Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

COVID-19: What Your Business Needs to Do to Survive During the Coronavirus Pandemic

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 154

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Today's episode is a special edition broadcast because so many clients and others have asked what our businesses should do in the midst of the current coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. I want to offer my own perspectives not because I am an expert per se in managing pandemics (I don't know of any marketers who are!), but because you need to listen to a lot of different perspectives to navigate the best path forward, and I want to be one of the voices that you tune into. It is this same concept that I bring up as advice in this episode. Stay positive and stay safe!

As mentioned in the podcast, take a screenshot of your online review for The Age of Influence and send it to neal@nealschaffer.com to schedule your 15-minute consultation.

Key Highlights

[02:07] My Advice On How COVID19 Affect Marketing

[04:17] Stay Positive

[04:50] Pivot After A Crisis

[06:40] Now Is The Best Time To Induce Digital Products and Services

[07:56] Marketing Always Needs Pivoting

[09:44] Bids For Ads

[10:22] Strengthening Marketing Infrastructure

Notable Quotes

  • The most important advice I can give you is that nobody is an expert on this and nobody knows. This is brand new.
  • I do think that if we want to control this, that is really the only thing we can control. And understand that whenever we go outside and interact with someone or get close to someone, we are just increasing the risk that we or our loved ones are going to get that disease with every social instance.
  • We can control our positivity. And when we're positive, we see opportunities that we're not going to see if we're negative. So that being said, when we get through this, things will be different.
  • So if you don't have a digital product or service, now is a great time to create one, your revenue may be going way down, get that digital product or service up as soon as possible.
  • It's another pivot that you need to do. But you need to look for opportunities to serve your audience and help them.
  • If you can ship product or if you do have digital products and services, this might be an opportunity so long as you can tap into the needs and serve your audience and what they're going through right now.
  • You need to continue to show up for your audience.
  • There's no easy way forward, we cannot control what we cannot control, we can control what we can control. 

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Neal Schaffer:

