Marketing tips for businesses looking to regain lost ground following UK lockdown
Here our PR team shares our three top tips for businesses looking to re-start their digital marketing and PR activity after the lockdown.
- 1. Communicate effectively with customers
The customer is the most essential stakeholder for any business and therefore engaging with your customers, immediately after lockdown, is vital. It is essential to inform them about your company resuming operations and assuring them of your continuous high levels of service, as well as details of any changes to operational practices. Information about bespoke services that will suit the current need of the customer in the post lockdown era are also essential to communicate.
Now is your opportunity to re-establish these really important relationships. Let customers know when you are re-opening and include any changes to opening times or working practices. If customers now need to book in advance, let them know, plus about any additional precautions that they will need to take.
Make really good use of all your digital communication channels, such as social media, website news pages, blog, e-mailshots, newsletters in order to spread the word about what your business is doing and how you are operating.
- 2. Talk to staff
Employees are an equally vital asset for an organisation and thus communicating effectively with staff has never been more important. Businesses need to acknowledge the challenges ahead and make sure the management team know all about what is happening and how to communicate it.
That’s why it may be a good time to introduce a staff newsletter (e-newsletter is probably best for speed) to ensure information is shared quickly and efficiently. It is important to let staff know what the business is doing to help them to work safely during social distancing. Keep a regular column in the newsletter about dealing with coronavirus and also to inform them about an open-door policy on Mental Health. It is important at this time that the CEO or MD or a company has a visible presence amongst the workforce. This should include a regular foreword at the front of any e-newsletter. It doesn’t need to be long, but this should reinforce the future direction of the business and highlight positive messages, for motivation purposes.
- 3. Re-evaluate marketing and comms plans
It may be that the marketing and communication plans you had prior to lockdown are no longer as relevant and these need to be updated in line with your new objectives and business plans. It is important to consider all stakeholders and talk to your PR and marketing agency about plans for communicating effectively with customers and other stakeholders in this crucial post lockdown period.
Since lockdown restrictions started to be lifted, we have worked alongside many of our PR and digital marketing clients to re-evaluate their campaigns and to re-focus and re-align their objectives and strategy.
Dragonfly PR is a dedicated Sheffield based PR and digital marketing agency which specialises in helping business to business, construction, manufacturing and food companies to achieve their growth potential.
Our team has years of experience in creating bespoke b2b public relations strategies and drafting articles that are guaranteed to build brand awareness of your business and regularly achieve coverage. With a background in writing high quality content for white papers, articles and thought leadership pieces, we are one of the leading professional PR agencies in Yorkshire.
Based in Sheffield, Dragonfly PR specialises in event management, PR and content marketing for b2b, particularly construction, manufacturing and food companies.
If you need any support with Public Relations or digital marketing and achieving growth after the Coronavirus lockdown, please contact our team at hello@dragonflypr.co.uk or call 0114 349 5341.