The times we are living right now are hard for all of us and most of the businesses. We have had to adapt ourselves and set the office at home, the lucky ones. Many others must continue going out every day to help combating what’s happening.

Marketing continue being extremely important, but we need to change our mindset. Tracking conversions, visits… all this is fine but there is something beyond this. Your brand will be in the spotlight. The way you are dealing with this, how you manage your employees, if you quickly implement the remote work, your actions, decisions in the current situation, if your brand do something to help the society in this moment.

What do we mean by this?

• Change your content for information that will help people's immediate needs and calm them down. Surely there is some knowledge, in your area, that can help with this. Here at Rock we are investing in content about Home Office and texts like the one you are reading now.
• Publish positive actions to combat the virus and prevent messages that could be considered as opportunistic on behalf of the company.
• Monitor closely the evolution of the local and global scene.
• Evaluate all the ways the company can help at this time and how to suggest them to the board for dissemination.

These are just a few examples that are essential for your brand to navigate this turbulent period and leave with a positive reputation in the future. And, of course, helping others is always the right thing to do.

If you already have a content strategy in place, your funnel mouth traffic is unlikely to have much impact, which will already ensure visibility and potential customers. The problem will be turning these leads into customers, since no one is sure of closing new deals.

This is where marketing comes in. Some examples:

• Use the information content, already mentioned in the sales process, to reduce lead anxiety. One tip is to ask salespeople what their main fears and objections are and create funnel top content to help with that.
• Examine the main objections at this point and create funnel top materials to get around them. Here you can use sales enablement materials, case studies and webinars.
• If it's within your means offer discounts or special payment terms for a while, until things settle down. This action may not guarantee income, but it can at least guarantee the maintenance of your customers.

Actions such as these will ensure that the loss is not so great, as your sales team will be better prepared to deal with customer insecurity and help them make the best decision.

Look at the future

The advice we've given so far is to help you make the most of an extremely negative situation and lessen its impact on your business. Luckily this moment will pass, and we must be ready to return with everything.

Many companies depend on events to generate demand so if you are one of the people who doesn't sleep at night due to event cancellations, I suggest you start investing in creating your own channels; podcasts, newsletters and blogs.

Times of uncertainty are complicated for everyone and, professionally, they require great effort and sacrifice. We are living in a unique moment, that’s true, but we can take comfort in the fact that, at least, it’s temporary.