During this very challenging time, we hope you’re staying safe. The rapidly developing news of the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic and how it is impacting on our families, friends and own lives is a huge concern for us all. Understandably, people are worried about the general economic outlook, and none more so than business owners who have seen their businesses brought to a halt.

When we surface from this unprecedented time of confusion and economic shutdown, it is predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility in figures released last week that the rapid economic downturn will be followed by an equally rapid upturn once the lockdown measures are lifted. See the graph below.

This does not mean to say that everything will then return to normal. A recession is almost inevitably on the horizon and only the fittest organisations will survive. Use this lock-down period and reduction in normal business activity to fully assess your business and put in place plans to come out of this  pandemic stronger. Take a look at your brand and marketing assets and plan a new marketing growth plan to strengthen your business and be ready to take advantage of the business surge when it occurs, as well as ride the storm in the longer term.

This pandemic has pushed our purchasing and research habits towards the internet at a faster rate than could ever have been foreseen. That is possibly going to remain the case and become the ‘new normal’. Is your online offer up to scratch, whether that be product sales or training and advice?

Some things to consider:

• Is your CRM system filled with all the detail it could be ready for you to properly segment potential customers and focus on those that can deliver growth and profit?
• Is your website working for you? Does it ‘talk’ to the right customers, deliver the information they are looking for and contain the right calls to action to guide them in the direction you want them to go ?
• How well do your social media and email communications drive action? How can you improve their impact to increase ROI.
• What more can you be doing to improve your online offer and make sure it gets found through intelligent SEO, PPC and remarketing?

With all these questions answered you can start to build a solid marketing communication strategy to boost your online exposure and gain the attention of potential new clients. Managing all of this  may sound like a huge investment of time and energy but that needn’t be the case with the use of an automated marketing platform. It’s the fastest way to grow at scale, seamlessly combining  prospect data and automation to give you value for money and a quick payback period.

You don’t need to use your valuable marketing and sales team resources to manually search for prospects and leads.  Automated platforms automate the process of finding prospects from your website visitors, LinkedIn and target company lists.

Use the power of automated journeys to self-qualify these prospects by serving them relevant content to drive demand for your product or service.  Based on engagement levels and lead scoring, you can easily identify your hottest leads.

After the investment and effort put in to generate prospects and sales opportunities, don’t leave them in the middle of the funnel while you are busy focusing on closing deals or bringing in new leads. Let the system do it for you through Social Posts, Blogs, Email Newsletters and Digital Ads Remarketing.

Let your sales team focus on closing – doing pitches or demos to your sales-ready opportunities.  In the meantime, use automation to deliver your initial sales outreach emails to qualified leads.  Monitor, forecast and measure sales team progress with an integrate Sales Pipeline, Activities Manager and Real Time Reporting.

There is no doubt that the Coronavirus presents a unique challenge for marketeers, but put in the work now to upgrade your marketing, and you’ll reap the rewards when ‘normality’ returns.

Stay safe.

Author: Protean Inbound

Protean Inbound is a B2B marketing agency with years of experience in helping businesses elevate their brand and marketing strategy – in good times and in bad. Contact Protean, info@proteaninbound.com