Content & Covid 19 – Marketing How We Should Have Been All Along…

By Dennis Schiraldi

As a worldwide pandemic unfolds my first and foremost thought lies with the health and well being of my family, friends, clients and the general public. I wish all of you well and stay safe.

There’s a lot of rhetoric right now about marketing in the current landscape. The narrative has certainly changed…

“the general consensus talks about how these devices (smartphones) and social media are pulling us apart are now the ONLY thing keeping us together.”

I am not quite sure many businesses have a global pandemic policy and if you do, I am not quite sure you could prepare for a shut down of epic proportions. Funny in the non-ha-ha way that as much as the general consensus talks about how these devices (smartphones) and social media are pulling us apart are now the ONLY thing keeping us together.

We are seeing the strength of what social media was created for…Connecting in a time where we need to be socially distancing.

We are also seeing a major shift in businesses taking to giving away content for free in order to bring value to people. Something I’ve been consistently preaching for almost a decade in my weekly newsletter, blog, workshops, the annual marketing conference I host and to my clients.

You are seeing the best in people right now offering up free classes, reading stories to kids, organizing group hangouts, virtual meetups, and guess what????

That’s what you should have been doing all along in the marketing of your business online.

If the current state of affairs proves anything, it’s that we all really want to connect in person. For example, say you are a yoga studio. I’ve observed the Facebook Live classes popping up, glad they are. However, if you are a yoga studio doing Facebook Live 1x per week prior to this would build your audience. The majority of which don’t just want to do yoga in their homes, but connect, in real life, at the studio. People are afraid to give their content away.

However, Covid 19 has changed all that…

Selling right now is EXTREMELY ICKY!!!

Everyone is different. Two weeks ago we had one prospect tell us that we should be more sensitive to reaching out another was surprised that we canceled a meeting and said we can reschedule for the following week.

Frankly, if you are saying you know what to do right now I call BS…

These are unprecedented times. I do know that most of the small business owners I know are holding onto their money until the uncertainty passes. Which we’ve always been positioned for the long game.

The education piece, such as online FREE webinars. Funny my accountant got totally pissed off at me 3-weeks ago because I missed a meeting to review my taxes. I don’t blame him it’s his busiest time of the year. However, 7-minutes in I offered my apologies and offered a Zoom.

He asked me, “what’s a Zoom?” I explained he responded with, “that’s a complete waste of my time…”

Which he’s now doing a webinar with a local publication on using Zoom and being productive with remote workers…You cannot make this up. Life is all about perspective and timing.

Marketing and the context of marketing has to change in this environment but it’s one that should have been there all along. This past week I emailed all the marketing leaders in my community.

I asked them what we can do…

Great marketers understand how to develop programs and context in changing times. Our good friends at 898 Marketing are working with a local TV station and a tech partner, Drund to deliver live streaming faith services and deliver webinars. That’s amazing, it’s good for everyone.

Our year-long sponsor iSynergy is putting together a video of us all being in this together. If you want to pull together a quick 5 to 15-second video be sure to direct message me we will explain how you can get in.

Jeff Herrmann has a number of programs at the Business Journal dialed up to help educate small business owners and navigate through these tough times.

PALO Creative, The Houck Agency, B Squared Graphics, Sassy Girl Media, Tilt Marketing, Dragish Marketing and of course us all coming together to do something amazing. And I hope to goodness I didn’t leave anyone out.

I’m super elated all my friends stepped up.

I delivered Junior Achievement courses last week to my son’s 5th-grade class and I’m helping his school understand how to deliver content in remote learning environments.

A lot of my brainpower the past two weeks has been dedicated to my clients and making sure they are in a good spot. More importantly, I have a client with frontline healthcare workers, Blue Sky Therapy. My first thought every day is for the safety of the frontline healthcare workers. Over the past week, we launched our teletherapy (telemedicine) solution, probably one of the most important and rewarding things I’ve done in my 20 years of marketing and in healthcare, you can read more about continuing your physical therapy and rehab services remotely!

There’s more…

I put on an annual marketing conference, which because of this is going to be dramatically different in 2020. I’m currently working on making this more accessible to small businesses that are going to need to build their businesses once this is done.

More to follow…

Listen, there’s going to be a lot of good that comes out of this…

Remember…

Content marketing is an effort to educate, entertain, engage and eventually promote something. Now is the time to live in the first 3-areas…

Educate, entertain, engage…

There will be time to promote later!!!

And now is the time to remember that when this thing ends that this how you should have been marketing all along and I encourage you to keep going with the content!!!

And when it does end, if you continue to build the goodwill now it’s going to pay you back 10x, I promise.

Be well, stay safe!!!

ABOUT DOYO LIVE

DOYO Live provides ongoing professional development through our online marketing platform, in person networking events, workshops and annual marketing conference. DOYO Live also provides day-to-day marketing strategy, management to a wide range of clients, typically involving content media strategies via web, emails, social media, partnerships with more traditional media companies and sponsorships that create awareness and generate leads for our partners.