in turn, can expose areas of waste and inefficiency.
Sure, you can’t always act on these concerns in the moment — especially if you’re scrambling to move to a remote workplace or shift operations online — but each item of excess and inefficiency should be carefully documented and addressed in the future. These can range from outdated marketing tools to ancient strategies in dire need of a 21st-century upgrade (more on new marketing strategies further down).
Overhauling Operations
Along with reducing excess, it’s important to use your new vantage point to consider how your internal operations are functioning. You can do this by asking yourself a few questions:
- Is your staff being properly cared for and are they equipped with the tools they need to do their jobs?
- Will you need to adopt social distancing guidelines when you return to work?
- Is remote work a long-term option for all or at least part of your team?
- How can you maintain internal communication and collaboration regardless of the on-site or remote nature of your current work environment?
There are many answers to each of these questions, and each solution should apply uniquely to your situation.
For instance, if you curate a significant amount of content, you may want to use a workflow app like Trello or Asana to keep everything in one place. If you often use contracts, you may want to shift to an electronic signatures model to keep things flowing even when employees and clients aren’t in the same space.
Regardless of the specifics, use your new perspective to analyze your internal operations and consider if and where you can improve going forward.
Creating Adaptive Marketing Strategies
Next up, take some time to consider your long-term marketing strategies. Look for areas of weakness that were exposed during the pandemic as you shifted to a remote workforce or possibly even shut down for a month or two.
What areas of your current strategy break down when your office infrastructure is disrupted? Where does collaboration fail when employees are forced to communicate from afar? As you identify these weak links, develop ways to address them.
For instance, can you use an extension on your website to quickly and easily provide time-sensitive information for customers, such as store closings or hour changes, whenever unique situations arise?
Make sure to establish clear ways to track marketing analytics throughout this time as well. Use your new perspective to consider what metrics were being neglected before — such as website traffic or online sales — that should be a priority going forward. Making these changes will enable you to maintain an adaptive marketing model that can weather any future shutdowns or physical limitations.
Again, whatever the specifics, the important thing is that you make an effort to sit down (even if it’s over a Zoom call) and discuss how you can create a more adaptive marketing strategy. The goal should be to find a holistic view that takes into account circumstances that may not have been on your radar before 2020.
Using New Perspectives to Your Advantage
When crises strike it’s tempting to throw in the towel and succumb to “the inevitable.” However, each crisis often has a silver lining. Each disruption provides a new sense of perspective and understanding that, when approached positively and with an eye towards improvement, can lead to genuine positive change.
All that is required is a steady, guiding hand of leadership that takes the situation by the reigns and finds the best way to make the best of each situation.