Providing Great Customer Service During Good and Bad Times

From communicating openly to revising your marketing strategy, there are many things you can do to keep providing great customer service in times of crisis.

Recently, small businesses have been struggling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. During these unprecedented days, it’s important to be transparent and proactively communicate with your customers.

Have a plan and stay calm

Right from the beginning, it’s essential to establish a plan and stay calm. When you reach out to your customers, you want to sound confident and knowledgeable. Your customers need to hear that you have a handle on the situation and that your business is available to help them.

Avoid making hasty, impulsive decisions during this time. Make sure you consider all your options and be open to changing the plan as the situation evolves. You don’t want to lock yourself into a stance that later becomes irrelevant.

Be proactive about communicating with customers

When there’s a change in business as usual, your customers need to hear from you. So you should reach out to them as soon as possible and have a plan for following up.

When you contact your customers, look for ways to be empathetic and acknowledge how the situation is impacting them and their families. But make sure the information you’re communicating is accurate and relevant.

Don’t speculate about the facts and don’t set unrealistic expectations that your business won’t be able to meet. This will only hurt your business’s credibility in the long run.

Your current customers are your best bet for staying profitable in the months to come.urces and information to help you s challenging time. Read on for our complete coronavirus coverage.

Have a central point of communication

Don’t make your customers search for the information they need. Have a central reference point where they can find the answers they need. You can direct customers to a public page on your website where they can find all the information they need.

On this page, you can include the most current information you have about the situation. You can also address some of the most commonly asked questions about how your business is handling the situation.

It’s also a good idea to regularly share updates on any social media platforms where your customers are active.

Revise your current marketing strategy

Your business likely already had a marketing plan in place for the coming months. But in the midst of a crisis, that plan is no longer relevant.

Review all of your advertising, email marketing, social media posts, and any other planned marketing efforts. If you don’t do this, you risk sharing something that your customers might view as insensitive or inappropriate.

For instance, mass emailing your customers and encouraging them to try a new product or feature may not be well-received by some customers.

Continue to focus on the customers you already have

When problems occur, many businesses shift their focus to how they’ll find new business. And while new business is always helpful, don’t lose sight of the customers you already have.

Your current customers are your best bet for staying profitable in the months to come. Now is the time to focus on delivering excellent service and providing for your existing customers.

Share what your business is doing to help

During stressful situations, your customers want to be inspired and feel like things are improving. So share that your business cares about what’s going on, and show your customers what you’re doing to help improve the situation.

Create And Grow Your Email List

There is some truth to the phrase “The money’s in the list.” About three-fourths of business marketers believe that email marketing offers a very good or excellent ROI (return on investment). One study from Emarketer.com measured  ROI recently at 122% - outpacing other advertising options such as social media, direct mail, and paid search.

Setting up and implementing an effective email marketing program can seem intimidating if you’ve never done it before. To simplify things, keep in mind the general sequence of events:

     1.   Your brand offers something of value to prospects in exchange for their personal                        information (name, email address);

     2.   The prospect signs up using a form on your website;

     3.   Your email list software confirms their opt-in, then sends them a download link,  coupon          code, or whatever valuable inducement you offered to them back in step 1;

     4.   You periodically send targeted email messages to segments of your list (or your list as a            whole) to connect with them and encourage them to make a purchase (eventually).

Communicating effectively in marketing emails is a science and an art. Skilled professional copywriters at The Mullikin Agency who specialize in email marketing know best practices for email content. They know how much and where to personalize your messages and what call to action to use.

Use content to promote and grow your business!

Do you want more sales, new clients, or a better return on your investment?

Most businesses do. Your brand’s success is often tied to how persuasive your prospective clients and customers find the copy on your website, blogs, e-mails and collateral materials.

Well written content that you publish on your website and elsewhere is essential for your future business success. Turning casual site visitors into interested leads, and interested leads into paying customers, should be one of your goals.

And as many well-known brands will attest, valuable, authoritative content can be extremely effective. In fact, B2B brands that blog multiple times each month on a consistent basis enjoy almost three times the traffic of those that blog once a month or not at all.

Persuasive content that your prospects and customers find compelling and informative is both art and science. It takes time, talent, and practice to develop world-class persuasive copywriting skills.

In fact, most small business owners who focus on content as part of a strategic marketing plan find that they simply don’t have the time to create enough interesting and relevant content for their audiences. That’s where experienced professional content providers can help you like The Mullikin Agency.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can leverage the power of well-written content to improve your brand’s bottom line.

