It’s now official we are in lock down until 16 April, which forces you to conduct business in a different manner using technology that you may have not used in the past. How you respond in the next month will determine what type of year you will have. But it does give you some time to reposition your product/services to take advantage of technology.
In this article, we want to highlight how it is possible to reposition your product / service to existing and potential customers. Every business will be different and will not be applicable to all, but we hope it will help a few people to at least reposition themselves.
Area #2 – Reposition your product
In our first article (Introducing the 3 R’s), we talked about reducing costs to a minimum. Inevitably, that means reducing spend on anything that could be considered a luxury or even a non-necessity. The challenge for you is that for company’s’ following that advice is that your product or service could fall into that luxury or non-necessity category unless you do something about it.
This will of course apply differently to different businesses. Toilet-paper companies are smiling now. Whereas the restaurant industry is really struggling and yet are coming up with innovative survival strategies.
Objective – A marketing strategy that considers the Corona Virus impact
Tactics:
· Determine the current perception of your product/service
· Decide on which elements can be repositioned as ‘necessity’
· Implement revised marketing in all key channels
· Maintain website / foot traffic
We have been impressed by the revised marketing we have seen from one of our local Personal Trainers (Get your program online and I will monitor you remotely by live streaming).
Be careful not to just focus on new customers though, you’ve got existing customers that you also need to convince of your value in these difficult times:
Objective – Current customers maintain interest and use of your product
Tactics:
· Send customer comms describing how product helps in current situation
· Offer extensions / bonus features to help them even more
· Offer targeted support on how to use your product in most effective way
· Maintain customer usage levels as high as possible
You’re going to have to go expend a lot of energy in ensuring that customers remain engaged in your product. That might mean accepting lower margins and giving away features or extras that would normally be reserved for higher paying customers. Not only do these kinds of projects help you to retain customers, they also help your fellow businesses and people to get through this difficult time.
We at RLActive will be offering customers free workshops to help them plan their own Corona Virus strategies. Look out for our forthcoming webinar series.