Framework: Marketing Strategy in the light of COVID-19
Framework: Marketing Strategy in the light of COVID-19
The Growth Report - #8
Today's topics include
📈 Growth Marketing:
Framework: Marketing Strategy in the light of COVID-19
🧠 Personal Growth:
Tactics for Relationships in Quarantine
🔮 Trends - The world during and after Coronavirus:
Links to the most interesting reads on how the world is changing around us
⛑️ Reflections from the trenches:
The difference between ambition and happiness
📈 Growth Marketing
Framework: Marketing Strategy in the light of COVID-19
Swiss venture capitalist investiere.ch has approached me to give a presentation to the founders of their investment portfolio startups, on how to adapt your marketing strategy in these challenging times.
Let's get one thing out of the way: Every business is unique, everyone's situation is unique and so your response to the current crisis and lockdown should be unique as well.
However, in collaboration with Urs Briner (Head of Portfolio, investiere) and Ivana Yoshima (New Business Manager, Google), we developed a framework on how to think through your current situation and available options to move forward. And since the feedback was really positive, I thought it might help you as well. Whether you are a founder, marketer or involved in a business in any other fashion, we all have to adapt in one way or another.
Jack London said it well:
“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”
The Framework explained
The basis of our framework involves the segmentation of the businesses by the relevancy of their value proposition based on the current situation.
We have identified four general situations you can find yourself in right now based on how relevant your value proposition has become (obviously this is more of a scale than a black-and-white decision):
Your company's value proposition is more relevant now
Your company's value proposition became less relevant and needs a shift
Value Proposition is not relevant anymore, but will be again after the crisis
You are still in product development
Based on which situation seems most applicable, you can start thinking about how you can respond. So let's have a look at each scenario and discuss some opportunities, challenges, and things to focus on.
1. Value Proposition is more relevant now
A relevancy-over-time graph for this kind of scenario would look something like this:
Example companies:
Opportunities
Unprecedented user growth
Exposure to new customer segments
Positive PR and strengthening brand
Challenges
System stress test on IT infrastructure, operations and customer success
Retention of new users
Alienation of loyal customers
How you can respond
1. Value Prop & Customer Segmentation
Focus on quantitative and qualitative customer research to create or adjust relevant value propositions for new customer segments.
Closely monitor feedback from the customer support team to detect early signs of frustration in the onboarding process of new customers.
2. Marketing Strategy Adjustments
Adjust monetization aspects for some, or all of your customer segments to lower barriers of entry. E.g. Offer a free tier of your product, re-package current product features or off heavily discounted yearly subscriptions.
Re-Prioritize your marketing experimentation pipeline and product roadmap to reduce the churn of new customer segments and to keep retention of loyal customers high.
3. How and what to communicate
Explain how your product is helping people through this crisis.
Highlight customer success stories, especially of new segments.
Communicate how you give back and share your success with employees, partners, customers and/or people in need.
2. Value Proposition needs shift
A relevancy-over-time graph for this kind of scenario would look something like this:
Example Companies
Opportunities
New product or service offerings
Acquiring new customer segments
Demonstrating industry-leadership and increasing trust in your brand/company
Challenges
Staying relevant to current customer segments
Staying financially liquid until shift is picking up
How you can respond
1. Value Prop & Customer Segmentation
Analyze how, when and by how much different segments are impacted:
How is their behavior changing right now?
What problems are they encountering?
What do they care about?
Value props that might not have been as important previously might be more important now.
How can you help solve those changing customer problems / motivations?
2. Marketing Strategy Adjustments
Change your product positioning and product messaging across all channels.
Shift your content strategy and double down on the new value proposition. Offer webinars, customer roundtables, online office hours, guides, checklists, and solid FAQs to help your customers navigate the new environment.
3. How and what to communicate
Keep your current customers up to date and proactively communicate any changes and how they are affected by them.
Showcase customers who have made the shift and highlight its positive impact.
Address any fears your customers might have about your new and/or existing solution
3. Value Proposition is less relevant now, but will be relevant post-COVID-19
A relevancy-over-time graph for this kind of scenario would look something like this:
Example Companies
Challenges
Cash Flow / Funding
Cost cutting / adjusted burn rate
Uncertainty of demand level post-crisis
Opportunities
Getting ahead with Product Development and Strategic projects
Upskill workforce
How you can respond
1. Value Prop & Customer Segmentation
Bridge by focusing on building an even better product to come out stronger post-COVID-19.
Invest resources in customer analytics, drive further insights and ask yourself if you need to be adjusting your segmentation
2. Marketing Strategy Adjustments
Nurture the relationship with current customers for future conversion and focus on brand credibility initiatives to remain top of mind
Plan ahead your relaunch strategy with flexible re-activation date, be ready to pick-up when interest recovers
Keep lights on your brand Search campaigns and use it to communicate essential information to customers
3. How and what to communicate
Provide thought leadership on other areas where you can be relevant to stakeholders on social, owned media etc.
