Marketing Post-Coronavirus: Practical To-dos for Marketers for the New Normal

Jason McDonald

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March 22, 2020

First, let’s get a few things out of the way.

PEOPLE FIRST. THEN BEER (CORONA BEER). THEN THE VIRUS.

As Suze Orman says, “People first.” Your health. The health of your family. Your friends. Your coworkers. Priorities. Chip in — participate in Social Distancing. Avoid crowds. Follow CDC advice. Be kind to each other in the stores; help others. We’re all in this together, and by “all” not just Americans but everyone, everywhere , globally — Chinese, Italians, Iranians, Brits, everyone, everywhere… everyone who has lungs and friends and loved ones and wants to breathe.

Second, Coronavirus isn’t Corona beer. Though at least at first, a few people thought so. But as marketers, we do think in terms like “branding,” and the beer has a brand (Fun! Cinco de Mayo! Mexico!), and the virus has a “brand” (Scary! Might kill you! Anyone can have it, even people who seem “safe”! Panic now and panic early!). So, third, one of the best books ever written on marketing (Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin), is ironically very accurate about how the Coronavirus isn’t, well, just a virus.

It’s an ideavirus.

Coronavirus is spreading through our societies as an “idea,” as a “panic.” The disruption it’s inflicting on all of us is an “idea” — things like — don’t fly in airplanes, don’t get into cruise ships. Buy masks, toilet paper, stop going to restaurants, etc. Social distancing, self-isolation, flattening the curve… These are “ideas,” and they are spreading faster than the virus itself. Are we underreacting? Overreacting? What can we do? #Confusion #Coronavirus

As marketers, we deal in ideas. Brands are ideas. Our job is to build our company’s brand and — ultimately — sell more stuff. We build ideaviruses, or at least try to…when times are normal. But they’re not.

What can we — as marketers — do to help our businesses and nonprofits survive, and come out on the other side, the post-Coronavirus side, perhaps bruised and battered, but surviving and even thriving in a post-Coronavirus world?

Let’s dig in.

A MODEL OF WHAT’S HAPPENING — 7 STAGES OF CORONAVIRUS IDEAVIRUS

We need a model of the “big picture,” of how this all works, and how Coronavirus is impacting our businesses. Right now, there’s a dramatic shift in demand — in preferences and desires to buy, “away” from nearly everything (but not entirely everything), so that it’s very difficult to sell anything. The buyers either don’t want to, or can’t, “buy” most of what we have to “sell.” No one wants to book cruises. No one wants to book airline travel to Italy (or at least very few). And the government is making it pretty difficult to do things like eat out in a restaurant.

Demand is (generally) collapsing, but for how long?

And will demand be different when it returns post-Coronavirus? (A few things like Zoom video stock, surgical masks and ventilators, and even toilet paper seem to be selling MORE, however — more on this in a moment).

Let’s dig deeper.

How does a Pandemic (or any type of crisis) move through an economy? There aren’t really a lot of good models for this, so I’m going to adapt one from a 7-stage summary of the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle, that is — the famous “stages of grief” that you’ve probably already know —

1. Shock — initial paralysis at hearing the bad news.
2. Denial — trying to avoid the inevitable.
3. Anger — frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion
4. Bargaining— seeking in vain for a way out
5. Depression— final realization of the inevitable
6. Testing— seeking realistic solutions
7. Acceptance-finally finding the way forward

As of the time of this writing (March 22, 2020), I’d argue we’re somewhere in the first two phases — shock and denial, but moving clumsily into #4 — seeking hopefully not in vain for a way out. Our society is largely paralyzed, and we’re doing necessary but very “short term” things to adapt to the new Coronavirus world. And not just hospitals gearing up and restaurants closing down, but we — as marketers and businesspeople — doing things like canceling ad spends, postponing projects, laying off junior staff, canceling out contractor work, and generally hunkering down into some type of hibernation as we “process” what this all means.

Hoarding cash is a big thing everyone is doing; it’s a type of hibernation.

You can also see signs of the “Anger” stage as politicians (I won’t name names) start to blame this-person or that-person, as if “blaming” and “shaming” are going to solve the pandemic.

What’s more interesting for us as marketers is looking forward to the future stages, stages #4 — #7, that is progressively adapting to the new Coronavirus environment so that our businesses can at least survive, if not thrive, in the new Coronavirus world. Let me paraphrase a quote I heard from a futurist:

“I spend a lot of time thinking about the future. Because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”

I’m not sure who said that, but you get the point. We’re ALL going to live in the Coronavirus world, so we need to start seriously brainstorming what it’s going to look like and what our role as marketers is going to be in this New Normal.