STEP 1: Create A Business Tagline

A good tagline may not be the first thing you think of when you begin creating marketing materials for your business, but it shouldn’t be an afterthought - or worse yet, ignored altogether. The right tagline helps create an easy reminder for your prospective clients or customers of your values, benefits, and experience.

A tagline is simply a catchphrase used to help sum up a brand’s mission or values, as well as the products and services that you offer. The best taglines are memorable, captivating, and powerfully associated with their respective brands.

Your brand’s tagline should convey a positive association and make your prospective customers want to do business with you and your brand. Yet a good tagline moves well beyond sales talk to “buy now.” The best taglines tell your users why they should buy your product or services.

Tips for Creating a Business Tagline:

     · Start with your USP (Unique Sales Proposition) or more broadly your UAP (Unique Advantage Point) - i.e. the thing that sets you apart from your competition. What do you do better than everyone else, and how? Try to see if you can keep it to around 12-15 words or so.

    · Clear and memorable are always better than clever and funny. By all means, infuse your tagline with your brand’s personality if you can, but don’t sacrifice clarity and persuasion in the process.

STEP 2: Create Valuable Content For Your Readers

A consistent stream of reliable, authoritative and interesting content published on your blog or website can convince prospects that may be on the fence, to make a decision and put their trust in your company. 

However, good content takes time to research, write, format, and publish. You also have a business to run, of course, so you can make one of two choices in regard to content creation, writing the content yourself or you might want to consider outsourcing the actual content writing to professionals like The Mullikin Agency.

If you’d rather do the writing yourself, you can save time and effort by outsourcing editing and proofreading services of your draft content. Even tiny errors can ding your reputation. Writers often become “word blind” to their own work, overlooking punctuation and typographical errors. A separate edit by a fresh pair of eyes will help you polish and perfect your content.

Or, if you’d prefer, you can quickly draft a one-page informative “creative brief,” explaining to a professional copywriter or editor exactly what sort of content you’re looking for and providing any style guidelines you’d like them to incorporate into your posts and articles. You can then outsource the writing of the content itself to a copywriter, who will use your brief to ensure the finished product meets your needs and expectations.

Insider Tips to Creating Valuable Content for Your Readers

    · Consider each stage of your buyer’s journey when planning your content. You should aim for a mix of content: informational content to introduce your brand to browsing visitors, more in-depth content to persuade visitors that your brand is trustworthy, and persuasive content to convince them to buy from you.

    · Be as specific as possible in communicating. Describe your targeted audience for the piece, where it will be published, what the goal of the piece is, and what you want your readers to do after they read the article (i.e. the call to action).

     · Think carefully about the length of your content. Some audiences prefer longer, more detailed posts, while others want quicker “Bite-sized” content that they can read and digest in a hurry. Above all, aim to make your audience happy.

STEP 3: Write About Your Service Or Products

While blog posts and similar kinds of content are usually aimed at educating the audience, other kinds of copy on your website should be written specifically to market your services and products.

The content on product pages, for example, must be persuasive, compelling, and descriptive, showing the product to its best advantage. That’s a completely different kind of writing than the educational or “how-to” blog post.

Sales copy also tends to be more static and longer-lived. Written descriptions and copy on product and service pages don’t typically get changed or updated frequently, so it deserves its own special focus. It’s generally more vivid, with a greater degree of descriptive content, and relies more heavily on the second-person -- i.e. “you,” instead of “we” or “they.”

For service providers, the principles are the same, although the execution might vary a bit. You won’t always have a physical product to describe, but you can still reach your prospective client by selling a result or process to them in a similar way.

Think of how you can describe what you do for your clients, not in terms of techniques or specific services, but in terms of what you can accomplish for them. That usually boils down to one or two benefits:

     · Helping them reach a deeply desired goal

     · Solving a problem or removing an obstacle

     · Saving them money, time, or both

Insider Tips for Writing About Your Service

    · Whether you’re starting from scratch or revising  or updating  copy, it’s helpful to start with a list of each individual service or product. You can then prioritize according to your specific revenue and sales goals, and sort into logical groupings or categories.

    · Consider the upsell. Whether you’re selling products or services, in many cases certain purchases seem to logically flow into others. For example, a consumer who wants to get fit might start out buying a book about running, but then decide to get some new workout gear as well. Figure these pairings out so you can connect the pages in some way on your website  with your written content.

