Marketing during COVID-19 and the resulting economic disruption has marketersespecially challenged. We spoke with Debra Andrews who have more than 20 years of B2B strategic marketing, marketing planning, and demand generation experience what she recommends. Debra founded Marketri LLC in 2004 to move marketing from a cost center to a profit center for aggressively growth-minded companies.
Download:Top Strategic Questions to Ask and Answer During and Just after the Pandemic
TRANSCRIPT:
Lisa Merriam
00:03 It’s rush hour in midtown Manhattan and I’m standing in the middle of 6th Avenue
without getting run over or yelled at.
00:10 The economy has been shut down and that’s leaving marketers wondering how
to respond.
00:16 “Don’t let marketing disappear in a crisis.” That’s what consultant Debra Andrews has been advising for the last month
00:23 The American Marketing Association New York caught up with Debrh online to talk about what marketers should be doing now for when the economy opens again.
Debra Andrews
00:32 Marketers first and foremost need to stay calm. They are needed more now than ever, whether you’re an in-house marketer or you’re an outside consultant.
00:43 Companies need guidance. They’re really not sure how to navigate the waters right now.
00:49 If you have a product or service right here now that is relevant to what’s going on with the global
crisis and somehow it could be of use to some of the sectors that are the hardest hit,
01:02 It’s ok to market your products and services right now.
01:07 There is going to be opportunity coming out of the crisis. In some ways I think people very anxious, businesses will be anxious to get back to business as usual.
01:16 At some point you know this may end up in a global recession who knows, but I think it is a very good time to plan and prepare.
01:26 Where should we be putting our marketing resources and dollars, and then from there, kind of building out what do you need from a marketing infrastructure standpoint.
01:35 Do you have a database that’s in sore need of some cleanup?
00:40 Have you wanted to embrace marketing automation?
00:43 Also you can look at content generation. You may not want to publish that content. You may not want to distribute that content.
00:50 But actually creating the content and putting it in your backlog for the post pandemic period is just an investment you make.
01:58 You will always need content.
02:00 Those are some of the things that marketers can do right here now to set the organizations up for success.
02:07 Coming out of this and just be ready to hit the pedal.
02:11 Those companies that stopped altogether it’s really hard to get started again.
02:17 If you are in industries where you have competition, you have to think about that too.
02:20 You know what is going to happen after this period. Are you, in fact, going to be behind.
02:27 Because your competitors are marketing smart during this time period.
Lisa Merriam
02:31 So there you have it. Even though you can’t do business as usual, you can plan and prepare.
02:37 And that’s brilliance in marketing.