Thinking proactively and systematically about the future gives us an advantage. While everyone else is in stages #1, #2, and #3, we can “jump forward” into stages #4 and beyond and start preparing for the New Normal, post-Coronavirus.

So, let’s dig in then to the stages #4 — #7 and look for practical to-dos you can execute for your company or nonprofit to thrive in a Coronavirus world.

QUESTION #1: WHERE ARE YOU — RIGHT NOW — ON THE CORONAVIRUS CONTINUUM?

You need to take stock. Stop being the proverbial “deer in the headlights” and start thinking, start analyzing. How is your business being impacted by Coronavirus right now? Where are you on the Coronavirus Continuum?

The Coronavirus Continuum of Demand

← Total Collapse | Constriction | Increase | Radical Increase →

On the far left, we have businesses like Cruise Lines that are completely shut down, 100% out. A little to the right, we’d have businesses like concerts and bars that are nearly or totally shut down.

You’d think concerts and bars would be “over,” but they’re not. For example, many musicians like John Legend are giving “virtual concerts,” that is finding innovative ways to “give concerts” online without person-to-person contact, and bars and restaurants as in Texas can now deliver liquor. 99% down and out isn’t 100% down and out, in other words. It’s 1% hope. Is there a 1% hope (or better) for your business? Where are you on the continuum of Coronavirus?

A little farther to the right, we have businesses like airlines which, while experiencing a catastrophic decline in demand, are still flying. There are still flights, though the volume has fallen dramatically as only essential travel is occurring. And still farther to the right we have businesses like toilet paper producers, hand sanitizer manufacturers, and producers of bread and rice, who are experiencing a (temporary?) surge in demand. And still farthest to the right we have essential healthcare services like hospitals, ICU units, and respiratory therapists who are experiencing not a collapse of demand but a massive increase in demand, one that seems likely to extend beyond the crisis phase.

So question #1 — where is your business on the Coronavirus Continuum? Far left, middle, or far right? And — if you produce more than one product or service — are there products or services that are experiencing MORE demand? Restaurants, for example, might be seeing a surge in take-out orders vs. a collapse in in-person dining. Hotels might be seeing the retention of essential travel vs. the collapse of discretionary travel. Colleges are seeing a shift towards online learning. Your to-do here is to dig deep — right now, what part of your business (if any) is still experiencing demand? Can you pivot towards that demand? Can you grow that sector of your business? Is it temporary or permanent?

QUESTION #2— IS THIS AN EXTINCTION EVENT OR A TEMPORARY SETBACK?

If you were a dinosaur looking up sixty-six million years ago and saw a bright flash — poof!, you’d just experienced an “extinction event.” It didn’t matter how brilliant your business continuity plan was, you were dinosaur toast. If, however, you were a little mammal, the climate was perhaps a tad too warm, yet you could survive the temporary heat of the crisis and look forward to a planet free of your dinosaur competitors. Their extinction event was your opportunity. So as you inventory where you are on the Coronavirus Continuum of Demand, are you (and your products or services) a dinosaur or a little rodent? Is this a catastrophic extinction event for your company, or a painful yet temporary setback? Is it different for different products and services that you offer?

Ignore (or kill) your dinosaurs, and look for your little rodents.

It may be the case that cruise ships become a thing of the past, but destination theme parks like Disneyland survive with some modifications on “social distancing.” It may be true (and I hope it is) that “wet markets” in Asia become banned, because quite frankly, the cost that they pose to the human race far outweighs any “benefit” that society gets from them. But other markets may thrive post-CoronaVirus. And if it’s just a “temporary setback,” then your business and marketing strategy might be just to put everything on hold. Cancel all your advertising. Fire your outside consultants. Slash internal spending. Hibernate until the earth cools off, and then business will return to normal.

You have three basic strategies -

1. Products or services that may be dead forever. #ExtinctForever
2. Products or services that are dead temporarily. #HibernateUntilAfterTheCrisis
3. Products or services that are “in demand” or may even face increasing demand. #GrowThemDuringandPerhapsAfter

Which strategy makes sense for your business as a whole? For an individual product or service?

QUESTION 3: DO YOU KNOW YOUR KNOWN KNOWNS, KNOWN UNKNOWNS, AND UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS? YOUR KKs, KUs, and UUs?