These strategies can help any business leverage the power of digital marketing to meet their sales goals. Remember to infuse all your content with a consistent “personality” reflecting your brand’s voice, values, and mission. Always look to differentiate your business from the competition. Write for those who don’t know you as well, not yourself!

Rise Above The Rest

How would you like to increase short and long term sales and profits for your company during these difficult times!

“Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time”  
-Henry Ford

In a study of U.S. recessions, McGraw-Hill Research analyzed 600 companies covering 16 different SIC industries from 1980 through 1985. The results showed that business-to-business firms that maintained or increased their advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recessions averaged significantly higher sales growth, both during the recession and for the following three years, than those that eliminated or decreased advertising. By 1985, sales of companies that were aggressive recession advertisers had risen 256% over those that didn’t keep up their advertising.

In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times, they have to.”   

-Bruce Barton, co-founder BDO Advertising Agency

Materials compiled from a variety of sources, including America Business Media, McGraw-Hill, Penton Research

Now is not the time to cut back or eliminate your advertising budget. Now is the time to double down, triple down and maybe even quadruple down on your business. It comes down to Risk verses Reward. The Mullikin Advertising Agency can help you drastically reduce the risk and make sure your business is greatly rewarded with increased sales!  

Should you Hunker Down or Double-Down your Advertising During COVID-19?

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The Choices You Make Now Could Ignite Your Business or Weaken it

There is no question we are facing unprecedented economic times. COVID-19 has already caused a drastic decline in the US economy.  But how you react right now and the choices you make could make or break your company’s future. So, what’s it going to be?

Are you thinking about cutting back your advertising budget? You are ready to hunker down and ride this out?  It’s an option, but perhaps not the best option. Take a look at what one company did in one of the WORST financial meltdowns in United States history: The Great Depression.

The Great Depression was very difficult for most consumer product companies, but Procter and Gamble came out of the entire meltdown a whole lot stronger than it was in 1929. How did the soap giant beat the Great Depression when grocery customers started cutting their orders? P&G determined that even in a depression people still need soap, so why wouldn’t they buy it from Procter and Gamble?

Instead of cutting back their advertising efforts as many of its competitors did, the company actively pursued new marketing opportunities, which at the time included radio broadcasts. It was able to maintain and increase sales while other companies folded. One of these campaigns involved becoming the chief sponsor of daytime dramas (later called “soap operas”) aimed at housewives, the company’s primary market. The Mullikin Agency saw the same thing happen with several of our clients during the 2008 and 2009 recession.

Could your business do something similar today?

Let’s look at a couple of ways to increase your marketing efforts right now.

The Digital Market Just Got a Whole Lot Bigger

You say that’s not possible!  There aren’t any more people today than there was yesterday; how could it have possibly grown?

It’s really pretty simple. With hundreds of thousands of people furloughed from work or working remotely, and so many live entertainment opportunities being shut down, the number of hours people spend online and on their TV, phones, laptops and radio is already increasing.  They can’t go to restaurants or gather in large groups. This is likely to skyrocket in the coming weeks. If you want eyeballs, digital is one place to consider being right now. People are stuck at home and you can reach them better than you ever could.

Less Competition = Lower Marketing Costs

While many of your competitors may stop marketing out of fear and uncertainty, this could be a great time to get ,more traffic and make more sales while others are pausing and stopping their advertising campaigns. It’s simple economics. The law of supply and demand says: when demand drops, and supply stays the same prices will naturally fall.  For online advertising, this means a lower cost per click, and lower CPM (cost per 1000 advertising impressions).  Your brand exposure will be less expensive during this time.

This may even be a great opportunity to leapfrog your competitors. When else in the history of your business have your competitors just stopped? SEM and Targeted Digital Display ad campaigns along with Facebook Lead Generation campaigns will likely leave your competitors in the dust.

Your Brand Will Be Louder Than the Rest

You’ll stand out. With your competitors cutting back, pausing, or stopping their campaigns, you will stand alone or at least you will have an opportunity to stand out.

Your message will be clearer without your competitors present and you will have an opportunity, perhaps the only opportunity, to address your customers and prospects without the noise of competing messages. 

 Remember, Procter and Gamble expanded their voice, while their competitors shrank, maybe you should consider doing the same.

The Mullikin Advertising Agency is open for business and can help you navigate through these difficult times with a customized on-line advertising approach that will bring you increased sales that could even help you leapfrog your competition. We can also help you with other advertising options as well.

Let the Mullikin Agency light up your business!

