Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Marketing in the Coronavirus Pandemic

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

On this special edition of the Radical Marketing podcast, Ryan and Robbie discuss how brands and businesses should manage marketing in this uncertain economy and market, including answering these questions: What should be your marketing focus? What role does marketing play in all of this? What budget should be allocated? What messages should be conveyed? What are the key tactics to deploy? Lots of great insight and perspective for businesses of all sizes. Stay safe out there and let's support local businesses struggling the most. Please share, review, and subscribe! Radical Podcast is always looking forward to meeting both aspiring, and grounded professionals across the country! Slide Ryan or Radical a DM on Instagram and let's make it happen! @radical_results on Instagram @ryanalford on Instagram www.radical.company If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

Hey guys, a special edition of the Radical Company Podcast. Robbie Fitzwater and I talk about marketing amongst the virus and pandemic going on. What should businesses and brands be thinking about? How much should they be spending? What are some tactics that they might should be considering? Do you go hard, go heavy, or do you hide away? Well, I can tell you it's not hiding. That and more on the

latest episode of the Radical Company Podcast. Hey guys, it's Ryan Alford. Welcome to a, I'll call it a special edition of the Radical Company Podcast. A little bit of a light or a heavier topic, excuse me. You know, with things that are going on, I'm joined by my good friend and marketing strategist, Robbie Fitzwater. It's good to be here. We're in a very sterilized room with Lysol microphones. Yeah, we've got our six feet of social distancing. Trying to keep things safe and consistent. We were thinking about doing this over the phone, but I sound horrible over a conference call microphone.

by doing this over phone, but I sound horrible over a conference call microphone. This is true. And we do have a good bit of, we've got social distancing going on here at the office. We're in 5,000 square feet with five people

and everyone's in a different quadrant. So I think we're safer than just about anywhere other than maybe like a bathroom at your house alone. But even then, that brings its own challenges into play. So a whole different kind of danger there. Exactly. But, you know, we wanted to get together.

I mean, it's an important time. I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening and we don't, you know, Robbie, we aren't coming from some place of judgment, critique, or have all the answers. Look, this has never happened. We're in a time with the coronavirus that it's unprecedented. But I do think as marketing leaders, as guys with points of view, and working with a lot of businesses, big, small, and indifferent, that they want to hear how you know, what should, how should we be thinking about things? What are some points of view on marketing and messaging?

And I think it's important that, you know, we give an opinion and we state some recommendations, but, you know, I think it's a time for opportunity while also recognizing the sentiment, the tone, and the reality of what's going on. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. This is, I mean, there really is, like you said, no precedence for this in any current state of affairs. Again, kind of the largest pandemic we've seen stateside is like 1918, and marketing was definitely a very different space at that time. Very different. And right now it's kind of that gray area where everybody's trying to kind of understand exactly what's going to happen, what it's going to look like, and kind of trying to look forward to what their life is going to be like in two weeks and four weeks and

six weeks and maybe like however long this kind of piece goes on for. And right now we're just kind of starting into the early phases of that. And you see grocery stores just completely wiped out. If you're trying to get bread, you're gonna be waiting a while. If you're trying to do a lot of things, people are still going through that panic phase

and haven't got into that kind of like, let's get into a rhythm, let's get into cruising and let's get, let's try and understand what our life's going to be like. So I think there's a lot of fear and a lot of kind of angst around it. And when those things happen, um, I think some of the things that have kind of come out of this already that we've seen, I've been kind of, kind of cool. I think some people are using the technology around us to do really fascinating things. Like we'll see, like on Instagram, people are live streaming yoga classes or live streaming workout classes just to be able to help people continue to kind of find some normalcy and try

and get some energy out while they're cooped up inside. And you see people kind of taking kind of the platforms we have and doing some really cool things with. And you see people kind of taking kind of the platforms we have and doing some really cool things with them and allows people to kind of express themselves in a different way and also kind of reach out to a larger community of people that are all in this together because it's not kind of a few people kind of in the corner kind of dealing with this. It's really everybody from big, small, medium, large. And it's impacting some people differently than it's impacting others. But at the end of the day, everybody wants to be safe and healthy. Yeah, and I think that's the biggest thing is safe and healthiness first.