This is the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help sales and marketing professionals, entrepreneurs and small business owners, build, leverage and monetize their influence in digital and social media. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. Welcome to episode number 154. Of the maximize your social influence podcast. Today's episode is being sponsored by my new book, The Age of influence, it was not published at the right timing by any means. But it is an example of me trying to serve my audience, despite the fact that we are in the midst of this pandemic crisis. For those of you that already bought the book and reviewed it, I thank you very much. I am offering for any of you that end up buying the book and placing an online review anywhere, a free 15 minute consultation with me already had some take me up on that offer. And I hope you will as well. It's a small little thing I can do to thank you for your support. So today's episode, is the special COVID-19 edition of this podcast. Now, I in no way planned on creating this podcast. And in fact, I have been trying to avoid publishing content about COVID-19. Because it is not something that I intended or want to news Jack. I've seen so many others write about it. I don't think people have negative intentions, when they're writing about it. They want to help people. But I thought very early on, it was sort of news jacking ish. And I just sort of wanted to avoid that. But you know, the reality is that I am getting asked a lot of questions from clients and from others what to do, how does this affect them. And I thought it was important to bring my voice into the conversation, one of many voices that I hope you'll listen to. So with that in mind, because I want to serve you, I want to give you my own advice for today. First of all, the most important advice I can give you is that nobody is an expert on this and nobody knows. This is brand new. And I'm a Gen Xer. So I've been around longer than Millennials are definitely, you know, Gen Z, this is really unprecedented. And while there are economic recessions that I have lived through, I equate this to war, we are out of war. My daughter who's a freshman in high school is saying, Daddy, all these people are posting World War Three hashtags. And I didn't get what he meant, because I said, you know, you're you're out of war with another country. But this is the closest of world war three I think we've ever had. We're at war with a global enemy that is invisible. And we need to treat it like war, because we have to do extraordinary things. The people on the front lines are not soldiers, their doctors, their nurses, their staff, their medical professionals. Those are the people that are putting their lives in harm's way for our health. And we need to do everything we can to support them. I've had a few doctor friends of mine say, Neil, you're an influencer, you should you know, remind people about social distancing? Well, I think it's in your best interest, whether you understand it or not. And I do believe when the President of the United States even comes out and talks about it, that you all understand how important that is. So I'm not here to preach to you by any means. But I do think that if we want to control this, that is really the only thing we can control. And understand that whenever we go outside and interact with someone or get close to someone, we are just increasing the risk that we or our loved ones are going to get that disease with every social instance. So I don't need to remind you, but I'm obviously going outside as very little as possible. But what I wanted to get back to was that nobody knows no one is an expert. You need to take everything with a grain of salt, you need to really find your own answer. But I'm hoping that this provides one more voice that you can listen to. So the next thing I want to say is you have to stay positive. We are going to get through this pandemics do not last forever. Okay? You can shut her down and think the world's coming to an AMA that gets you nowhere, right? We can control our positivity. And when we're positive, we see opportunities that we're not going to see if we're negative. So that being said, when we get through this, things will be different. And the concept here is that with every recession we've gone through, and it was really the recession before this in 2008, which got me started on this incredible social media journey myself We will get back online. But when we return, there's a shift. There's a pivot. You know, today Macy's announced that 130,000 People are going to be furloughed. Well, Macy's was also an example of a retail outlet that didn't embrace the internet shopping early enough. And when they come back online, probably not a lot of their stores are going to come back online, because it was already a trend that they were cutting down. And hey, now's a good time to really cut down to make sure that they can maximize shareholder income and shareholder profits. So that's sort of the thing that's going to happen. But on the other hand, new industries will appear, we're gonna see a new growth in medical technology, right, we can only imagine and medical support staff, facilities, and all the supplies that all those facilities need, we're gonna see new, obviously, we're gonna have a growth, I believe in telemedicine, and remotes, testing, even we see these derived through a COVID-19 test location. So there will be new things that appear and habits will change. Right buying habits will change, our buying habits will change. If we've never done grocery shopping on the internet, that changed. I think for a lot of us during this pandemic, in fact, we probably got a lot of stuff on the internet, we never thought we would. So with that in mind, what this means is that this digital transformation that's been going on, you know, since the internet was born, will continue to accelerate. And it's not just about from, if you're listening, this podcast and the information you want to get from this, it's not just about obviously using digital more and more to promote your product. But it's also trying to induce a digital product or service as part of your offerings. And if you don't have it, now, it's your own risk mitigation. If you do have it, then the effects of this recession are not going to be nearly as impactful, negatively speaking, as they are for other people. So if you don't have a digital product or service, now is a great time to create one, your revenue may be going way down, get that digital product or service up as soon as possible. Even if it's and there's a lot of different digital products that you can create even one on one, video coaching is might be the easiest thing to do. One on One group coaching, membership site. These are things that are not that complicated that you can do very, very quickly, and try to generate some income while you try to architect something a little bit more scalable. So what can you do? One of my clients said, and it's a Japanese client, and you know, the way to translate what he said the CEO said, from pinch to chance. pinchy got a chance to a and it's such a impactful way of thinking about it. Because when we're in a pinch, there's got to be a