Learning how to create warm marketing messages in times of crisis will be an organization-saver. Communicating well in times of uncertainty is one of the things that your customers will appreciate the most in the middle of any crisis. Doing it wrong, without heart or reason, will probably kill your reputation and then your business.
Organizations that understand and apply this simple concept often emerge victorious from hard times, such as that of Covid-19. It does not mean that this is simple. But it does mean that it is possible and, even more, necessary.
The Covid-19 has shaken the world. Most industries are being affected very notably. The turnover of many has been reduced perhaps by 30%. For others, this situation will mean before and after the takeoff of their brands. However, for others, this will be goodbye.
Something that we will undoubtedly see is that Covid-19 brings with it a wave of solidarity. Of closeness and even hope.
But how does this affect the way you are creating warm marketing messages? Are you creating them at all?
Warm Marketing Messages Will Help You Win The Engagement War
One of the most obvious things that arise from the international crisis propelled by Covid-19 is that we are people. We are individuals with needs, with ways of doing things, perhaps hobbies. We are men and women with tastes and preferences. We are people who need other people’s heat as much as we need to drink water or eat.
Probably, in the context of this coronavirus, many of those who are working remotely miss the interactions with their coworkers. It is true that there are things that a video conference cannot replace.
There are probably many who are still excited about working from home and with the crazy idea of maybe continuing to do so once this crisis, with God’s help, is over. But even then, this doesn’t change an evident fact.
No one was expecting a crisis like the present one. But we are all expecting that the organizations that interact with us do it in a human, friendly way.
Almost anyone out there needs other people’s warmth and to feel understood by other people. Brands and organizations are not exempt from transmitting this heat in the way they communicate with their leads, customers, employees, and stakeholders. This is what sets the tone in the way you communicate with customers in the middle of a crisis.
I want to emphasize that we are people. And that is precisely what organizations often forget.
Let me give you some context. And data.
With 69% of marketers using more video content, brands are becoming increasingly more invested in the visual medium. Did you know that over 500 million consumers watch video content on Facebook every day? Even better, video traffic is set to make up 82% of all internet traffic at some point next year.
Consumers want to see more video content, and brands are investing in providing it because it pays back.
Why?
Coupled with this data, I find it really interesting how micro-influencers have increased exponentially. The ratio of mega-influencer (1m + followers) to micro-influencer (less than 100k followers) used in campaigns in 2016 was 1: 3. Back in 2019, there were 10 micro-influencers used for every mega-influencer.
See the pattern?
As individuals, we need the context of other people that have something in common with us. People that somehow understand what we like and dislike. Most organizations are not there yet. Their marketing is cold, old and distant. When your brand understands this, creating warm marketing messages becomes part of a culture, a culture your audience understands, appreciates and wants.
Winning the engagement war starts by understanding why this is important and who are the individuals impacted by every message. It starts by creating personalized micro-messages that influence a person because the general message hits the target.
I’m aligned with Tarek Abdalla. This year there will be a stronger focus on creative-first strategies based on consumer insights. This brings more flexibility and better measurement. It allows any organization, regardless of sizes and marketing budgets, to create marketing strategies and messages that adapt to the individual.
But, guess what? It is still the beginning.
The majority of brands are not there yet. Only some big players. This represents an opportunity for any marketer that understands why an organization needs to be relevant, specially when a marketing and the whole society is going through a crisis.
Beyond the use of technologies such as Pirsonal’s to reach hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people with personalized multimedia marketing, the important thing is not the technology itself. What matters is the strategy, who empowers that strategy and who’s the target of the same. Actually, now more than ever, or at least in our recent history, what matters is what’s behind the heart.
This is when your marketing starts being relevant and when your marketing, messaging, sales and customer experience start winning little battles that little by little give you a big win in your customer’s mind and heart.
It is this strategy that defines how the message should be with personalized videos or any other type of content. That strategy is based on the people you will target thinking not only about your goals but also about their goals, about their particular context, about what hurts and how you can hopefully help.
Analyze The Buyer Persona Or The Augmented Buyer Persona
Often, when an organization needs to communicate in the middle of a crisis, everything happens really fast.
There is no time to think. Just to execute. And this is a mistake.
Why?
Because the people you are going to target are leads, customers, employees or any stakeholder whose life has also changed.
What then?
Stop for a moment.
Use buyer personas and augmented buyer personas to create a better message.
Buyer personas help you improve your product’s or service’s value proposition, increase profits and create higher lead conversions. When you use them, you create better marketing messages and can plan your distribution aligned to your target’s interests based on what you know about other people that have a similar background.
An augmented buyer persona is the profile of an individual comprised by all the interrelated information gathered about that individual provided by one or many data sources and the individual’s buyer persona, taking into consideration the individual’s particular context to create products, services and, most commonly, marketing messages that fit the individual’s needs, objections, desires, and interests, aligned with the objectives set by the organization.
A buyer persona is mostly based on other people but not precisely on the individual you are targeting with marketing communications or for whom you have created a product. From my experience, you’ll find that, from an operations perspective, buyer personas are less flexible when thinking about products and services but can be really flexible when thinking about digital marketing.
When you use what I call an augmented buyer persona, you create marketing automation workflows, marketing messages and campaigns not only based on what you thought you knew about people similar to your target audience but especially what you know about them individually based on the marketing data your customer or lead has provided through one or several marketing channels.
This information is used to create textual and especially contextual messages that can talk to their hearts and that support your personalized marketing in the middle of a crisis like the Covid-19 and help your stakeholders engage with your message in a deep way.
This will help you get the type of marketing conversions you need even if what you have in mind an engagement campaign, which also requires results.
Sharing a Warm And Personalized Message
Creating warm marketing messages is about speaking to the heart and mind first. The sum of these two variables will help you reach that person’s pocket when the time is right, which also requires a strategy.
Most companies that use personalized videos as part of their marketing program use it for engagement strategies. BTW, here you’ll find 6 mistakes you should avoid when creating a personalized marketing campaign.
As individuals, we need to be in constant contact with the outside world. And we also need that world to adapt to our particular needs, contexts, and objections.
How is your organization’s marketing adapting to this paradigm? How are you communicating your changes to your employee’s conditions? Do your shareholders understand the results of the last quarter? How do you communicate with a person who has lost his job, who may have a sadly ill family member?
Behind each person, there is a specific context. Sometimes the information you have in your CRM, marketing automation or data management tool will tell you what you need. But on many other occasions, you will need to go old-school and think 😛.
Seriously.
Think about what is the best way to communicate numbers, scenarios, variables.
You need to think about how the CEO of the organization will address its 10,000 employees in a scalable, but personalized way, attending to the needs of the organization, but above all, to the needs of that father of a family with three children who during the last 3 years has fought like crazy to go the extra mile for the benefit of his family, career, and company.
Personalized marketing, and specifically personalized video marketing, enables today’s businesses, brands and organizations to speak to each person’s heart and mind. It empowers individuals better understand a message and an actionable. This is what we at Pirsonal call “Evoke a Reaction”.
But for the message to be effective it must target the mind and heart, in no particular order.
In times of crisis, your brand should be focused on your audience’s pains, desires, and challenges. Taking this into consideration will lead you to create warm marketing messages that hit the right target in the middle of a time-sensitive situation that will set the future of your organization and your brand’s reputation. Use marketing personalization to create micro-messages based on your segmented audience. Personalized video helps you create dynamic messages on a scale way, as video is the type of content any type of buyer persona consumes for better customer experience and personalization helps you shape the message to what each person needs from your organization.