But I think it's important and the innovation is happening. You see that. I don't want to shake any, well, I told you so's at anyone, but the need for e-commerce, the need for online channels of doing business, the need and opportunity with buying and selling a car online. There's so many things, and you're seeing people now, okay, There's so many things, and you're seeing people now, okay, see what the opportunities were there for innovating the convenience of it. And now it's not only a convenience, it's a necessity. And so the yoga stuff is fascinating.

Like, we have a yoga studio next door, and I walked, you know, over there. We share restrooms. And they were doing an online, you know, version of the class in there. You know, they've already kind of pivoted to that and they said, how's the tennis? It's been awesome. So people are embracing that and, you know, it's definitely bringing a sense of community back in some ways. I think you realize how fragile certain things are, but how connected we all are. It's like this, all of this to me is like these interesting parallels and different things of, you know, you think everything's so big, but everything is so connected. The interconnected interplay of all of these things, from the technologies to the currencies to the, uh, just the day-to-day reliance on, you know, how many times have I heard supply chain this week?

And yeah, that's if you're, if you're working logistics or supply chain, uh, good on you. Um, that's, it's not a fun place to, I'm sure that's not a fun place to be right now. And, and yeah, like you, like you said, we're going to see, we're going to feel some after effects of this when supply chains haven't been hit for us as hard as they kind of may be at some point. Stuff is still being able to be delivered here in some capacity, but some of that may slow down and we don't kind of know what that's going to look like. And then we saw that gray area in front of us. But like you said, the cool things that are happening are people really finding ways to connect with each other and really kind of form community and kind of grow that community.

Like, again, yoga classes. There's art classes being taught by artists in real time that kids can view during the day because they're out of school and they're they're trying to find ways to keep people entertained um musicians are doing live streams and concerts of at any given time i think like cold play um one of my favorite bands the decemberist was doing a live stream the other night that my wife and i watched for like 45 minutes and it's just ways that they can kind of get people are using their gifts to kind of give back to the society as a whole to try and make people feel a little bit more calm, which is, I mean, at the end of the day,

they may not be intentionally doing marketing, but they are doing marketing. I mean, they're growing a community. They're building a passionate fan base, and they're ideally trying to make people's lives better without asking for much in return, but they're building relationships and building fans. And I think that's the key,

and I want to tee up a couple things for you, return, but they're building relationships and building fans. And I think that's the key. And I want to tee up a couple of things for you, but that very point is marketing is communication. And right now for brands, big and small, that communication is building your brand for the future. And so what do I mean by that? It's the steps that you're taking for your community. It's the steps that you're taking for your workforce. It's the things that you're doing and putting out there that are building a reference point for how you handled both the best and the worst of times. And that is marketing, you know, for brands right now in a lot of ways. And you see the ones that are, you know, and I'm going to call out some good players and some bad players here,

but you see the ones that are stepping to the forefront and then you see the ones that, call out my boy Richard Branson at Virgin for telling everyone to go home for eight weeks, unpaid and he's got $20 billion in the bank or $3 billion, whatever. And look, I'm not saying, look, I'm a capitalist. I mean, I believe in, you know, just give your money away necessarily, but I don't know. You know, there's just certain things that are kind of like telling in moments

of crisis. And I think there's going to be commerce happening while this is going on. And there most certainly is on the other side of it. And so I think you've got to remember both the now and the then. And that's one thing that you make a good point of, taking a long-term view of this. Because, again, this feels like dire, like completely, again, I'm sure, again, people in 18, 19, or 1919, thought this was going to be the end of the world.