Maybe, however, you don’t know if you’re a dinosaur or a rodent. Maybe you’re not sure if this is an “extinction event” for a product or service, or just a temporary setback. Maybe a temporary surge in demand (e.g., toilet paper) is just a weird fluke that will be evened out by a decline in demand in the near future… We know that the Coronavirus crisis will end — that’s a known known, but we don’t know when — that’s a known unknown, and we don’t know of twists and turns that we haven’t foreseen, those are unknown unknowns.

As philosopher-king Donald Rumsfeld once said —

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Question #3 is thus a research question. Start researching systematically where your business and its marketing stand now, in the short term, and in the long term.

Meaning, with respect to your business / marketing and Coronavirus, what do you know that you know (e.g., demand has fallen 90% for our restaurant’s in-house dining vs. just 70% for our take-out), what do you know that you don’t know (When will bans on gatherings be relaxed? Will there be a run on the banking system? How much demand for our product or service will return when the crisis ends?), and what do you not know that you don’t know (for example, is this a permanent change in demand — will Cruise Ships go, entirely, the way of the dinosaur? Will imports from China be entirely banned? Will new regulations hit your industry post-Coronavirus and, if so, what might they look like?).

Take YOUR product YOUR service YOUR customers YOUR industry and research your KK’s, KU’s, and UU’s.

Take out a piece of paper.

• Make a list of your KK’s. Make a list of your KU’s. Make a list of your UU’s.

Start simple, just sit at a desk with a coworker (at least six feet apart, or via Zoom meeting) and whiteboard out your KKs, your KUs, and your UUs.

Then, start to sketch out potential scenarios…building upon each.

For example, IF the government bans restaurants for 6 weeks, for 6 months, for ever… THEN our business will be like X, or IF people become permanently afraid to sit next to each other, our airline will have to do such-and-such (e.g., permanently increase our cleaning procedures, etc.). IF we have to move our university to 90% online classes, THEN we will need such-and-such infrastructure, and such-and-such marketing to “sell” our online classes. Write down your scenarios, and start planning for what you need to be doing (today, next week, next month) in scenario #1, #2, #3, etc.

QUESTION #4: ARE YOU STAYING CLOSE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS?

Customers are king, jack, and queen when it comes to marketing. What do they want? What will they pay for? How do they learn about, get excited about, and ultimately purchase your product or service? Many of us are in “panic mode” due to Coronavirus, and we’ve stopped communicating with customers. But you don’t want to do that. You need your customers as a source of information and — long term — you want to stay “top of mind” with them, so that when the rebound comes, they look to you to reboot their purchases.

Question #4 is thus — are you staying close to your customers? Part of this is research and part of this is outreach, to stay top of mind. Let’s look at each one separately.

Research. Are you monitoring what your customers are doing and saying? The beauty of the online world is that there are easy tools to monitor customer conversations and look for trends. For example, there’s Google News, Google Alerts, and one of my favorites, “topics” inside of Google news such as COVID-19. You can also do keywords searches that are relevant to your industry such as a search for “Coronavirus Restaurants” on Google and using Tools > Past Month set your time horizon for recent items. Twitter is an obvious tool as well, using hashtags that are relevant to your industry such as #CoronavirusRestaurants or #CoronavirusBayArea. Other tools like Buzzsumo let you listen in to customer conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. So listen in, and figure out what your customers and industry gurus are talking about, specific to YOUR industry.

Outreach. The second part of Question #4 is how do you stay top of mind with your customers during the crisis and its aftermath? Hopefully, you’ve pre-built your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and email lists pre-crisis. Perhaps they’re rudimentary. But perhaps you have a lot of “free time” now in the Coronavirus world to beef up your social channels. Reach out with content. Identify and share useful content that’s specific to the needs of your customers and your industry. Host a Twitter chat. Go on YouTube Live or Facebook Live. Set up a Facebook Poll or Twitter Poll and ask customers questions. How are they coping? What are they looking to learn about? Be that “useful expert” in your industry.

Interact with your customers.

Pay attention to comments on your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social accounts. Respond back. Answer questions. Be there for your customers “online” if you can’t be there “in person.” And if you or your customers are not super active on social, send them an email. Check in via email. Check in via telephone. Ask them not only how they are coping with Coronavirus as a person but how they see the situation unfolding for them (and you) and in your industry. Your marketing to-dos are a) research, to learn what’s happening specific to your customers and industry, and b) outreach, to stay top-of-mind and close to your customers so that they know you continue to be the “helpful expert” that is there now and will be there in the future post-Coronavirus.

