Helping you and your business during these challenging times

For the majority of those still able to work, the pandemic has turned the usual office environment and social interaction of the workplace on its head. We have all had to get used to new ways of working with virtual team meetings and lots of conference calls. For many people, there is the added challenge of balancing family life with the working day and for me trying not to get distracted by the added comforts of working from home.

For most businesses, the virus has undoubtedly had a negative impact. Measures have been put in place to try and mitigate some of this impact, it has required some tough decisions and presented new challenges. We have been working closely with our clients during this period to continue to offer them the support they need.

In this insight, I am going to share some of the practical ways we are engaging with clients and some of the challenges we are helping them tackle. Hopefully, some of these will resonate with you or your business, and you will find something that can help you to adapt and get through these times.

Be proactive and be there

Relationships with your clients and customers are vital to your business, and this is a unique time for us all. For me, I have looked to keep as much dialogue with my clients as possible. We have weekly calls scheduled which vary in length from week to week depending on what we need to cover. Sometimes we have a plan to discuss and other times we don't. It is about catching up, talking and seeing where the challenges are, and working together to overcome them. I'm finding these more regular, shorter meetings are allowing us to work as efficiently as possible with our clients, adapting our strategies and prioritising our activity.

Keep talking, keep engaged and be there for your clients. Pick up the phone and give your clients or customers a call. Send an email and check-in to see how they are getting on. Maintaining and improving relationships will undoubtedly put you in the best position to weather the storm and grow your business on the other side.

Be ready to adapt

At Mearns & Gill, we work with our clients to identify their marketing objectives and develop a marketing plan to deliver them. The lockdown has turned many of these plans upside down. We have had to react, adapt and re-focus our activity. Typically, we set short, medium and long-term objectives with a client. Right now, our emphasis is on the short-term, looking at core activity over the next 1, 2 or 3 weeks. It's not usual for us, but we feel it is right for now.

We are, however continuing to think further ahead by having conversations to prepare for life after lockdown. Still, with so many moving parts out with our control, we aren't getting too ahead of ourselves. Regular meetings with clients help us to adapt our strategies and prioritise our activity.

For some of our clients, they have had to close their stores or sales offices temporarily. Some can sell online; some cannot. Where they are not able to, or it does not provide value to advertise or promote themselves in the usual way, we have been working together to look at how they continue to remain engaged with their customers at this time.

One example is running digital campaigns on their social channels, like the recent Inspire Challenge we worked on with Jamieson & Carry. They invited people of all ages to design a piece of jewellery. One design will then be selected and created in their state-of-the-art workshop, and they will donate all proceeds from its sale to the NHS Grampian COVID-19 fund. This campaign allows Jamieson & Carry to keep engaging with their customers while also being able to support the incredible work of our NHS.

Thinking outside the box is essential in times like this. For the many businesses that are continuing to operate during the pandemic, they still need to generate income and sell their services or products. Getting their advertising and messaging right is a challenge we must handle delicately, ensuring any campaigns reflect the current climate and don't come across as insensitive or inappropriate. We have been working with all of our clients to adapt messaging and promotional plans, ensuring they can remain visible and promote themselves.

Take a considered approach and prioritise your activity

For many, the pandemic continues to harm sales and the ability to generate returns at this time causes an inevitable knock-on effect with businesses looking to reduce their expenditure. Marketing spend is not immune to this, and we have been working with clients, reviewing planned marketing and advertising activity, looking at ways to make short-term savings while minimising the risk of further damaging their ability to generate sales.

For some clients, marketing budgets have needed to come down, and we fully support this decision. We are working with our clients, advising them how best to invest any available marketing budget at this time to ensure the maximum return on this investment. One area we have been looking at more in the current climate is digital advertising as people find themselves indoors more and spending more time online. Using advertising services like Pay Per Click (PPC), we can help clients reach potential customers who are still actively searching for their products or services. With PPC, you only pay when a user clicks on your advert, so regardless of the budget you set for a campaign, you only pay if it delivers you results. Budgets can change in an instant, and we can provide clients with a clear report on their return on investment for any campaign.

Using other services like Google Analytics can help you to track visitors to your website, review changes in traffic over a specified period and monitor the effectiveness of your activity. When times are more challenging than ever, being able to measure the results of your marketing activity is critical.

Think smart and push yourself out of your comfort zone

We have all found ourselves having to work in ways that we are maybe not so used to or don't come as natural to us. Delivering Mearns & Gill and client events is a big part of our business, and the lockdown and on-going restrictions have had a significant impact on this activity. With events as we know it unlikely to return for a considerable period, we have had to review our event calendar, engage with our clients and stakeholders and look at how best to take this forward.

Many of our events like the conferences and lunch and learn events are about bringing people together to share ideas, best practice, experiences and solutions. These elements are more important than ever, and there is still considerable demand for these events. Our challenge was to find a way to deliver them in a safe and productive environment. Over the last two weeks, we have launched our first virtual events and webinars, which have been a real success. It is new to us all, and we are continually looking to improve this service, but we can already see the value and the feedback from attendees has been encouraging.

We have also had to change the way we are promoting our events, and one example of this is our Build It conference which is due to take place in November. Usually, we would be having our launch event, promoting abstracts, sponsorship and ticket sales, but the timing is not right for that at the moment. Speaking with the Build It committee, it became clear that the community value delivered as part of this conference was crucial. The committee was keen to provide a platform to discuss the range of issues the construction sector are facing. We listened, and last week we ran the Build It 'Business as Possible' webinar which brought together key individuals from across the North-East construction community to discuss the range of challenges facing the sector at this time. We were delighted to have over 100 people register for this event which made for some interesting debate and discussions.

This event showed us that you could keep the momentum for your event going. You need to keep your community engaged, and this will hopefully ensure you are in the best possible position to switch your focus back to your 'normal' activity when the time is right.

Maybe your company is finding it more challenging to keep engaged at this time with your audience? Perhaps you're considering using webinars to share knowledge or insights? Or maybe you could host a series of short videos or a Q&A on your social channels. There are lots of tools to help you stay connected, and it all comes down to about having the confidence to push yourself. It doesn't have to be perfect, and if you need a bit of help or guidance, don't be afraid to ask. Remember, we are all in this together.

I hope you have found some of this insight informative and have practical advice to take away that will help you or your business at this time. If you want to discuss any of the areas further, then feel free to drop me an email, and I would be happy to have a call. Take care.