There's going to be nothing at the end of this. But we are going to kind of come through this at some point in time. And kind of what happens now is going to be kind of the most transparent version of what life is going to be like for them. And when you're a brand, you like people always say like let's act with transparency. And this is really a time where brands are really going to be focused to act with transparency because you kind of see where they've got to put their money where their mouth is. I mean, you see people kind of like groups coming out of the woodwork saying, hey, we're closing our stores.

We're still going to keep funding our employees. We're going to make sure they're comfortable and safe. And from that perspective, if you're looking for a commodity, great. You're going to buy a commodity. It's not going to matter. But if you're looking for a brand that you're going to do business with and have exchange commerce with for a long period of time, those are the brands where you want to say, hey, what did they do in a really tough time? Because you want to know you're doing business with somebody you can trust. And if you can build that relationship and build a level of trust, you're going to have that for a longer period of time.

So right now, I mean, while it's making an invest, while it's making a tough investment, when, I mean, when everybody's having to tighten their belt, I mean, even if you really have to do that, in long term, if you can afford it, it's a smart decision because it's going to pay dividends in the long run. and if you're executing your business in a way that's straightforward and transparent then you have nothing to worry about but if you're

trying to hide stuff it's it's a time where people are gonna people are gonna start asking what asking questions and because so much of the economy is really shutting down at this point it's you don't you don't be putting people out on the street when you don't want to be putting people out on the street when you don't have to be. And if you can take care of your employees and take care of your business, then that's a much better place right now than it would be moving forward. So let's do a little, I don't know if lightning around is the right way, but we can kind of yin and yang on this a bit. So for business owners, and maybe we'll say small business for now, small to medium business, that might be listening to this and thinking,

all right, what should they do? Like maybe you'll go one, I'll go one, we'll go tit for tat here. What do you do? From a marketing perspective, what's domino one for you um if you're a brand manager a marketing manager or a business owner you know for how to handle this so first thing i would think about is what you have you have your core customer base you have your core community how is their behavior change be changed from where it was normally to right now what are they thinking what are they feeling and what are they really searching for and if it's comfort and stability if it's some sense of

some sense of normalcy understand how you can work to help provide that through the context of your brand understand hey i know my community is out doing other, is kind of in-home huddled up, how can I add value to them that is going to be in line with my business, it's gonna fit in line with what I would normally doing in marketing. Your marketing may change from a more promotional focus, but you can still add value through content. Again, I'm always gonna beat the drum of content, but you can add value in through content. Again, I'm always going to beat the drum of content, but you can add value in different ways. So how can you add perspective of what are the best movies in this certain vertical to watch? Or what are the best horse movies to watch if you have a

equestrian business? How do you find different ways to kind of keep people engaged with things that they're already doing? You know, people are indoors, they're kind of wishing they had access to the things they want to do outside, but you don't always have the luxury. So how do you kind of bring that to them and kind of bring the lifestyle along with it? There's also great ways that you could also kind of take this as an opportunity to kind of get to know your community better, get to know your customer base better. And I mean, try and, again, while I say like the live yoga, the live streaming, I think it's a fascinating example of, hey, this is a person trying to build a relationship. And ideally, that's going to be a two-way dialogue. So you can take that time to really focus on understanding and getting to know your customer base a lot better than you would in any kind of boom time when everybody's just going guns blazing.

So from that perspective, getting to know your customers and kind of understanding their behavior. But then from a messaging standpoint, how do you continue that drumbeat of communication even though it's not always as easy because you've got to get a little bit more creative. You can't say, hey, we're going to do a sale here, we're going to do a sale here.

And if anybody has the coronavirus sale please like just if you have that brilliant idea please just stop stop right now because it's just it's horrible because there you're we're probably gonna see a lot of bad examples of that but like understanding how how you can kind of like like add value to your community hopefully brighten their day a little bit yeah and those are the things that marketers are going to do now that are going to hopefully kind of be a reason that people want to get involved in the long term and if you can partner a lot of people are hurting right now i've seen a lot of cool examples of people kind of partnering with

a non-for-profit to help help people get the the things they need and to live a little bit better life if you can spend some time doing that right now when you're not spending time on other things, then that's time well spent and that's kind of a good story you can tell about your brand and about kind of the mission of the organization. Yeah, and my number one is first consider your opportunities for pivoting.

