Getting Back to Business - Post Pandemic Marketing

As a small business owner, you wear many if not all of the hats, including marketing. If you’re like me when the pandemic hit you were a little lost in the marketing department. Continuing to advertise for pet sitting and dog walking services given the constraints on people’s movements and the unease with physical contact became, at best, ineffective and, at worst, insensitive. Our first impulse was to simply stop marketing and wait it out. It quickly became evident though that waiting it out was the last thing you should do. The experts agreed that the pandemic was a time for renewed, albeit revised, marketing efforts.

Marketing during the pandemic shifted away from selling and more toward helping and relationship building, arguably where it should have been all along. We embraced an approach of kindness, empathy and working together to get through a tough time. If we were able to continue serving our clients, we made sure they knew we were there for them for whatever they needed, even if that was just a reminder that they weren’t alone. If we couldn’t continue to provide services, we made sure our clients knew what the status of our business was and what they could expect in future. Whichever of these boats you were in, you’ve been working these past months to maintain that connection with your clients and to continue to build those relationships for when things get back to a more normal place.

As we get closer to a post pandemic world, we’ve again got to rethink what our post pandemic marketing looks like. Here are three things to keep in mind as you navigate the new marketing landscape after the crisis.

Love your clients from 6 feet away

The length of a cow, the height of your high school locker, the average height of a refrigerator, a standard dog leash and of course, the distance recommended by the Center for Disease Control for minimizing the spread of Covid-19. These days 6 feet away has become the battle cry of our war against an invisible enemy. We may never look at this distance the same way again.

We are or were at least a society of contact. Hugging close friends and family or even not so close friends, handshakes to do everything from say hello to close a business deal. Running a pet care company is a particularly intimate and personal service. We come into people’s homes and become part of theirs and their pet’s lives. Until the pandemic hit, I strived for and was proud of our personal approach. A warm handshake, close contact when meeting furry family members, meet and greets in people’s homes spent getting to know each of our clients on a personal level. And then the virus hit and we, like everyone else, had to figure out how to love our clients from 6 feet away.

Human connections are everything. How do we promote a personal “hands on” service in a market that is leery of any personal contact? The answer is we find alternative ways to “connect” with our clients and personalize our services. Maybe that’s increased personal messages to our top clients or virtual meet and greets or pet sitting visit updates that include pictures of sanitization activities. Now is the time to put on our creative hats. There are many ways to provide a hands-on service without actually being hands on! We need to brainstorm ideas and include those in our services and correspondingly our post pandemic marketing messages.

Tell them about your new normal

You’re likely taking precautions as we emerge from the pandemic. Your employees are wearing masks and following good hygiene practices such as hand washing and using sanitizers. You may be offering reduced contact initial meet and greets or even completely virtual meet and greets. You may be offering touch free dog walking services where you pick the dog up from the yard or the porch and don’t enter the home at all. We’re all following some form of precautions because we want to keep our client’s and our employees safe.

Don’t assume your clients know this. They will make some assumptions about how you’re conducting your business, hopefully positive assumptions, but you shouldn’t leave this to chance. Use your marketing to stress, more than once, what you’re doing to insure everyone’s safety.

Tell your clients you’re grateful

In my own business I’m grateful that those who were able to, have continued to use our services during the pandemic. There are so many small businesses struggling to survive right now and my heart goes out to them. Many of our clients stayed with us during the pandemic even though in many cases they were now working from home or facing their own financial pressures. They’ve continued to allow us into their homes and trusted us to minimize risk with masks, sanitizers and other methods during a time when every form of contact is a concern.

Those clients who weren’t able to continue services through the pandemic said they’ll come back when it’s passed. I’ve been humbled by the many encouraging notes, messages and texts offering support and commitment to future business. At a time when it was easy as a small business owner to despair that things would ever get better; these words of encouragement and support were invaluable and deeply appreciated.

Make sure your clients know how much you appreciate what they’ve done and have committed to doing in future for you and your business.

Because of the pandemic, many business owners are today where they should have been before this happened. They’ve embraced “what can I do for you” marketing verses “what can you do for me”. We should take this to heart and never go back to a pre-pandemic “sell, sell, sell” approach. Good advice in business is a gift and this advice is a big fat beautiful present with a shiny red bow!

Getting Back to Business – Post Pandemic Marketing

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