TL:DR Version

This may not be the right time for everyone to pump money into large marketing projects, but there are things you can do during COVID-19 that will help you grow your business over the long haul. Read the full post below for more details. Here is the quick version:

  1. Customer Personas: Review your existing customer persona documentation and see if it’s still accurate or should be updated.
  2. Conversion Optimization: Identify leaks on your site where users are falling through instead of converting. Task your analytics people with a site audit or use a tool like VWO.
  3. Email/Marketing Automation: Revamp your email campaign copy or try building out a completely new automation workflow. Now’s the time to get that funnel you’ve always wanted
  4. Reporting & Analytics Improvements: Are all the conversion points on your site being tracked properly? Do you have a good dashboard in place? 

 

4 Marketing Activities To Focus On During Covid-19

Making use of your time when business isn’t normal (or even close!) is all about identifying opportunities with long-term value. Often these are the things that aren’t given the proper attention but always seem to be on your to-do list. We’ve got four areas that you can focus on today that can deliver serious benefits when your customers resume their normal behavior.

  1. Customer Personas: Defining customer personas is always a valuable exercise as it forces you to think about your business from the perspective of a customer. Do you understand who that customer really is! Data without a name, face and unique characteristics is only going to get you so far. Try using this time to evaluate your current customer personas or develop brand new ones if you haven’t done this exercise before. This post from Buffer is one of our favorites on persona development.
  1. Lead Generation Optimization: This is a perfect time to task your development and design teams or agency partners with reworking your site for lead generation optimization. This process can have a multiplier effect on any other marketing initiatives you take so an investment in this today is one of the smartest decisions you can make. If making developer-level changes to your website is not an option right now, an alternative is to test out tools like Google Optimize and VWO that allow you to make code-free A/B versions of pages. Use the results to inform future website design changes.
  1. Email/Marketing Automation: Let’s face it, often email is just used as a tool for one-off campaigns. If you do manage to build email workflows, it’s tempting to move efforts elsewhere and forget about them. Let’s remedy that right now. Start by evaluating your email or automation platform and asking a few questions. Does it do everything we would like it to? Are we seeing the results we’d hoped for? What value could we deliver via email to close more leads or to better onboard customers that we aren’t currently providing? It’s quite possible there are new platforms out there you haven’t considered that could be a better fit, and may even cost less. It’s also a perfect time to completely rework your email funnels and make sure your workflows are aligned with those customer personas we just discussed.
  1. Reporting & Analytics Improvements: This could involve trying a new reporting/dashboarding solution like DashThis or Google Data Studio, or switching from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics. Want to go a completely different route? Start by auditing your lead goals and other measurable website activity. Then determine an attribution methodology in Google Analytics that more accurately reflects customer decision making versus a simple last-interaction model. Whatever way you choose to go here, try having an earnest and in-depth discussion as a company about what tools and methods could be implemented to get a better grasp on performance.

This is something of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure approach to marketing. You likely only have the capacity to tackle 1 or 2 of these items in the immediate future. It’s important that you are thoughtful in choosing which to pursue and support your team with everything they need to accomplish the task. Even if these were back-burner projects, don’t rush and don’t cut any corners. We hope this helps right now and are here to help if you are having trouble getting started!