And so you're seeing that with restaurants. That's the most obvious one with pivoting from in- you're seeing that with restaurants. That's the most obvious one with pivoting from in-store dining to pickup and delivery. You know, they, uh, some of them maybe should have been there already, but they're pivoting quickly to that. Another example, um, you know, a company that I follow, we've worked with indirectly a few times, Mizzy Cosmetics. They are, they do lip balm, mainly for cosmetic for women. They also do some of their stuff like dentist grade lip balms and different things that are in the medical community. But they've pivoted because they saw the shortage of hand sanitizer.

And so they're making hand sanitizer out of their factories now. And so they made that pivot because they had the resources, they had the facility that they can make anything cosmetic, uh, semi medical and they pivoted. And, you know, I don't know what their sales are going to be, but I saw their, um, some of their posts today and I was like, this is brilliant. This is a perfect pivot. It's a segment that's selling out unnaturally because of the demand. I think that'll change. But they're filling a need in the market and they had products that kind of fit in there

because they're doing it. They're doing some of the more, I think it could be more of a cosmetic stuff, but they're also doing a medical brand that can be used in hospitals and things like that. They've reached out and said that's there. They have the capacity. Obviously, they can't serve the entire country,

but they've made that pivot. And so I think, first, if you're a business, no matter what you are and what you do, you need to be thinking and whiteboarding pivot opportunity, natural opportunities for things that you already do but maybe a different way that you can serve it up yeah like like the the henry ford like i would have built a like the you don't want to be the buggy company when cars are becoming more more popular yeah you don't want to you don't want to be that guy that's in the that thinks

they're in the train industry when they're really in the transportation industry they're those again kind of a really good example of that and during during times of crisis in the United States, like there's presidents for that. Like, what was it back in the day? They, hey, Maytag, could you build tanks? And Maytag suddenly goes and builds tanks for World War II. I mean, those are things that, ways to make a pivot to add value to society. And again, the beauty industry especially too, if people are spending more time inside, you're not going out, you're not getting dressed up. So the value of cosmetics at that point

is kind of plummeting in some ways because maybe you might get dressed up for a Skype call, but you're not going to be getting dressed up like you would be on a daily basis. So I think if you're a lounge product, go for it. You have free reign to do well for yourself. If people are sitting around all day, like sweats and snuggies are going to maybe do well.

But it's a good pivot, and it's a good way to look at a business a little bit differently. Exactly. Next one, Robbie, what do you think as far as far as okay the natural inclination on budgeting and so there's obviously efficiency and budgeting properly is definitely needed so you know as an agency owner as marketers no one is saying that it everything's the same nothing stays the same with what's going on right now but what what's your perspective on growth versus hold on versus just the overall budgeting of marketing considerations? So my normal perspective on budgeting is I always say let's take it like a 70-20-10 approach.

70% is your core business. 70-20-10 approach. 70% is your core business. 20% is kind of what you're doing that's on the, what you're doing that's kind of moving towards the more innovative side of things, but not completely. And the 10% is kind of that experimental kind of moonshot. It's going to be high risk, high reward, where you're going to find kind of the big bang or really not much else. Businesses are going to kind of have to keep that 70% running as much as possible. But that innovative side, you're going to have to find that through different means. So that budget that you've been setting aside for innovation, you're not going to be able to kind of experiment with that the same way you would be normally.

So you're going to be pushed to run a little bit more lean on that aspect. But from that perspective, it kind of forces you to try new things and experiment from a different perspective in your business, where you may be investing a lot in certain capacities. You may be forced to kind of try different things that may be kind of hacks for part of your business, but you're probably going to find different innovative ways to use them. And kind of, that's where I think some of this innovation is going to happen is like, nobody writes great songs on a full stomach. I mean, all, I mean, everybody does, you're going to hear better songs on an empty stomach when somebody's going, when somebody has like, has things to sing about.

