The impact of the current global pandemic may be varying drastically across industry to industry, location to location. And I’m going to keep publishing these. You might think, why don’t you pause on the content and pause on kind of putting these out right now while we’re figuring things out? But that would be the exact opposite of what I’m suggesting you to do. 
I’m suggesting that you need to start doubling down and communicating more and being more transparent and preparing for this upcoming recession, things like that. And that’s what today’s topic is all about.
When I say doubling down, I want to give you some clarity around how I would prioritize what you really start doubling down on. In the previous blogs, I’ve really been talking about preparing for the recession, cutting some of your expenses, investing more in marketing, and really not just writing this out, but seeing the opportunities that it’s starting to present. 
I really believe that this is going to present one of the greatest opportunities probably for the next 10 plus years. And from what I’m seeing, and again, I’m not an economist by any means, and this whole coronavirus thing changes. I mean 10 times throughout the day and being posted within hours of me writing this, the economy and stock market in particular is nose diving again this morning.
It’s definitely a fluid situation.
I want to make sure that you’re not getting into a state of paralysis, and you’re at least starting to take some of those actions. One of the things I want you to consider doing is to double down. I do not want you to start cutting your marketing budgets. What I want you to do is to look at, are there some unnecessary things that you can cut or pause and redirect those back to marketing? Because what’s already happening is businesses are shutting their links staff, laying off staff. They’re pausing marketing, and they’re kind of going into hibernation. Now, again, there’s certain industries that you have to be doing that kind of stuff right now and taking massive action. However, I’ll give you a simple example of where someone is seeing an opportunity versus where someone is seeing a huge problem. 
So this particular person has a lot of Airbnb ease in the Buffalo, New York area. And obviously travel is kind of coming to a grinding halt. But rather than just sit there and lose an insane amount of money, what he started doing is advertising and marketing to doctors and health professionals and letting people know of his increased cleaning regimens and things like that. And also looking at corporate people, and wondering, are there any people that are kind of in transition or people that just need a place to stay for a month or two? 
So we very quickly pivoted his marketing not to just capitalize on the situation but to just kind of maintain even so he doesn’t end up losing everything because this could be kept strophic for people in travel in tourism. 
Now, what I’m suggesting from a doubling down standpoint is A: you look at any places that you can scale back or cut? I like to use the phrase fringe benefits, things that mean, you kind of added because the economy was rocking, or there’s some things like that, that you can pause or cancel for the short term. And I want you to redirect that in from doubling down. 
Where should you invest? I’m suggesting a couple things. The first thing is content. So we’re doubling down with podcasting. And not only am I going to continue to produce this particular podcast Marketing Above All each and every day, we’re planning on launching three more podcasts in the next 30 days. Not three months, six months a year from now, three more different podcasts in the next 30 days. 
People are glued to their phones, they’re glued to their devices. They’re looking for leadership. They’re looking for guidance, they’re looking for content. Content is the area that I really want you to go extremely heavy in: YouTube, LinkedIn, live Facebook Live. I want you to start producing content, I want you to start communicating more than you ever have before. I want you to look internally, do you have some people on your team that can write effectively? Or that can produce good videos that look good and act professional on video, for example. Content, content, content content, double down, triple down on the amount of content you’re putting out there. 
Your competitors are starting to very rapidly scale back. They’re panicking. They’re nervous. They’re not sure what to do. As you’re putting out more and more and more content, everyone again is online. Now more than ever, they’ve already been online. They are online. Now more than ever in history. If you’re putting out content, they’re going to find your content, put it out on social media, put it out on all the different social media platforms, blogs, on your website, launch podcasts like this. Put YouTube videos out there, local community content, it doesn’t have to be specific to your niche. 
For example, if you’re in pest control, you don’t have to be talking about it nor should you be talking about right now. Simply pest control for the summer. Talk about how things are being affected in the community and what you’re doing to help, how your service continues to help. 
Just continue to put out content, content, content. 
The other thing I want you doubling down on is where you are investing with paid traffic, Facebook ads, Google ads, Instagram, YouTube, Google display, all those different platforms. It’s as if essentially that there’s been a 25 to 50% cost reduction in what it’s costing to get attention, what it’s costing to get leads as we speak. 
Look at the different areas that you can double down in, focus on your content initially, and then start to pivot over some of those ad resources. But the big thing to keep in mind here is that your message cannot be the same thing that you’ve been putting out. Over the last six months or longer. You’ve got to pivot your message. 
For example, if you’re a credit union, now is not the time to be talking about buying a new vehicle or buying a new house. Now is the time to be talking about emergency loans, for example, what the credit union is doing to help its members in these tough financial times. Those are the kind of things that you need to be putting out there. But the attention right now is very, very cheap. Times will be tough for the next year, year and a half. But this will pay off dividends thereafter. 
Double down on content, double down on your ad spend and make sure the message is on point.