Many times we are approached to help an organization achieve its marketing goals, but to them, the challenge feels insurmountable. Strategies and tactics have gotten messy or confusing for them. Inevitably the conversation starts with these types of comments:

“We’re spending $$ on PPC, but our results have bottomed out.”

“Our competitors have recently upped their game, and now we seem like a weaker competitor.”

“Our offerings have changed or improved, but we don’t know how to communicate them in a way that resonates.”

A big part of the value we bring to our partnerships is structure. We know from our years of experience what dependencies are necessary to get great work done. Showing you how we get it is very important. Leadership teams are rarely comfortable with “trust the process”. Therefore we enjoy building sophisticated roadmaps to help you understand priorities, timetables, and dependencies. This helps everyone understand when you can expect your branding and marketing to function on a much higher level.

 roadmap to shape up branding and marketing is fairly simple and straightforward. It looks like this much of the time, unless we're inheriting existing marketing programs:

➡️ Brand Strategy ➡️ Brand Identity ➡️ Content & Collateral ➡️ Website ➡️ Marketing & Agency Services

This is rarely enough information for communicating to your leadership team, so during our work together, we’ll put together more sophisticated roadmaps. Here are some examples.

Example 1: Two-Year Alignment of Multiple Service Offerings

This client had finished a large strategic alignment of their various B2B service offerings, as well as adding a service line that is completely new, requiring a different strategy. This was a two-year roadmap, outlining quarterly priorities.

Example 2: Rebrand Internal & External Rollout

In this example, the client had completed a comprehensive rebrand and needed to understand what it was going to take to communicate to their internal and external stakeholders, eventually rolling into ongoing marketing and business development.

This nonprofit client had two very important fundraising events in the fall and winter and had just completed a new brand identity. It was critical to ensure the new identity was deployed with quality before starting an intense marketing campaign. Our audience needed to understand what they were seeing was their favorite events, just modernized.

Build it in a spreadsheet or other tool to allow for detail, but then build a simpler one for clarity and simplicity. Less is more.

Priorities and dependencies are critical to communication.

The plan will always change. Don’t get hung up on dates or timelines that are unreasonable. Communicate in phases or time periods instead of strict dates (unless there is an event that is immobile)

Someone may not be excited about how long a particular phase might take. Don’t change the roadmap for them, especially if a date is unreasonable. Under promise and over deliver and you will win a ton of trust.

Our team can help you reach your branding, marketing, and business goals. 

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Coronavirus/COVID-19 is currently impacting just about every aspect of daily life. There is no clear timeframe for when we can go back to normal and 

. Nonetheless, life and business will need to continue and adapt to this new normal. The hope of this article is to outline a few digital tactics that can help businesses during this period.

Is Your Website Set up for eCommerce During Coronavirus?

The most obvious shift is acceleration of an ongoing trend: more and more users will be shopping online. The number of online orders in the U.S. and Canada were 

 for the 2 weeks of March 22 through April 4. Along the same lines, U.S. online grocery sales for 

Now is a good time to ask yourself if your website and digital store are able to adapt and fulfill more orders? Is your eCommerce experience user friendly? Are you able to scale up and fulfill more orders online and deliver? Things to consider when evaluating your online store and eCommerce platform:

Is my checkout process easy and intuitive?

Am I ready to fulfill an increase in orders?

Am I using my platform to its fullest extent and is there anything that can be automated on the backend?

Does my website offer a positive shopping experience?

Growing your online sales and business is one of the most obvious ways to react to the COVID-19 pandemic. These sorts of business decisions are tricky and unique for everyone at this time. However, if you’re able to, now is the perfect time to invest in your business’s eCommerce capabilities and do your best to meet your growing online demand.

QR Codes – Offer a Contactless Transfer of Information

QR codes might seem like a blast from the past but they have a number of potential uses in a social distancing society.

, is already using QR codes to enable people to shop their store via their front windows and order products online:

QR codes can allow brick and mortar businesses to offer users the opportunity to literally window shop.

QR codes are also playing a big part of China’s efforts to re-open following their Coronavirus lockdown

. The Chinese government is using mobile apps to track citizens’ movements and health status. The mobile application produces a QR code that can be scanned to share a user’s infection status.

While China has a long history of unethical surveillance of its citizens and human rights abuses, this idea is still smart in principle. China and other nations need to ensure technology is deployed ethically to maximize their citizen’s participation. Therefore transparency and ethical use are paramount if this technique is to be deployed elsewhere.

QR codes can offer Chinese shops and businesses a method to verify a citizen’s health status without having to make physical contact. Thinking ahead, we could see similar applications used elsewhere. Citizens being able to share their health status in a contact-free way will help prevent further spread of the virus as we begin to try and “re-open” our economies.

At the very least, providing contact info via QR code instead of a traditional business card could help users around the world practice better social distancing.

Streaming Video in the Age of Coronavirus

As users have to adapt to doing more activities from their own homes, they are increasingly turning to online streaming solutions. 

in terms of publicity as the platform has become a favorite for online socializing and digital happy hours. Zoom said daily users spiked to 200 million in March, up from 10 million in December.

As schools have been shuttered during quarantine, students and teachers have had to pivot to online learning. 

With many teachers being forced to learn online teaching techniques on the fly

. One thing businesses and marketers need to be asking themselves is, “how can I pivot my business online?”

One of our partners, The Jewish Community Center of Louisville, has been working on such a pivot. With their building closed, The J Louisville has begun offering some of their key services online and have built a “

” section of their website. They are offering group fitness classes online where users can take part in classes via Facebook Live. Additionally, users can still sign up for online personal training sessions with their licensed personal trainers. In addition to fitness, The J is also offering arts & ideas, jewish life & learning, and kids virtual resources.

Finding a way to turn your in-person service or experience and translate it to streaming may be key in keeping your customers throughout quarantine. There is going to be a learning curve as you venture into this new space so don’t get down on yourself. Learn and improve as you execute and you’ll be all set.

This article outlines just three methods of how you can adapt your business during the coronavirus pandemic. There are still tons of new opportunities out there as well. So in the meantime, keep your head up and try your best. That is all anyone can ask for at this point.

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Our strategy team can provide you with an unbiased look at your brand and marketing to give you the perspective you need to make the next move the right move. We provide audits at all levels - high-level, comprehensive marketing audits down to platform-specific social media auditing to SEO audits of your websites. In addition, you receive our hard-earned insights, recommendations and a roadmap or plan to move your forward.

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How To Adapt Your Business During the Coronavirus Pandemic