How will your business look in 6 months?

The grim reality is for the immediate future things will be chaotic and with regulations changing hourly it will be hard for business truly plan for NOW.

Cashflow will be imperative as will maintaining clear lines of communication with both staff and customers. But perhaps the most important thing righty now is establishing a plan for how your brand will viewed when the world starts to go back to (the new) normal.

As the situation unfolds it will be so important for your brand to remain visible even if you are not actively servicing clients but at the same time it will be vitally important not to appear insensitive to the circumstances or opportunistic.

Businesses will need to trade with empathy – Understanding the changing needs and resources of their customers and potentially dealing with grief and loss.

Depending on your audience(s) you may need multiple strategies regarding your messaging and that may be channel by channel.

Where you communicate may need to change too. Think carefully about the channels you are using and why. If people are isolated and you have a large exposure to print advertising, digital media may play an important role in your business being able to maintain visibility with your audience. Radio too might be an opportunity given many people will turn to this “old faithful” medium to keep up to date.

If you are a B2B business – the greatest value you can add for your customers may be how your business, services and products can reduce stress & costs at this time. Remember there is going to be a huge amount of head scratching going on at the moment as companies try and figure out how to solve any number of a thousand problems. If you can help them solve problems this may actually grow not only your business in the interim but also (if you do it well) their trust in your business at the most testing of times.

For B2C businesses – now might be the time to really focus in on your existing customer base. If you have been lax in setting up platforms and campaigns to tap into your existing clients now might be the perfect opportunity. These customers know and trust your brand, they have used your products/services and during hard times will be looking for stability and security.

Nothing might take away the bitter pill the present circumstances are going to make your business swallow, but if you get the next few months right your business might have the potential to have a solid foundation for the recovery.