Retain media presence, adjust levels & mix accordingly.
4. Still in product development
A relevancy-over-time graph for this kind of scenario would look something like this:
Example Companies
Challenges
Impact of follow-on recession on demand / product launch
Potential change in customer needs
Opportunities
Talent availability
Advance product launch if it can be relevant during COVID-19
How you can respond
1. Value Prop & Customer Segmentation
Pivot product development to a COVID-19 relevant solution if that is viable.
Consider if you need to adjust your product vision or business model in case of long-term changes in customer needs triggered by COVID-19 and follow-on recession.
2. Marketing Strategy Adjustments
Think through different launch scenarios and communication approaches, have a back-up plan if you launch while COVID-19 measures still in place. Be ready to support with inbound & outbound Marketing initiatives once you are ready to launch.
3. How and what to communicate
Continue to engage your target audience around your product vision, provide updates, thought leadership on owned channels & social media.
Some further thoughts and principles
If you haven’t started these things yet, it’s a good time to consider now.
Experiment
The current situation is unpredictable and is changing on an almost daily basis. Don't try to make long-term plans, they are likely to become irrelevant as this whole thing unfolds over the next weeks and months. Go into experimentation mode. Act quick, try things out, and iterate.
Think like an early-startup founder, uncertain times require opportunism, agility and adaptability.
Daily Communication
If things are changing fast, make sure you communicate. Often. Organize daily virtual stand-ups, war rooms, etc. where applicable to keep employees, investors, and partners in the loop. In times like these, it's better to overcommunicate than to risk chaos, even more so because we're all working remotely now.
Job Rotations
If certain departments like operations or customer success have less work, now is the time to offer them job rotations. Onboard team members to where they are most needed within the organization. E.g. Farmy has appointed most of its marketing employees to customer success managers or logistics support.
Customer Research
Right now is the time to do customer research. People are at home, have more time and are more likely to be reachable. Keep a tab on how their situation changed. Do customer interviews, surveys or just a good ol' check-in. No matter which of the above category you count yourself in, customer research is key to unlocking the opportunities and overcoming the challenges presented by this crisis.
Please reach out if you have additional thoughts or want to exchange ideas. I'd love to hear from you.
Let's do this 💪🏼
Check out the full presentation
🧠 Personal Growth
Tactics for Relationships in Quarantine
Do yourself a favor and listen to this podcast over the weekend:
Tim Ferriss Show #418: Esther Perel — Tactics for Relationships in Quarantine
It covers questions such as:
While conducting remote therapy with couples in quarantine, what noteworthy patterns has Esther been observing?
When memories of past stressors aggravate the anxieties of the present, and how we might come to terms with them through reframing our self-image.
Advice for people who, either by choice or circumstance, are spending their quarantine alone.
How can couples and families cope and give each other space when they’re quarantined together? How might they use the circumstances as an opportunity to bond with, rather than intrude upon, one another?
Putting things in perspective for someone who insists that they’re feeling ‘great’ right now.
A fantastic and timely listen since all of us are likely to be in such a situation for the first time. I am not one to listen to relationship advice podcasts, but this one is worth it!
🔮 Trends
The world during and after Coronavirus
It's tough to talk about trends or make predictions right now. The world is in flux.
So I decided to turn this section into a link collection and let you pick and choose what's relevant for you. Here we go.
Instagram Livestreams are on the rise - Instagram livestreams surge in social distancing era
...and so is Facebook Live - It took a global pandemic, but Facebook Live is back in favor
Zoom Backgrounds and screensavers are the latest crave - Brands Are Creating Zoom Backgrounds to Class Up Your Quarantine
A venture capitalists short summary of changes to come - What will this crisis accelerate in your ecosystem?
An in-depth look at the Science, Health policies, Economics, and Macroeconomic policies of the current crisis - London Business School Lecture: The economics of a pandemic
The author of Sapiens warns us of things to come - Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus
⛑️ Reflections from the trenches
The difference between ambition and happiness
In this section, I share my weekly thoughts and reflections that come up during our journey of building our company GrowthBay.
I recently read this quote by Bill Watterson, the cartoonist, and creator of Calvin and Hobbes and it stung me a little bit.
“...having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measures of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.” - [Read the full speech here](Read the full speech here)
It's an uncomfortable read.
We just started a company. To me, ambition and "never being satisfied with where you are" is the natural inclination of those who leave their jobs and venture out on their own, is it not?
And at the same time, Kevin and I ask ourselves often: How much ambition is enough? How much should we push ourselves? Are we on the right track? Are we enjoying the journey? How many compromises do we need to make in order to get where we want?
I don't have the answer to these questions, but if you also feel rebellion inside yourself when you read the above quote, it might be worth stopping and taking a step back to ask yourself:
How much is my ambition interfering with my happiness?
See you next week,
Sandro