Supportive partnerships: Navigating turbulent times together
Navigating the now - ascertaining where we are and planning a new, or adjusted route, is a shared experience for marketing and advertising practitioners
Without access to a crystal ball we cannot truly know what the future holds, but we can build contingency plans and activate our strength in numbers by inviting our partners and peers to creatively problem-solve with us. During a time of scarcity, whether in terms of budget, turnaround times or hands on deck, there are 3 key areas where partnerships can provide pivotal value and support as we weather this time together.
Solution Focused Content
Content marketing has many applications that support awareness building, educating, sharing thought leadership, research findings and driving enquiries about your expertise. Whilst larger content pieces that require pitching and longer production times can effectively support long-term positioning, this approach is not going to cut through the noise in the B2B market at this time to generate immediate value to your customers. Instead it’s worth considering how you can be nimble with your content strategy to provide accessible, tactical value with short-form articles that sit on your website.
A good place to start when reviewing your approach is to ask: what does my customer need right now? If you have a clear understanding of your target audience and the challenges they are likely to be facing, you will create useful content that offers tangible value and is more likely to appear in their search results when they are exploring potential solutions. The important point here is to stop thinking about the ‘solution’ in terms of your product or service and the benefits you perceive it to have - instead focus on the audience needs in terms of what they might ultimately type into a search engine as they carry out their research.
Leading with Empathy
When considering your approach to PR, now is the time to lean into what the media want and need to serve their readers with empathetic and appropriate content. My recent conversations with Trade Media Editors have demonstrated that press releases are becoming increasingly redundant, as a blanket approach to updating press contacts is not compelling to titles that are seeking to provide a unique perspective to their audience.
In order to land your newsworthy items with targeted titles, be confident in taking additional time to understand the publication’s agenda and reporting style so you can tailor your pitch to align with their approach. It is also important to consider how you can supply unique quotes or bespoke elements for added value. Where possible - and understandably this depends on time and resources available - engage in a dialogue with your target publications in advance of pitching content, so that you can provide the most meaningful contributions.
Adaptable Partnerships
The concept of furloughing has been approached differently by region, for example, the German Kurzarbeit (or short-time work) scheme involves a reduction in hours of work which still enables people to continue and retain their employment whilst the government makes up the remaining difference in income. Conversely, in the UK furloughed employees are not permitted to work in any capacity whilst being paid 80% of the salary they would have earned from their full-time employment. These differences have shone a light on the perceived value versus cost of work.
If you believe that marketing is a value creating function, rather than a cost-centre, then you justify the investment needed at the outset of any activity by reinforcing that it is focused on bringing a return in revenue to business. However, if you see marketing high in the pecking order for a necessary cost-cutting exercise, there is careful consideration to be taken around not only weathering this time but how to eventually accelerate out of this challenge on the other side. It’s worth clients and agencies reflecting on the reasons they decided to partner in the first place and how best to proceed in a constructive manner.
If a business partnership is right, all parties involved should believe that they can and do benefit from the collaboration. This stands during the bad as much as the good times, as there are always creative ways to solve problems and develop new ideas in collaboration. We share the burden to reap the eventual rewards together.
Whether you are part of a tech start-up, a distinguished brand or agency of any persuasion, we all must recognise that turbulent times are never likely to be too far away - and not just due to extraordinary situations like the one we are all currently living through. Navigating the now, whilst anticipating and planning for the next, is going to be a fundamental approach we must lean into.
I hope that by using some of these ideas, and maintaining partnerships that enrich every party involved will enable us to solve these challenges together. In this way, we all have the chance to thrive.