When life throws you a curveball you may be tempted to panic, don’t.

I recently watched a video from a psychologist who explained the body’s responses to sudden events. Initially, our bodies flood us with adrenaline as a way of dealing with it. This gives us extra energy to deal with the initial situations.

The flush of adrenaline is designed to help us make decisions and act quickly, the fight or flight response to danger, but these decisions are for the short term not the long.

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Rash decision making

In times of crisis, it’s often inviting to make significant changes but you should resist that temptation. In the same way that, when someone is grieving, it is advisable not to make any major decisions for a year so that you know that your thoughts are clear. The same is true for business decisions in the wake of large changes.

So, what does this mean for marketing? Although it might be tempting in a time of crisis to batten down the hatches and wait for it all to blow over, we believe that’s not what you should do. If anything, there is no better time than now to use your digital tools to engage with potential customers.

Throughout our working lives, there will be times when we have to deal with the consequences of unexpected events. How we deal with those changes will define how we come out the other side.

Why? Because the event will usually blow over and things will go back to normal or a variation of that normality eventually. And if you spent that time simply waiting for it to blow over, you will be at a standing start and you can bet that your competitors will be in a different situation. It is better to get your message out when it is relatively quiet than when the crisis has passed and you’re trying to get your voice heard amongst the noise.

People are fickle too and, if they aren’t hearing from you now, who’s to say that they will want to hear from you later? If you are operating as normal then your clients and potential customers need to know that and your digital comms should be doing that for you.

This all combines together to make this a good time to take a look at how things are done and what can be done differently.

Time to pivot?

Once that initial rush of adrenaline has worn off and before you slip into a feeling of acceptance and lethargy, you need to think about how you are going to come out of the crisis in the best way possible.

This could mean that you need to change not only the message that you are putting out during the crisis but maybe also review the people who you are targeting. Review what you do and explore additional and sometimes entirely new avenues. You never know, you may come across something you hadn’t previously thought of.

Your new thinking can then be applied to all your digital customer touchpoints, including social media, your blogs, ebooks, whitepapers and more. Once the crisis is over then your business will be in a much better place for having pivoted your narrative with due consideration for the changing world.

The saying, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ has never been truer than when as a business you suddenly have to deal with the unforeseen. Throughout our working lives, there will be times when we have to deal with the consequences of unexpected events and it’s how we deal with those changes that define how we come out the other side.

If you’ve been inspired by these innovative approaches to positive audience engagement, talk to That Media Thing about the story you want to tell to your customers email contact@thatmediathing.com