Lockdown marketing

Most marketing teams I work with spend the bulk of their time generating leads. They're running ads, launching campaigns and organising events. It's all about finding buyers. 

But what do you do when entire countries are hunkered down in their homes? It's quite literally illegal to buy most products and services right now.

What's more, when it comes to the things people can buy, I expect your potential customers will be deferring their purchasing decisions until there's a bit more certainty in the economy. 

This means there's not much to do by way of lead generation right now. You can't sell when nobody's buying. 

If that sounds like you, here are  three things you can do to fill your time and (more importantly) build a solid foundation for when we come out of this lockdown and people start buying things again. 
 

1: Do some customer research

This doesn't have to be anything fancy. Rather, it can just be a matter of picking up the phone and talking to a few customers. Get their feedback. Ask them why they use your product or service. Find out what they'd like to see in the future. 

But more importantly, ask them questions about their life.  What keeps them up at night? Where do they see themselves in five years? And so on, and so forth. 

Questions like this are going to give you really solid insights about what actually drives your customers. You can then use what you learn to build better offers and more compelling campaigns in the future. 
 

2: Review your messaging and positioning

Every organisation has a bit of "drift." That's when your product or service evolves over time, but your messaging and positioning do not. This happens because evolution is a gradual process; it's the outcome of lots of small decisions, so you don't really see it happening. 

Start with your website. Does it match the conversations your sales team is having with customers? Is it putting the right benefits front and centre? Is it talking to the right people? You'd be surprised at how far your messaging and positioning can drift in quite a short time. 

From here, you can work your way down into other marketing materials, to make sure everything's lined up. 

You can get started by taking a look at my blogpost on positioning, and my notes on the iconic marketing book, Positioning: The Battle for your Mind
 

3: Build a content surplus

A library of ready-to-go material is a bit of a holy grail (or white whale) for marketers.

We'd all love to have a whole bunch of content that we can just browse through and find what we need. At the same time, we get so consumed by the day-to-day, that everything seems to launch just on (or a bit after) its deadline. 

This applies to newsletters, blogposts, case studies - you name it. 

So now is a good time to (finally) build a surplus of content.

A word of caution, though: don't just produce a bunch of stuff based on ideas that pop into your head. That's a surefire way to end up with a giant library that never gets used.

Rather, sit down and think about what kind of activity you might be doing in the future. Use the first two things in this list to inform your strategy. 

For example, if there's a really strong benefit coming out of your customer interviews, that you don't currently have covered, then put together some case studies that tell this story more effectively than what you currently have. 

Or, if you find you need to update your messaging and positioning, put some content together that helps to support your new messaging and positioning.  

If you get a bit of a library together, you'll have more content to draw from when you get back to campaigning and hustling for leads - which will make those campaigns just a bit less stressful than they otherwise would have been. 

You can make a start with case studies by reading this comprehensive guide on the foundations of a great case study.
 

Wrap it up

I don't want to overwhelm you so I'll leave it there for now. Pick the easiest one of these, chip away at it and, as always, let me know how you get on. 

(This originally appeared in my newsletter. Sign up now to get content like this, for free, every two weeks.)

Photo by Alec Favale on Unsplash