5 Digital Marketing Strategies and Tactics for Crisis Management

Digital marketing strategies and tactics are fluid. They should change over time to align with market conditions, customer demand, and many other external factors. A crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies across the country to stop and rethink things – especially how they market to their customers. 

For some, it has forced them to speed up their transition to digital marketing and shift things online. For others, it has proven how important it is to be agile and flexible in the face of a crisis. 

Digital marketing has become central to all interactions. Digital channels have become the primary way to engage customers for many. 

Here is how to revamp your digital marketing strategy to reflect the new reality brought on by the COVID-19 crisis:

1. Baseline – How Has Your Company Been Impacted by Crisis?

When a crisis occurs, there are generally three stages the company will go through – stabilization, re-starting the workflow, and then back to focusing on business growth. 

Before you can do anything with your digital marketing strategy, you first need to understand how your company as a whole has been impacted. This will be the baseline for how you will move forward with your digital marketing strategies and tactics. 

2. Reassess Digital Marketing and Offline Marketing Initiatives

Once you gain an understanding of the impact of the crisis, it’s important to do a review of what you had planned. 

“Businesses need to modify their offers to adapt to the new demand,” says Martin Wiedenhoff, Director, Revenue Growth and Expansion for BDC Advisory Services. “What do customers want now and how can we respond to that change?”

Look at your messaging across all digital marketing platforms. What was scheduled? Is there anything that you need to remove? Do you need to modify some messaging? What new messaging needs to be developed?

Here’s an example of how we used different messages for an auto services client to determine what message was performing the best:

You need to understand that online and offline marketing aren’t separate entities. They should co-exist together within your overall marketing strategy. Read our case study on how leveraging online marketing lead to offline marketing success

3. Address Your Customers, Clarity Is Important

Communicate regularly and be clear and transparent with your customer base. If your product or service offerings are directly impacted by the crisis, explain what you are doing to make things right. Keep them up to date about what you are doing to overcome the new barriers you are facing. 

It’s also important to talk to your customers to understand what they are going through. This will give you invaluable insights into how you should adjust your marketing messaging and strategies during a crisis. 

4. Refine Your Marketing Strategy and Tactics

Depending on how your company is affected by a crisis, your marketing strategy may stay the same, be put on hold, modified to some degree, or you may need to completely change your strategy and start from scratch. 

The new focus needs to align with your new business reality. For example, COVID-19 has seen grocery stores shift their marketing campaigns to focus on how they are keeping stores safe for shoppers through new signage, cleaning processes, social distancing and offering an expansion of curbside pickup for grocery orders. 

Part of shifting your marketing focus will also mean assessing the channels you use. 

• Do you need to reallocate your budget?
• Which platforms are your primary focus?
• How can you capitalize on new marketing trends?
• How can you use creativity to be different than competitors?

5. Measure and Adjust Your Marketing Efforts

Tracking your marketing efforts is paramount. This is no surprise to anyone. You need to measure the results of your digital marketing strategies to see if it is having the desired impact. If not, you need to adjust. 

“Companies need to be able to measure their impact. There is less money now to do marketing, so it has to work,” Wiedenhoff says. “If it doesn’t work after two weeks online, you have to pivot.”

Develop a number of messaging campaigns and scenarios ahead of time. This will allow you to quickly shift your messaging if situations around the crisis changes or if your marketing is off the mark. It’s a dynamic situation that will require refinement along the way. 

“In normal times, experimentation might sometimes seem a risky game. Changing the working models to which employees, customers, or business partners are accustomed can seem to risk pushing them away, even when those experiments take aim at longer-term gains for all concerned. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has made experimentation both a necessity and an expectation,” says Simon Blackburn from McKinsey Digital. 

A crisis is an unpredictable time. Toronto marketing companies like ours learned this all too well with COVID-19. It forces us to stop, think, adjust, and react to the ever-changing landscape. Doing the same with your digital marketing strategies will help your company address your customer needs, show you are proactive and weather the storm. 

The Marketing Garage is an award-winning Toronto digital marketing agency  that has extensive experience in cultivating effective digital marketing strategies. We help businesses in many different sectors across North America fix their online marketing and branding. Our data-driven mix of SEO and online marketing process is like no other.