If your website still has examples and words about what you used to do for your customers before the coronavirus pandemic, you’re doing yourself some serious harm in attracting new clients who will help you stem the tide and come out of this recession stronger and more ready for the future.
“We don’t know when what we were used to will be back,” said business consultant Tom Stimson in his Intentional Success webinar “How to Make a Clean Start with Express Marketing.” “That’s getting in the way of your marketing message.”
Companies need to be asking themselves how they’re going to be relevant to their clients and their new needs in the future and stop trying to tell those customers how they’ve been relevant in the past that might never return, he said.
“Your old message is getting in the way of new customers,” said Stimson. “Maybe you can afford to sit it out for now, but your customers can’t afford to wait. They see your old message all of your website and social media and they see something that’s not what they need.
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“It’s not helping your business or your customers. It sounds like your heart is in the past,” he said, noting that streaming events should be front and center today for companies who built their brands in live events. Virtual events shouldn’t be an add-on, said Stimson. They should be the focus for you today.
“We have to change what the customer perceives us to be,” said Stimson. “You should market the company you need to be to the customer who needs you. It’s easier to keep a customer than to win a customer and it’s easier to win a customer when the market is in flux like it is today.
“If you don’t help people at their most basic need level, you won’t be in their sites when the next big opportunity comes along,” he said.
How to Revamp Your Marketing Message
Stimson says company leaders need to trim old references and images from their websites, make profiles of their target customers and highlight their values.
“Look at sales as a series of conversations that marketing can support,” said Stimson. “The key is letting go of what you can’t be right now. You want to share your knowledge, sell your services and help the buyer see themselves doing business with you.
“You need to understand the customer’s reality and put things in front of them in those terms,” he said.
