Adjusting your Marketing Strategy During this Crisis with Mark Schaefer.

This week’s podcast is an interview with the amazing Mark Schaefer. Mark is a globally recognised author, speaker, podcaster and business consultant who blogs at Grow – one of the top FIVE marketing blogs in the world! At the time of the interview, Mark had actually been diagnosed with coronavirus 17 days prior. We are going to be talking about how it affected him, but also his content and how he is adjusting in this time we are in.KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTWe have to reframe our business and our strategy based on what is going on right now.Are you relevant in this moment?Pivot your content – some content you may have had planned may now seem irrelevant.The world needs you to teach something different right now.Make sure your content is meaningful and helpful.We constantly have to reassess what we are posting and read the room. Make sure you keep thinking about how your audience is feeling and what they are going through right now.Ask yourself, what do your customers need RIGHT NOW.Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – many of our customers are likely to be at the bottom level right now.If your product or service is aspirational, this may not be the right time to be selling, but you can still keep marketing your brand.At this time, your brand is more than the short-term sales.People will remember what you do during this time.It’s all about survival right now and what we can do to help.People who are “known” means having the reputation, the authority and the presence to get your job done.If you are “known”, you have a permanent and sustainable competitive advantage.If you have some down time right now, you need to be working on this concept of being more “known” and building your personal brand.Never take your audience for granted, you need to continue to be a leader.Think about what your purpose is right now, be brave and use this as an opportunity.Inspire your audience, and help them in a positive way.Be gentle on yourself. Just because we have the time and the space, doesn’t mean we emotionally feel like doing it.The biggest goal we can have right now is to arrive and be there in one piece when this is over.We need to focus on the little things such as staying healthy, taking care of relationships and comforting and nurturing our children.We don’t have to be remarkable right now.This is a period in our life where it is not like it’s ever been before, so we can’t be hard on ourselves!Reframe this time as a complete reset.We are not that far away from the world exploding with joy! We will appreciate all those little things we once took for granted.It takes time, work and patience to build your personal brand.Manage your expectations, you can’t build a business overnight!There is no magic button to success – consistency is key.You need to become a habit in people’s lives so they look forward to what you produce.Consistency is more important than genius.We are all in industries where it is competitive, so we have to keep going!Just because someone is doing it one way, doesn’t mean it’s a particular style that really works, they have just found what their ‘tribe’ likes to see. You will find what your ‘tribe’ likes too.You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in something to be known.Show your journey to your audience, no one starts out as an expert but we can all learn!We have an opportunity right now to really work on our brand and become a legendary. We could do something in this crisis that people will never forget.We have an opportunity to do something that can create loyalty that lasts forever.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…We can continue to show up during this time to our customers and our audience, by being helpful and relevant through our content. The best way is always to be authentic, although it may take longer, it is definitely the way to go.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSAn introduction to Mark - 01:58Mark’s coronavirus experience - 05:58Adjusting your marketing strategy - 10:35Meeting the needs of your customer - 14:09Your brand over sales - 16:39Being in the public eye during this time - 21:09Being gentle on yourself right now - 27:20The positives of this situation - 31:06Playing the long game - 33:38Building your brand - 36:54Your competition - 38:35Becoming “known” - 41:35Becoming a legend - 43:10Transcript below Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Okay, I think I told you last week that it was going to be a solo-episode this week and to be honest, it feels a little bit like we're flying by the seat of our pants because basically what happens if you don't know how the podcast works or how I do it, I batch content, so especially with interviews because obviously I need to make sure I know we've got interviews coming, who we've got in. Sometimes if I've got someone amazing coming on, I have to wait awhile for them to find a space in their diary. So what I try and do is I'll say I plan out quite far ahead in advance, but the recent coronavirus thing has really kind of had an impact on the podcast because as I'm interviewing some people, they are talking a lot about it and therefore it doesn't make sense to put the podcast date later, sort of in the month or in the next few months.So I've been moving things around, so I apologise if one week you listen and I say next week we're going to do this. And it changes because my poor team are literally having to tweak and change as I need them to. Because like I said, I just feel like some episodes are worth bringing closer to the front. Some can wait a little bit. An introduction to Mark So today's is an example of that and it's actually a really good example of why I needed to bring it so close, because today's interview is with the very amazing Mark Schaefer. So if you don't know Mark, let me just give you a little bit about who he is and what he does. So Mark is a globally recognised author, speaker, podcaster and business consultant who blogs at Grow. That's what his blogs called, which is one of the top five marketing blogs of the world.He teaches graduate marketing classes to Rutgers University and has written no less than eight best selling books. Mark's new book Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins is an essential new view of business and a manifesto, the human centred marketing and it hit number one in both the marketing and advertising categories on Amazon. He's worked with loads of global clients including the likes of Cisco and Dell and Adidas. He's also been a keynote speaker for a lot of huge events and I personally saw him speak a few times actually at Social Media Marketing World and he's also appeared as a guest on channels such as CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS. So to say this guy knows what he's talking about is a bit of an understatement. And some of the books that Mark has written are books that I have read and love.So the one that I really kind of thinking about, which actually isn't his latest book, although that's wonderful as well, but the one that really stuck with me is Known and it's all about the power of becoming known and how that helps you. And not the power of becoming famous and not being Insta famous, but being known as an expert in your industry. It's a great book, I can highly recommend it and I've linked up to it in the show notes. But the reason I wanted to bring Mark on so soon, I literally interviewed him a day or two ago. Well, it won't be a day or two by the time you listen to it, it's probably like a week or two, but the reason I wanted to bring it on so quickly was because I interviewed Mark during a time where he has coronavirus.Mark got diagnosed the coronavirus 17 days prior to when we did the interview and coming out of it, and he was obviously feeling much better by that point, but he'd been quite poorly and coming out of it, he was obviously talking about it quite a lot and I was very interested to hear how he'd got on and how that affected him, but also how it's affecting the content that he's putting out right now and how he is shifting and changing for this time we're in. So that's why I wanted to get this out to you because I think it'd be really valuable to hear what he has to say. And I was very honoured, I was his first interview since being diagnosed with coronavirus and as he was coming out of it, so I was very honoured that he gave me his time. We kept it short or kind of bang on the 45 minutes as much as possible, just so that we could not take up too much of his valuable time and his energy.Because as you can understand, he was still quite weak. So I really hope you enjoy today's episode. Like I said, the interesting thing was when I initially wanted Mark on, it was very much to talk about his books and we didn't get a chance to talk about them a whole lot. So I do highly recommend you go check them out because they are amazing. Like I said, Known is one of my favourites and I do encourage you to look and read it, what he has to do because from a marketing standpoint he really resonates with me. He's very much about loving your audience, he's about the consistency and tenacity of creating regular content that isn't some quick magic button that we can press to become known. So I highly recommend you go check them out. But I hope you enjoy today's episode. Here's...