QUESTION#5: WHAT’S YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE NEW NORMAL?

Thinking about the future is hard. Because it’s the future. But we all hope to live out the rest of our lives in the future, so you need to think about it. Think scenario-planning not predictions. Think probability not certainty. With your research in hand, you should be able to sketch out some scenarios for your company, your industry, your customers in the new Coronavirus world. A New York City Italian restaurant might have scenarios such as —

• Restaurants stay closed to “in person” dining until October, 2020.
• Take-out, however, remains open and increasingly vibrant as New Yorkers get sick of cooking at home. Delivery and food quality in a take-out environment become paramount.
• The government lets restaurants re-open but mandates six feet between tables, and forbids lines or congregating waiting for tables; thus, you have to a) move your tables farther apart, and b) set up some type of text-messaging system to alert waiting customers when their table is ready.
• Demand shifts towards concerns about cleanliness, and you need to showcase the steps you take with staff and customers to be hyper-clean in a post-Coronavirus environment.

In any of these scenarios, you’d make some predictions for your marketing, such as —

• Our website becomes the “front door” to our restaurant more than ever as it become online first and real-world second.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) becomes more important than ever. Do we rank on Google?
• Google Ads becomes more important than ever. What are key terms we might advertise on once demand starts to rebound?
• We need to participate in services such as GrubHub or Doordash more enthusiastically than before. Who can we partner with for the post-Coronavirus future?
• We need to grow our social media presence so that “home bound” customers know we’re open for business, and learn the “new ways” that they can purchase our Italian food both take-out and dine-in.
• Perhaps we need our own app?
• Perhaps we need a better email list? What would our customers want to hear about and why?

Question #5 is thus thinking about your scenarios, planning your marketing, and looking at the infrastructure you’ll need to be successful in the New Normal. In other words, brainstorm your scenarios as a marketer, and then inventory the digital (and non-digital) infrastructure you’ll need to excel in the new environment. Is it your website? Your Facebook page? Tweets on relevant hashtags? Your e-commerce store? Merely answering the phone to field customer inquiries about hours and service offerings? Perhaps it’s using Google My Business to communicate hours you’re open during and after the Coronavirus hot period?

QUESTION #6: MARKETING STRIKES BACK

My Mom, wise as so many Moms are, has always told me a couple pearls of wisdom. The first is “break it down into manageable parts.” That’s really good advice, Mom! I can’t fix the Coronavirus, but I can update my Google My Business listing to reflect changes in my hours (and those of my clients) during the crisis. Or, I can’t be open as a restaurant, but I can make sure my take-out services are working. Or, I can’t operate my brick-and-mortar store, but I can beef up my e-commerce and shipping services for online customers. Or my business is 100% shut down, but I can plan for the post-Coronavirus rebound in demand. Or my business is extinct, and I can take an online class to prepare for a new career.

The second advice my Mom has always given me is to remember — in times of crisis — that, “this too shall pass.” Remember the horrors of September 11, 2001? Yes, it was terrible. But it did pass. Remember the worst snowstorm or hurricane of your life? That passed, didn’t it? Remember the financial crisis of 2008–2009? Yes, that passed too.

Coronavirus, too, shall pass. The world may be different (think airport security before and after 9/11, or home loan applications in 2006 vs. 2009), but normalcy will return. Perhaps a new normal but something normal. You and your business live in the present, but you’ll also live in the future. So NOW is the time to start preparing for that future, the “New Normal.”

How so? Assuming you’ve researched and brainstormed your business through the seven phases of grief / Coronavirus, focusing now on #6 and #7 — testing and acceptance. Accept that many annoying features of Coronavirus such as social distancing and skepticism about business cleanliness might become the “new normal.” Start testing products and services (and tweaks to products and services) that might be able to survive and even prosper in the New Normal.

It’s a good time to work on foundational skills for your business. Bolster your foundational marketing assets that will be there, like little rodents waiting for the heat to dissipate, ready to jump to the surface and multiply once the “climate” cooperates.

