Do You Have Continuity In Your Marketing?
Business continuity (and the planning for those worst case scenarios) is a vital part of running a business. If there's one major lesson to take from the Covid pandemic it's that even with some warning of the impending catastrophe, many businesses were simply unprepared to deal with the challenges. Some business were more able to adapt – any roles normally done in an office, for example, were easy to switch to home working. Other businesses had to find completely new ways of trading, perhaps switching to kerbside collection, or channelling fresh produce away from the closed hospitality sector and towards consumers.
The thing about the pandemic was that everyone was hit by the same problem at the same time, so people were very understanding and patient about it, but a crisis that strikes just your business isn't going to be received in quite the same way. This is why it pays to have a continuity plan for all aspects of your business, and which covers issues affecting all departments.
Consistency in your marketing can be relatively easy to achieve if there's a big enough team for people to be cross-skilled and work collaboratively, allowing for anyone to take over the responsibilities of another should someone unexpectedly leave work or be off sick for any reason. If it's just one person, and something happens to them, your marketing activities are effectively on hold until they return or are replaced. If it's a case of replacing someone entirely your marketing activities can suffer for much longer as the new person gets their head around the methods and campaigns of the previous incumbent.
Using an external marketing agency for your business communications ensures you have consistency in all areas. Not only do you not have to worry about staff absences, you're also going to get consistent communication from us about the progress of your campaigns, and you'll get the benefit of our experience in setting and maintaining a consistent tone to your marketing, and a consistent message too.
Contracting your marketing to a third party like us also means consistent activity – if we say we'll post three times a week on your social media channels and monitor the responses, then we'll do exactly that. If we agree on a monthly report, you'll get it without asking on the agreed date. While there is something to be said for having a trusted in-house marketing team and building a relationship with them, with us you're building a business relationship, one that is dependent on each party fulfilling the terms of the agreement. You know we'll do what we promise and there's no need for you to spend any time on people management or resolving interpersonal issues in the workplace.
There are always going to be factors outside our control when it comes to business continuity, but it's how we adapt that matters. Take Twitter as an example of an external event that created big issues for marketers, not least because of the paid blue tick scheme that saw pranksters imitate big brands on the platform. Have you personally got the time to work out the best strategy for moving marketing communications off Twitter, or for working out how to leverage the turmoil for your advantage? Has your marketing team got time to work out what to do and keep your existing campaigns running? We certainly do, because we're looking out for all our clients and having these big-picture brainstorms every day, and you're getting the benefit of that when you work with us.
So, to achieve continuity in your marketing activities and benefit from the industry experience and thought processes that make us expert marketers, get in touch today. Next time something disrupts the business world, we'll solve the marketing problems for you.
