5 Tips for Navigating COVID Recovery in 2021
Written by Amy Boyle Collins
The phone started ringing in earnest last fall. The sentiment was universal. Clients were ready to prepare for the new year. They felt the promise of a fresh start that comes with flipping the calendar from December to January. COVID-19 vaccines had been approved and a plan was underway to roll them out.
Our team at Gambel Communications breathed a sigh of relief and got to work. We had been urging clients to prepare to round the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic for months. We dove into developing relevant strategies and creating new content for restless consumers ready to engage, socialize and spend with organizations providing safe options for them to do so.
Despite some fits and starts early in this new year with a rise in COVID-19 case numbers, we have been moving ahead full force with projects across industry sectors. We worked with Ozanam Inn to announce their new homeless shelter. We launched the Holiday Inn Club Vacations New Orleans Resort – the first hotel project to do an official grand opening since COVID-19 hit the hospitality sector hard last March. We’re currently working with The Domain Companies on its opening of The Odeon, which is the largest building to be developed downtown in 30 years. We are curating marketing and public relations plans for several clients for the Carnival season, navigating no parades but instead a flurry of enthusiasm around house floats. And there’s more to come. To say it’s a busy first quarter is an understatement!
As you navigate your own business recovery, here are some things we advise you to think about to position yourself for optimum marketing success:
1. Don’t expect a straight path. The “new normal” of the past several months is likely to persist well into 2021, so plan accordingly.
2. Rediscover your unique selling point. You may have pivoted to capture new revenue streams or evolved your business model to fit within COVID-19 restrictions. Now is a good time to do a gut check on what it is your company does best - what makes your company appealing to your customer (or donor in the case of a nonprofit).
3. Find your target audience. Where is your target audience getting their news these days? Who do they listen to? What media are they consuming? These are all important questions to explore and answer as you think through communications outreach.
4. Embrace the digital life. Digital transformation continues to accelerate, as businesses across all sectors ramp up. It is critical to stay focused on the trends that will define hyper-connected consumers today. If you aren’t online, spending resources speaking to your customer online, you need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy.
5. Pay attention and stay nimble. In any crisis, we tell clients it’s important to pay close attention to what your stakeholders reasonably expect of you and the world around them. COVID-19 is not done with us, so we all must stay nimble and continue to feel the pulse of the market and respond accordingly.