How To Effectively Market Your Product Online During A Crisis
Image credit: Woman reviewing her notes from the Melanin Modern Collection, Copyright: Rodrigue Ako
With the COVID 19 pandemic, a lot of small businesses are wondering how they are going to make ends meet during these tough economic times. A lot of the conversations happening on social media are centred on raising awareness about the virus. With all the uncertainty going on small businesses are wondering how they can continue to push their products and market them online without seeming insensitive. Here are a few tips to help you continue to market your brand during this period without coming off as uninformed and insensitive to your customers' feelings.
Keep communicating with customers
Make your customers feel they are not alone. Hold conversations with them online where you constantly ask them how they are doing and how they are coping with everything around them. If you usually send weekly newsletters, keep these going but instead of trying to sell your product to them replace the information with interesting stories, compassion and sincerity with how you’re also handling this difficult time as well. This will help in building a sense of trust with your customers and make them feel they are not alone.
Provide a healthy distraction
This is not the best time to promote sales to consumers as it is a stressful time and they may get irritated by your brand constantly pushing products to them. Instead, it would be a great time to share other stories with them about your brand. Talk about your brand history, share stories about your employees, brand vision and mission. Try as much as possible to be uplifting in the messages you send across
Promote products that will directly solve a customer problem during this period
At the end of the day, you still need to make money as a small business to make ends meet. Think through and evaluate which of your products are able to solve a customer problem during this social distancing period. For example, a product or solution that will make their lives working from home a bit easier or a product or solution that will entertain and uplift them during social distancing. Whatever it may be, make sure to market it in a way that clearly shows the consumer how it will benefit them in the short term during this social distancing COVID 19 period
Educate your audience
A lot of people’s lives are changing during this period. Take this opportunity to educate your customers on different strategies they can use to make their lives easier. For those struggling with the changes walk them through how you as a business have adjusted to the new conditions. Make them feel empowered to be able to survive this period and come out stronger than before
Whatever you do, #teamPICHA is here to wish you all the very best in keeping your business up and running. We hope these few tips help you to re-strategise your marketing during this period as a lot of businesses are looking to online channels to market their products now.
We have a free collection of images that you could use called #MelaninModern. This collection features of black women in the professional world and can be found here: https://pichastock.com/downloads/category/melanin-modern/