So I'm, I'm of that perspective perspective of like your budgets are going to be probably cut back around like 25%. I mean, across the board, that's probably going to be the place that people kind of end on because a lot of their business, depending on what it is, is going to be cut back. So marketers are going to have to get more scrappy and get more lean. It's going to be a place where they're not going to be able to kind of do the same things they've always done because that's the way they've done it. They're going to have to really assess like, what are we doing? What's effective? What's not? And where are we investing our time and resources? Because time is also part of your budget because if people are wasting time, then they're not doing anything.

Yep. And my answer on the budget part is a lot of it has to do with your risk, how risk averted are you versus, because there's definitely risk involved as much as anything now. I will say that you can't stop investing in your brand. And so whether that's content development, but, or, and the,

the way branded, you know, he's not, I'm not talking about TV ads, but the brand, your communication strategy, your PR strategies, your, um, your blog content back to some of the things that you said, you, I think you've got to stay true to that. But I think now is the time for innovation and testing. I am, you know, more than anything, I've sent out emails to some of our clients. And again, I'm talking, and I think we're both talking, look, if you're in a restaurant and you went from, you know, 100 to zero overnight, obviously there's some other considerations. But when you still have demand for your products and there's still a natural

buying cycle there for what you're selling i think that's what we're talking about here now is the time to consider innovative new approaches and what might that be well maybe you've you've fought the change to digital you know like you've i mean you've you've forever run in print magazines but you know you've needed a better website all along. Maybe you've relied on great imagery, but now's the time to test some video strategies that use more of what gets engagement. Again, all through the lens of the right message. So it's the combination of testing new channels, new things, with whatever that redefined budget might be.

But now's the chance to push it out maybe in a different way than you would have, all through the lens of respect and understanding the mindset of the consumer. So it's not, well, now we should just, instead of doing a sale on TV, we should do a sale through a display ad no uh you need to think about well how about we give 20 of all proceeds of this goes back to the

travel and tourism industry you know sale or you know like how we, this needs to be about, if you can break even for these next two to three months and be feeding back into the broader economy, that's probably the way. And I'm not, I'm a capitalist, I believe in all that. But, like, you need to be thinking of ways with which you can deliver and keep your people working, but deliver those messages and those products and those services through the lens of the proper context. Yeah, you don't want to be, and even if you are doing really well,

if you're thriving during this time, if you're the hand sanitizer business that's just doing... Toilet paper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Toilet paper going through the roof. Nobody's heard of a bidet. Come on.

But even them, I'm going to jump in. Even the ones that are crushing it right now, if you don't, you can look at this as an opportunity to be a peak, or you can look at it as a way to increase the overall forever. Because think about it. If I was Charmin right now, like Charmin toilet paper,

I would be saying that we're giving back 80%. Whatever it is. Think about the goodwill that they could build that then increases their sales forever over time instead of just being this one-time peak. Or how do you partner with different groups to try and give back? And I think that's one of the things you hinted on is the partnership opportunities here are really unique too. It's like how do businesses partner together to make the pie bigger for everybody else right now it's not necessarily competition as much as it is kind of let's work together to all get through this if we can break even hey you can you can piggyback off off what

we're doing here we can piggyback off what you're doing there and hopefully kind of keep keep the boat as stable for everyone else as possible the high or just, if we can keep the low tide as low as possible for everyone, all ships can stay there. Because if all of your customers or all your B2B competition goes under, guess what? It's going to be a problem for you down the line.

