I recently saw someone write in a Facebook Group, “no one is going to be buying right now so I’m going to stop everything”. 

What that signals to me is her own mindset and her own belief rather than necessarily the reality. The fact that she is just going to stop all of her marketing, stop selling and close down her business because she believes that no one is going to buy from her right now. 

It is actually up to your customers whether they buy from you right now or not. Don’t make that decision for them and don’t shortchange yourself by assuming that no one is going to buy from your business right now. 

I understand that day by day and almost hour by hour, there are measures being put in place by the federal, state and territory governments, which means that some businesses do need to close down. But if that’s not you, then don’t just decide you’re going to stop serving and stop selling. 

I understand that perhaps you have a sense of guilt or shame around marketing and making offers and selling right now. Let me make a point here: you can profit through this and that’s very different to profiting from this. 

And so just know that it’s okay for you to keep making money right now. Even if other people are struggling, it’s okay. And in fact, the economy needs us to keep marketing and to keep selling and to keep that money changing hands and to give our customers a reason to spend. 

In this episode, I share some approaches that we can be using to navigate during this time. 

Audit Your Business

And so here’s a few steps for you to take to look at the different revenue streams or the different offers that you have in your business.

1. Pause
   Let’s be realistic here. What potentially do we need to pause right now? And what is something where there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities for us right now? This might be areas that perhaps haven’t ever really been that profitable and haven’t ever really taken off. And they might be ones that you say, right, let’s just pause those right now. 

2. Pivot
   The second is what will you pivot and what opportunities do you have to get really creative and to look at doing things in ways that you’ve never done before. I’ve been loving seeing so many different businesses doing this and learning and looking at the different technologies and processes that they can put in place pretty quickly to actually pivot different parts of their business and keep on serving their customers. 

3. Press Go
   And the third category is also what will you press go on? What do you have that can help people even more? And this comes back to it’s okay for you to sell. It’s okay for you to still be helping people and to be asking for money to do that. And I think sometimes that people might think, “you should be offering everything for free right now”.

But that’s not gonna help anybody because you still have your bills to pay. You still have staff or contractors to support so they can have money coming in and so they can keep the economy going and be spending money and keeping other businesses thriving. 

So if that thought comes into your head that maybe you should just offer everything for free or slash all of your prices, I really encourage you to rethink that and of course be generous and serve and you can do that through your content and creating some really great resources.

But also understand that just because what is going on right now, this doesn’t actually mean the value that you have to offer is suddenly diminished or suddenly goes away. You still have so much value in what you can offer.

Double Down on your Marketing

The best time to really double down is all the time, but even especially when others are not. And so I want you to really be communicating with your audience and your customers and clients. And it’s time for us as business owners to really step into a leadership role. And to show that we emphasize.

History has shown in the past that when a recession hits, marketing is often one of the first places business owners slash or attempt to cut. And history shows that this is a mistake and it’s well documented that cutting marketing in a downturn will only help defend profits potentially in the very short term. But ultimately the brand will emerge weaker and much less profitable. 

I liked what the Harvard Business Review had to say about this and they said, take a scalpel rather than a cleaver to the marketing budget. And nimbly adjust strategies, tactics, and offerings in response to shifting demand. And the businesses that do that are more likely than others to flourish both during and after these times. 

So if there was any time to show up and share your great content that inspires or entertains or helps people, it’s now and people are spending more time online right now and it’s an opportunity for you to get your brand in front of them. And we are so lucky with online marketing: it costs us nothing and it’s such a quick and powerful way to get in front of our audience and connect.

Focus on Personal & Business Development

Now the other thing to look at is if you’ve been seeing a drop in business and if you have been impacted.

I’ve loved seeing what some of my members inside The Modern Marketing Collective have been saying at this time with such a positive mindset. They’ve been like, “Hey Emily, I finally have time to work through some more of the training”. 

And so how can you work on your business right now? And perhaps there are things that you haven’t found time for before, projects you have been putting off. Maybe that’s creating content. Maybe that’s investing in your learning. Maybe it’s recording podcast episodes or actually creating that freebie for your email list and growing your email list. Or maybe it’s filming some videos.

This is a great time to actually focus on what we can control right now, what we can work on and look at the opportunities that we have.

For instance, I’m going to now be moving to two weekly episodes of The Emily Osmond Show. Along with our regular Tuesday episode, I’m also going to be adding in bite-sized episodes each Thursday. 

Care for Your Customers

Now, the other point I want to make is to really just look after and love your existing customers. So many different studies show us that it’s cheaper and it’s more profitable to retain your existing customers than to acquire new ones, which is another reason why I’m a big advocate for memberships.

So prioritize marketing or campaigns that help actually stimulate repeat purchases or upsell or cross-sell across your business to your existing customers too and make sure that your strategies are focused on your existing customers and reward their loyalty.

Look after them, find ways that you can support them even more and then if there are customers that you do need to say goodbye to, they will come back to you. 

This is Temporary

We will get through this. Remember that this is temporary and yes, it’s going to hurt some people and things aren’t going to be the same for a while, but it isn’t forever. And we will make it through this. My thoughts go to you and I’m thinking of you.

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