There are very few by-products of the COVID-19 global pandemic that are positive. On such item is the "forced innovation" that takes place when you simply need to do SOMETHING!
Most businesses are having the following conversation internally "well, we can either go dark with our marketing, cut down to next to nothing or continue with status quo." But what you're not hearing a lot of is businesses discussing trying all of those little ideas that we've had over the years, and we've never executed them.
IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS —
We're no longer in a situation where we can forecast much of any standard success rate based on seasonality, our previous consumer behavior. The weather means to the modern market, or is that we need to work by constructing more micro scenarios that we gauge by moving the needle. Smaller spans analytics showing incremental increases and decreases will give you a much more efficient roadmap in today's uncertain consumer.
PULL THE TRIGGER —
For instance, if you had the idea of developing seminar content to aggregate your clients, now is the time to execute on that idea. Now just because you may only intend to do it a couple of times to gauge affectedness does not necessitate that you do not maintain your brand and experiential messaging. In fact, it might be said that if you take these small scenarios and approach them with 110% effort, if they fail, then it's simply due to the channel chosen and not the craft of the product.
FAIL FAST —
Another benefit of smaller, more encapsulated marketing prototypes is that when they fail, making an adjustment or creating a "Plan B" is far more comfortable than a long-view media program with traditional channels and full saturation.
KICK THE TIRES —
Today's third-party software marketplace makes it very easy for marketers to try a lightweight version of most previously involved channel drivers. Taking on AI bots to social media channels, adding live chat, creating dynamic surveys, and implementing basic CRM's is easier than ever with small third-party applications. From there, see above, if you start to move the needle than investing in a more robust feature-rich solution may very well be a good directive for you.