And so from that logical perspective, if we can do that, how do we think of, what are some ways you think think that businesses could achieve that right now with their messaging? Yeah. I think primarily it's, again, like you said, listening to your customers and knowing what they're needing and feeling and then building your messages accordingly and thinking about what matters to them. And so in a community like

Greenville, you know, we know how bad, you know, travel and tourism and restaurant industry is being hit. Um, I'll give an example. I'll practice what I preach. We, you know, we run a, a club called Greenville, you know, or a entrepreneurs, um, uh, group and community called Greenville hustle, GVL hustle. And we've been working this week on limited edition t-shirts. And with all the proceeds, we're going to do a big promo behind it. We're going to be working with the city and do a bigger push than we normally have with all proceeds going to that industry. And so again, that's because we're, you know, being an agency, we're tied to the community and tied to that industry and

we're seeing the impact and so we're trying to again pivot an entity that we already had in a way that can impact the community in some way and i don't know whether that is when we did the math like we sell 50,000 t-shirts and they ten dollars that's 50 500 thousand dollars you know like there's nothing to sneeze at. And so, you know, again, through the lens of practice, what you preach, you know, that's the way I think brands and companies need to be thinking, you know, is what's, what's something we're already doing that could be, have that kind of impact in a different way based on what's happening in the community

yeah partner partnering and partnering and supporting and that that's what i mean during times like this people are looking for ways to do that and and they're not always necessarily right available for you and finding ways hey how can we how can we support a business that's kind of in line with what we do but not necessarily who we view as a direct competitor? How do we, like, I think there's going to be some cool collaborations happening with brands partnering with each other to say, hey, I've got an audience. You've got an audience. Let's work together to find ways that we can kind of, maybe people like Jack Russell Terriers and something else. And we're going to combine efforts to try and engage that audience

or hopefully add some value to their lives. We're going to support this different group in this different capacity. Any gift card bought from this organization, we're going to match half of it for ours. So those are opportunities to kind of keep the wheels spinning for some of those businesses. But it's a cool story you get to tell about your brand and your business in some capacity. Yeah. I think the biggest thing, you know, if I'm giving counsel, is for the leadership out there, it's time to step up and to, it's not time to bury your heads.

Look, it is our job as leaders, as owners of business, to keep this economy moving and running. And so I consider it my job not to keep our agency moving and running and working with the clients we have, helping them innovate, but I don't look at it as, well, running a sale or taking advantage or how can you promote something that someone might go buy look this is about consumers this is about business this is about needs that people have you know we're driven by an economy and it's our job to keep this economy moving and you keep

that moving with the right messaging and the right marketing and the right principles. But it's not time to just go, oh, the world's over, you know, or like, you know, go bury our heads. I mean, and that's one of the things is like, maintaining a consistent, understanding what's going on, how things are happening and how things are affecting you. This is probably one of the times you can least afford to kind of set it, forget it marketing. Like, hey,

we got all of our campaigns scheduled. Let's just let it go and let it fly because you're going to something bad is going to happen at the wrong time. You're going to be coming across as completely tone deaf, which is you never want to be in that position. But yeah, you've got to keep abreast of what's happening, but then try and really go out there and live it and try and create as much consistency as possible. And if it is supporting the local businesses around you, doing as much of that as you can. Like we all have great ways to support businesses that we love and care about as individuals. Like share more, share more. Celebrate more people on Instagram stories, on your own personal accounts.

And find ways to do that to kind of celebrate them in a little bit different way and hopefully drive some business in their direction. And, I mean, hopefully everybody's making a little bit of room if they have the capacity to go support local businesses as much as possible. I mean, make an effort to eat takeout food more than you normally would because you know those businesses are on the razor's edge and hurting in a lot of capacities. Maybe go buy gift cards from a store that you may not necessarily need something right now, but give them a little bit of cash flow to keep things going. And gift cards may not be the best example, but doing something where you're trying to reinvest back in your community,

those dollars are going to stay here. Yeah, that shop local mindset, there's's never more opportune time for that. Exactly. So maybe one last thought here, Robbie, if, is there a tactic, you know, we've talked pretty high level. I always like to try to boil it back down to the ground a little bit. Is there a tactic that you think maybe, and when I say tactic, I mean a marketing channel, a marketing vehicle. Is there one tactic or another that you think now's the time to be hammering or appropriate? We've talked about the filter of the message, which is more important than probably any of it. the filter of the message, which is more important than probably any of it.