You have the present moment to prepare for the future. As marketers, this is a “learning” and “preparatory” moment, such as —

1. Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Is your website optimized for the new keyword patterns that will reflect how customers will search for your products or services post-Coronavirus? Or, if things won’t change, can you use the time NOW to finally get around to optimizing your website in your newly found “copious spare time?” To-do: work on your website design and its SEO-friendliness.
2. Your Online Ads. Perhaps they’re frozen and put completely on hold. But you can set them up and optimize them so that they’re ready in a moment’s notice to go live, once the government eases up on restrictions and once the hurricane of Coronavirus passes. Do you understand Google Ads? Might they work for you? Ditto for ads on Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram. You can get them ready NOW so that they’re ready to go in the future. To-do: research the right keywords for online advertising and even set up “paused” ads ready to go at that moment when demand begins to bounce back.
3. Your Social Channels. Perhaps you’ve ignored Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok because prior to Coronavirus, you just “didn’t have the time.” Well, guess what? Time is now what you have in spades. Research and understand how to use them. Chart out your content marketing strategy now as we pass through the storm — content that’s good for now (the crisis moment), content that will be good as restrictions ease, and content that will be good once the “New Normal” solidifies. To-do: build up your social channels and social engagement now with “fun,” “free,” and “informative” content so you’re ready to sell in the post-Coronavirus environment.
4. Your infrastructure. Perhaps your website kinda sort sucked. Now is a perfect time to upgrade it to best practices! Perhaps you had a little e-commerce traffic, but not much. Now’s a great time to beef up your e-commerce capabilities! Perhaps you had an app or participated in an app, but only half-heartedly. Now’s the time to dig into that app and really master it! What are the components of your infrastructure that you neglected when times were “good,” but you now have the time to fix, now that time is the one asset you still have?

The to-do of Question #6 is to identify and build the relevant marketing infrastructure you’ll need to excel as a company when Coronavirus ends, or we establish a “new normal” post-Coronavirus.

QUESTION #7: ARE YOU A LIFELONG LEARNER?

I worked at a Media Company in San Jose, California, in 1994. I remember the company’s graphic design artist at the time — can’t remember her name, and I remember the company conversation about the Internet. I vividly remember her saying that she understood desktop publishing, and she just wasn’t going to get“into” this annoying “Internet thing.” She refused to learn website design. I’m not sure what happened to her career, but I remember her resistance to the future. Vividly. I was sort of stunned, but I was young and very junior, so I kept my mouth shut.

My response was different. In 1994, I didn’t know anything about the Internet. Nothing about web design. Just a little about email. But I got in my car, I drove to Fry’s Electronics, I bought the one AND ONLY book they had about web design and I built my first website, which became a portal for embedded systems engineers. It made me a lot of money.

Was I an engineer? No.

Was I a website designer? No.

Did I resist the future? No. I embraced it.

I am a lifelong learner. Are you?

The Coronavirus has delivered a terrible blow to our societies, first and foremost to the people who are impacted directly with the virus. Hopefully, you and your loved ones will avoid serious infection. I hope they do. I pray that they do. But I can’t do anything about that, really.

What can I do? What can I learn? What do I have (and you have), probably more than ever? TIME.

Time means you can go into “learning” mode. Don’t understand website design? There’s never been a better time to take an online course in WordPress. Don’t understand SEO? You can buy a book (mine, of course) on SEO, or take an online course. Haven’t a clue on how Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, Instagram Ads, or other forms of online advertising work? Each vendor has robust tutorials on how to get started, and folks like me produce third-party books and tutorials on how to learn.

Not sure about social media? Again, there are free tutorials, paid books and classes, online webinars and conferences. You can “invest in yourself” as a marketer by taking some of your new “copious” free time and going back to school to learn. Set aside an hour a day (alone or with your team) to “learn” SEO, “master” Google ads, or “get into” social media marketing. Then take that knowledge back to the infrastructure of your company and plan out your survival strategy for Coronavirus.

The future is just a moment away. You will live your life in it. I wish you the best of luck!

~ Jason McDonald

P.S: POSTSCRIPT ON FREE RESOURCES

As an author, journalist, and collector of all things digital, I produce some free resources for the marketing community —

#1 The Marketing Almanac — my PDF cornucopia of marketing tips, tools, resources, tutorials, and online learning items for digital marketing. It has sections on SEO, Social Media Marketing, Google Ads, and more.

#2 My THE MARKETING BOOK, which I am giving away free during the Coronavirus crisis. The book is an “evergreen” guide to thinking through your marketing step-by-step.

#3 Stay in Touch. You can follow me on Twitter. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Email me a question.