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Are You Communicating What’s Important Right Now?
September 22, 2020 Vanessa Niragira
Now more than ever, it’s good to stay in touch with your consumers. As the World’s First Sweepstakes Marketing Agency we know about customer retention and would love to pass along some information! Between a pandemic and a civil rights movement, you have to make sure your messaging is done correctly and clearly illustrate your stance on both matters.
What Is Correct Messaging?
When we talk about correct messaging, you want to be sure that your wording isn’t tone-deaf. To you, it might look like industry terms or buzzwords but it’s important to think about what you’re writing from all angles and consider every outcome.
“Have you missed us? DYING to come back?” may have been an acceptable message prior to the global pandemic and prior to people dying daily during this civil rights movement. Right now, however, this messaging would be in poor taste and extremely insensitive.
What Is Important To Illustrate?
You want to make sure that your consumers know that you care about 3 things: them, your employees, and the community (for larger scale brands your “community” is the world).
Your Consumers: While this might seem that this only applies to brands that have some type of storefront, this also applies to any delivery/pickup operations. Outline your plan to keep them safe, and show them that you’re complying with all laws and restrictions!
Your Employees: Communicate how you are keeping your employees safe from the virus, as well as any safeguards you have in place to protect them with regards to the movement. This will apply if your storefront is in a popular area where protests are happening. An important note, make sure you’re actually doing what you say you’re doing. In this day and age, people have multiple ways of exposing your brand anonymously.
Your Community: Remember, silence is compliance. In 2020, you cannot take a neutral stance about COVID or civil rights. In the consumer’s eyes, by not saying that you’re against the problems (police brutality, anti-maskers) then you are showing that your brand doesn’t care.
How Do We Ensure People Know We’re Sincere?
After you’ve shown where your values lie, it’s time to take action and be vocal about it! It’s great to say you’re anti-racist, but what has your brand and all of its money done to showcase that?
Whatever you decide to do, it should make sense and fit with your brand! There are many different routes you can take, for example, if your brand in the past has talked about mental health, it would make sense to donate to a charity that delivers those services to areas that don’t have access to it. This is a good time to get creative and do some good, or perhaps it’s time to take a look at your executive team and realize that it’s …. a little monochromatic.
It’s also time to put on your empathy hat and realize this is not the time to push your sales messaging on the consumer. Instead, take this time to showcase the human side of your business and really connect with your customers and prospects. Pushing for sales will not only come off as insincere but you risk losing customers and damaging how consumers view your brand. People are very perceptive, they want to support businesses who are doing the right thing. It’s time to show that you actually care if you want to keep your customers and your following.
Being a sweepstakes marketing agency, we’ve recently had a number of clients approach us with an idea regarding a goodwill, donation style sweepstakes with proceeds going to a charity of their choice (such as frontline workers associations). While it’s important to be vocal and tell your customers what you care about and take a stance on important issues, a donation style sweepstakes can be an effective way to show your customers and prospects exactly what you’re doing to give back to your community, while fostering positive brand recognition. Think you’re ready to touch base?
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Vanessa Niragira, Oakville, Ontario, Sept 2020
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