If your business is just starting off or is well established, a successful Digital Marketing strategy is essential for businesses  during these difficult days to grow their brand, drive more leads and stand out from the competition. Get your marketing channels lit up for success.

Here are some powerful ways to light up your online marketing!

Connect with your audience on social media

With people engaging with brands on social media, your business needs to be where your customers spend their time. Target your audience with engaging conversations and build a brand that goes viral.

Use a local Advertising, Marketing and Public relations firm like The Mullikin Agency who knows the market and understands Social Media, has great ideas for creating visually impacting messages that help tell your story to others. We can help you do all of the following:

Boost your ranking with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google your business’s name – and see if your website is ranked as one of the top 3 businesses in the search results. If it is, you’re doing amazing. If not, you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers and could use some help.

To improve your ranking on Google, follow these steps:

• Perform an audit of your website to optimize it for search engines.
•  Create rich valuable content for your audience to increase trust and credibility in your business.
• Create quality references from sources such as blogs and social media.

Drive more leads with Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Generate more traffic to your website and increase your visibility with digital ads tailored and directed to your audience. With SEM, your business appears at the top of Google search results and is the first link customers will click.

Email Blasts and a strong list of e-mail addresses

Make it easy for your audience to connect with your business by building a strong, memorable and trustworthy brand. With consistent and catchy brand colors, fonts and messaging you will make a big impact.

       1. Create a brand

Build a cohesive brand with your company’s logo, tagline and let it pop with color, typography, iconography, and more.

       2. Strike First Impressions with customized business cards

Perfect your business and help promote with well-designed business cards.

      3. Support your sales with professional material

Whether it’s distributed in large numbers through direct mail or handed out one at a time by your sales team, brochures, rack cards, flyers and other printed material are all ways to increase the spread of your business’s word about different products and services and attract to continually receive new business.

      4. Help bring your brands story to life with logo, animation and videos

In this new era it’s important for your business to brand its story with a creative video or use of animation to delight your audience and to always stay memorable.

      5. Get viral with social media designs

It is always important to increase your presence on social media with unique images and videos so your audience can relate and share your business with others.

      6. Wow your audience with web & Mobile Design

Promote your business and make sure your brand is consistent across all platforms, whether it is web or mobile. Leuer your customers’ attention to your website with bright and engaging content. From blog posts and articles to infographics and videos, your websites content will reign supreme.

Advertise even during economic slowdowns

For this economy to function, companies must market and advertise even amid a global crisis. Take a quick look back at the tragedy of September 2001 and how businesses reacted.

In the weeks after 9/11, the ad industry responded with uplifting messages. The Ad Council released “I am an American,” a TV spot showing the nation’s diversity. General Motors offered an uplifting advertising campaign entitled: “Keep America Rolling,” combining a pro-America pitch with zero percent financing.

Today we find individuals and businesses deeply concerned and fearful. People seem to be apprehensive for their jobs, for their lives and for the future.

It may seem like the easiest course of action is to batten down the hatches and cut back just to survive, but that is not what history teaches us. 

The U.S. economy needs marketers and marketing. Consumer spending  accounted for more than two-thirds of economic activity in 2019, so it’s no secret that marketing helps drive commerce.

I believe we will see businesses in the coming months that are willing to take bold risks to keep this economy rolling.

Businesses must give consumers a reason to spend through special offers and the promotion of their products and services even when we are going through tough economic times.

During the Great Recession back in 2008, I wrote an “Opinion” published in the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal in April of that year that “during economic downturns, businesses must look for creative ways to be even more visible than ever.”

What I said 11 years ago can still be true today, “To succeed during difficult times, you will need to be tenacious and creative. Engage your entire company or organization. Make a commitment to do what it takes to succeed and take an aggressive approach to generate new business.”

In Ad Age’s first issue published post-9/11, they offered a similar and hopeful view: “President Bush had it right when he urged that normal national life must return promptly; that the nation has to get back to business after last week's horrors.”

The economic life of this country is the foundation of our well-being and cannot be put on hold for very long. Consumers, already anxious about the economy, need to see that business is not retreating. Companies and employers must sell products, and they need to market and advertise to make it happen. Advertising messages and schedules must be planned and purchased, and businesses must look to the future.

After times of crisis throughout our history we have always pulled ourselves up by our boot straps and took positive action. Even with these unprecedented days of COVID-19, we must soon begin to reset and move forward for the good of the entire nation.

Someone once said, “In Good times, businesses want to advertise, in bad times they have to.”

Let it be so!