How are agencies coping with corona virus? Here are two stories of marketing agencies and how they are coping with the pandemic.
Patrick Garde, Co-Founder of Exaweb said, “Due to the coronavirus, we immediately implemented work-from-home arrangements by mid-March. We have not returned to the office since then. We believe that the health of our team members is our number one priority this pandemic.One of the WFH tips we can share is to set a weekly huddle, if possible, on Monday, to start the week with a positive vibe. One facilitator every week where each one can present something or play an ice breaker game to get to know more of your team members. Most importantly, you can recap last week’s previous tasks and talk about the upcoming week’s to-dos.
Our favorite client success story is our flower shop client. When we started the campaign, the owner had a couple of branches, one inside a mall and the other was the head office where the preparation of arrangements usually take place as well as the storage for flowers. Also, their average monthly revenue was only around Php 30,000. When we implemented the campaign, in a few months or so, their monthly revenue averaged at Php500,000 and during peak season (Valentine’s), they reached Php1,800,000. In a year or two, they decided to terminate their branch inside the mall as the online sales were higher and to reduce overhead costs (rent).”
David Toby, Director Pathfinder Alliance said, “I am a small business owner that runs a digital marketing agency in Perth, Australia. When COVID hit, we had a lot of clients cutting budgets – understandbly so as there was so much uncertainty and naturally marketing budgets are the first to get cut. With my business, we were lucky that we qualified for finacial help from the government. This gave us the ability to still service clients who had cut their budgets on a similar pre budget cut level on what is technically the government’s dime.
It’s given us space, and the freedom to explore different solutions to solve and better our client’s standing post-covid without the pressure of doing ‘what we’re just paid to do’. This allowed us the opportunity to test less conventional digital marketing platforms, such as Tik Tok, Reddit, Snapchat, Taboola, Plista, Yahoo Gemini,Affiliate networks, etc. As these are the less conventional/proven platforms – clients weren’t necessarily prepared to splash out their own money for us to test things – but because of how we decided to approach things, we were technically doing the work for them on platforms that we believed had the potential to succeed, for them, on the governments dime. It was a good learning experience for us and our clients. Additionally, approach was that there are also a bunch of different small businesses that are affected by the COVID-19 situation, but are also trying to do their very business to contribute back to society at large, and other small businesses. We spent the better part of the start of the lockdown pulling together all the resources we could find big businesses (Google / Facebook) as well as small local businesses pitching in to help into one page so that it’s easy to find and action all the different grants, stimulus packages, offers and incentive that is available. We’ve also included a form for people to submit how their businesses are contributing back just incase we’ve missed it. It just showed a bit of camaraderie in the midst of a pandemic. It was our contribution back to society to hopefully make lives a bit easier for some.”
This initiative also put our services on the radar for a couple of prospects whom want to work with us when they’re in a financial position to do so.COVID has also highlighted the importance of remaining agile and adaptable in marketing as we saw seismic shifts across different industries. E-Commerce boomed, travel industry crashed, gyms were shutdown, etc. We can forecast for the quarter, and plan for the year, but none of that really matters or work if none of your plans and good thoughts are actionable in the current climate. Staying agile with your marketing – including adapting the main product / service offering, is critical in time of uncertainty and massive changes.”