A year+ into the pandemic and it’s time to take a look back. What have we learned about marketing, social media, business, and each other? Josh led a discussion centered around how the pandemic has changed just about everything as it relates to business.
Here are some of the top takeaways from the past year. You can use these tips to help create a business that’s catastrophe-proof.
Keep Marketing
There’s a great lesson from Post and Kellogg’s during the Great Depression. In a nutshell, Post pulled back on marketing and advertising while Kellogg’s invested heavily in radio. Post has never gained back the market share they lost during that time.
Yes, the pandemic made things tough, but fight that knee-jerk reaction to pull back on marketing. It won’t serve your business.
Have a Flexible Business Model
Using the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Canvas as a way to document your business are great tools for flexibility. Business Plans aren’t typically as flexible as a canvas model. Using a canvas to document your business model will help you create flexibility within your business.
Be ready to pivot when things go wrong. Use your canvas to document the pivot you need to make.
Be Mission Driven
Business Brew guests from December 2020, Mark Odegard and Annie Wissmiller, did a wonderful job breaking down what being mission-driven nor purpose-driven can do for your business.
Essentially, being mission driven means customers are fans because they identify with your business’ mission, not just your products or services. This means they are likely to be supportive when things like a pandemic happen.
Watch The Benefits of Being a Purpose-driven Business to learn more!
Keep Learning
When things go wrong, you have to be committed to learning how to adapt. The pandemic created lots of downtime for people. Some used that time to learn a new skill or develop a new product or service. If you experience an extended period of downtime in your business in the future, make good use of that time.
In general, you don’t want to stay stagnant. Keep learning and growing. Keep getting better at what you do and how you do it. Scheduling regular learning and growing time, outside of pandemics and catastrophes, is a good practice.
Best Practices Don’t Change When Things Go Wrong
When you learn a business or marketing best practice, keep using it even when things don’t go according to plan. Best practices don’t stop working when the world changes. You just have to figure out how to apply the best practices in the new environment.
Track Your Data!
When things go wrong it’s hard to know how bad they are if you aren’t tracking your data. Not everyone’s business suffered last year, and not everyone thrived. But you can only know which one is happening if you’re measuring all the trackable data you can, from marketing to advertising to sales metrics.
Watch the full Business Brew below!