chance to get out of that pinch, but also a new opportunity. And marketers, especially if you've been in digital and social media marketing, with every algorithm change, you're pivoting right? When Instagram gets too big, and your organic reach goes down, you're gonna pivot somewhere else, just like when you pivoted from Facebook to Instagram. So we're always pivoting and if you're an entrepreneur, your whole life might your whole professional life, at least, maybe about pivoting. So it's another pivot that you need to do. But you need to look for opportunities to serve your audience and help them my client provides IT software. They're an example of an IT software company that provides unique applications. And when you think about it, or when they thought about it, their unique applications actually help companies better manage remote workers. So there's something they can tap into right now, where they can talk about what they're doing. But they're also genuinely serving their audience and helping them in this time. So are there opportunities that you can be doing the same? Can you tie into this pandemic, something that your company does, that you can help people with? And if not, can you offer them something for free? Can you offer them a special discount to show at least that you have empathy for what they're going through, we see a lot of companies doing this, we see a lot of companies changing their logos to emphasize social distancing. And maybe that's something else you can do to get your name out there to encourage people to do this to help stop the spread of this pandemic. Another thing you might be wondering, is now I have clients that literally are deemed unnecessary enterprises and cannot ship product, because they literally can't work out of their warehouse. So for a lot of companies, if you are physically unable to deliver product because you don't have a digital offering, you're going to be pulling the plug on your social media advertising and maybe your influencer collaborations. But if you can ship product or if you do have digital products and services, this might be an opportunity so long as you can tap into the needs and serve your audience and what they're going through right now. There might not be as many bids for those ads, the ads might be cheaper than they ever have been. Even Facebook is hinting that ad revenue is going down from pinch to chance, that may be the opportunity there to really get in and get really, really good results for your advertising dollar that you might have never gotten before. Another thing that you absolutely should be doing is, regardless of what industry you're in, you should have more time now. And if you have more time, that's time that you should be spending on strengthening your marketing infrastructure, making sure that all the things you planned on doing get done, because now's the time you can be doing it. And smart companies are not cutting back on their marketing. But they're saying for the next month or two, we're going to work on these infrastructure things that we have always talked about doing but never did, we're finally going to revise our old branding, we're going to revise the website, which we hadn't done in five years, and we're looking for a chance to do that, we're going to create more content, more digital content, so that when we are out of this, we will be able to fire all cylinders, at 100% strength, we are going to stay the course. And I think this is really important. You need to continue to show up for your audience. If you pull the plug on your social country too scared to post, you're going to miss out. And you're going to not be able to maintain that mindshare, because we are spending more time on social media now. And your audience is going to gravitate towards others that are spending that time. It's sort of like the way I explained it to my kids, who as I said, once a freshman in high school one as a seventh grader, the way you spend your time over this month or two of remote learning is going to differentiate yourself, if you're spending it all playing fortnight compared to other kids that are actually studying a few hours a day, after a month or two, there's going to be a difference, right? Those kids that really put in the time are going to be at a competitive advantage, because they have the time to do lots of things. And it's the same thing with your business. If you just shut down for two months, two months from now, when you go back online, you're going to be at a competitive disadvantage, make it an advantage by showing up and doing all the things that I talked about. There's no easy way forward, we cannot control what we cannot control, we can control what we can control. That's from a personal basis, social distancing, obviously, but for our business, getting back to working on things that are going to help support our growth over the next decade. These are things that we can't always do on a day to day basis, because we don't have time to, if you plan for your business to be around after this pandemic ends, you need to continue investing in it. And you may not have a lot of money to invest, you may not want to invest a lot of money right now. But you do have time to invest. And with that time, you can get a heck of a lot done. So I hope you'll join me from pinch to chance. I have never been busier. Right now I came out with a new book. So obviously I'm in book promotion mode. But I'm reaching out, I'm setting a goal of being interviewed on 100 different podcasts over the next 90 days. I over the last two or three days, I've booked 10 interviews, right? These are things that I always wanted to do never had time to do. But now it's like, you know what, I want to be out there. Because more and more people are on social media, more and more people are looking for answers, and I want to help be one of the voices that they listen to. So it's up to you. Hopefully, this podcast will give you the confidence and a little bit of positive energy, a little bit of positive mojo to help you get over the hump and get back to doing what you were born to do, and that serve others. And there's no better time than now. There's no better place than digital and social media to do that today. So I hope you'll join me in remaining positive and staying the course and moving full speed ahead. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the maximize your social influence podcast. I know it's a little bit different. But when world events come up, where I get asked those questions, it really is a disservice if I don't talk about this with you. You're not going to hear me have episode after episode talking about this. But I do hope that it served you and this is why that I really like to not schedule podcast months in advance, but really like to keep them in the here in in the now so that they are relevant to you. And in that way I can best serve you. So that's another episode. If you liked this episode, I'd really appreciate your reviews, your subscriptions, your feedback, it means the world and it's what? Well, it's what keeps keeps me running for lack of a better word. So thank you, once again for listening. And wherever you are in the world. Make it a great, safe and social Day. Bye Bye everybody.