But is there a specific tactic that you would say, hey, try this or do this, or this is something that you should be, if you're not already rocking and rolling, you should start? I mean, that's, again, thinking about the behavior of everyone right now. If everyone's cooped in right now, they're spending a lot of time on their couch. They're spending a lot of time watching Netflix. Yeah, that's what's going to be going on. But they're also going to be having their phone with them at any given time. So they're looking for information. They're looking for entertainment. They're kind of looking for an escape. So kind of all of those, again, unfortunately, like spending more time, I want to say there's a lot of information going on on

social. There's a lot of information going on on social. There's a lot of information going on on email. Those are the two places my head naturally goes to first. Instagram's going to be the channel people are going to be spending a majority of their time on and focusing on right now. And email is something that's going to be consistently available and accessible. Finding a way to keep both those running right now. And Instagram stories is probably the best and most, most effective way to do that right now is because people are spending a lot of time there.

Or Instagram live has actually been come a really viable channel right now. I think that's been kind of where a lot of the, a lot of the unique things have come from so far from what we've seen. Personally, I probably don't spend as much time as TikTok as I should, but that's where I've seen. that's where I've seen a lot of the great things happening. LinkedIn, while I want to always beat the LinkedIn drum,

I don't think that's where people are going to be spending as much time right now just because they're focusing on kind of keeping their personal lives together and keeping that focused. I think of like that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like need for safe and security and safety. like those are like you need for a new job or career opportunities like those are going to be those are a little bit higher up but farther down is where you want to feel safe

and secure. So that's where I think people are going to be spending a little bit more time and again I'm always a fan of email. I absolutely love email. And it's like social channels. You just don't have to fight an algorithm as much. Google's still a little bit of a beast. And finding ways you can entertain and engage through email and finding ways you can probably make those two play together well is my suggestion. Yeah.

I knew you were going to nail email, and that's why I love you, and that's why I had a different one. Here's my overarching. Sorry, mine was broad. Yours was broad. I grabbed all the good ones before you even got a chance. I've got diversity here in my thinking. Here's number one.

Digital is important right now. It's been more important, but it's more important than ever. If you sell products and you don't have a proper e-commerce store in place to deliver product that people need, you need to be refining that strategy, building a better e-commerce, removing friction in that process. You know, look, hey, now's the time to take advantage of Amazon. Because Amazon's not going to be, they're so overwhelmed with toilet paper and and hand sanitizer you're not going to be able to get that pair of jeans you needed or you've been putting off so direct to consumer uh if you provide that frictionless experience it's it's there and i mean that there's there's never a better time and it it goes into that like shopping local people want a human connection really bad

right now and they're going to get that from Amazon, but they can get that from you. And that's an opportunity. So double down on your website. And for all those businesses, too, thinking about people that people are bored, like all those things that have been on to-do lists that they've wanted to get around to doing, there's probably going to be things that people have always wanted to learn how to do something. People have always wanted to kind of learn how to tie dye a shirt i don't know um but those things people are going to have more time for those kind of activities during the day um so understand how

your business can kind of if your business falls in line with that how can you help provide an escape for people yeah and i think so doubling down website experience improving that you're going to have more website traffic. Look, the halo effect of this is going to be great. Even when things go back to, and I'm air quoting for anyone listening right now, normal, there's a new normal. And that's going to be more digital interactions. Robbie talked about it with the live streaming, live capabilities.

But I'm thinking whether it's lawyers, insurance, whether you throw a conference every year, the in-person interactivity is going to be less in-person for the foreseeable future, if not ever. And so anything that you need to be building as far as a strategy, if what you do relies on traditionally some level of person to person you need to be building out your strategies and your capabilities for digital connection and i mean no you couldn't be you couldn't be more spot on there too and you see like the lives

the conference the conferencing programs or the what their collaborative web programs like just skyrocketing right now zoom web x zoom web x everybody's just going to town right now but those those kind of in-person physical physical relationships you're going to learn have to learn how to expand those into a digital space like again teaching i love teaching but hey my class is suddenly all online like i used to have in-person section and an online section and you've got to learn how to do you to have in-person section and an online section. And you've got to learn how to do the online section just as well as the in-person section. And it pushes people towards that scale of innovation.

But right now, suddenly, you can scale this to everyone in the world. And it gives those businesses that are willing to try it and willing to take a different approach a lot of power in doing that that. And I mean, that's all that digital is, is just expanding a physical in-person relationship to a digital space and connecting that in a long term way. So I think that's where we're going to see some of the long term impacts on the economy of like, hey, like people can work remotely. It's not going to hurt your business. And they're probably going to be a lot more effective doing that because like Joe from accounting is not going to come be bugging somebody every 20 minutes or kind of trying to chat by the water cooler you don't have a lot of that time wasted but you have people

who can be really focused doing things in a digital anywhere in the world so those are going to be some of the cool things that really do come from this like wait people can really work remotely and it's going to be okay um and those things that people have been wanting to try for a while that never been able to kind of give it a shot are gonna are gonna actually happen yeah capture your customers emails grow your email email database get sms slash text messaging capability that's going to be huge another one and look the group thing is going to explode. It's already huge. You've got LinkedIn groups, you've got Facebook groups. I'm going to give you a name. It's called Mighty Networks. It's an amazing platform for building community. That's

a freebie, but that's a good one. Look them up. They have a really robust system. One of the original starters of the technology of Facebook started this. It's a great platform for building community and online networks. They have a lot of integrations already in it. So I'd encourage you to look at that. If your business relies on that community or you're a coach or you're doing things, give them a look. Those things probably can't be overlooked more than this too. Cause I mean,

that's a time you can really focus on building and building and fostering that community. And that's something that's a tent that that's an asset you you can bring with you and if you can build your own community i mean like i always say like content community content drives community and that generally drives commerce so both you get those three lined up and in parallel then you've got something really powerful and some of the most innovative things that probably are happening in marketing are on the community space right now like glossier has like a thousand person super fan group of people that basically do all their marketing research for them and say, hey, we want to try this new, we think this is going to be a

new, a new cool, a new cool lipstick shade. Let's run this by the community and get, and validate that it actually would sell. So those are all things that people can do and leverage those communities in different ways. Absolutely. Any closing words of wisdom here, Robbie? I know we don't pretend to sit on a perch and have all the answers, but we've been close to this. We've done this a long time, so we've got perspective on the things that could work. It really has to be through the lens of the right message depending on your brand or your company and what you do. And it's hard to generalize.

You can't really generalize that when having this kind of discussion. But any kind of closing thoughts? This is a really tough times, really beautiful things come out of it. Like when humans are faced with some really tough circumstances, generally that's when humanity kind of shines the brightest. And looking forward, I'm kind of excited to see what comes out of this from that perspective because I think things are going to happen that are really tough,

but I think people will come together and find ways to make it better for everybody. And the economy will change. People will, things will evolve. The marketing industry will continue to move forward, and business will continue to move forward. But I think the things that people maintaining true to their business, true to themselves, and hopefully true to their employees,

and being good stewards of their brands, and again, that's, and shop local. That's other, and support, do the things you can to support the businesses and the groups that you're in touch with. Because those things will go a long ways. And even if it's not, even if you don't see direct benefit from it today,

it's a long-term investment. Yeah. And I mean, the golden rule and karma have never been more true than they are today. I couldn't agree more. I think I'm hyper positive about what's going to come out of this, you know, call me crazy, but I, you know, I have an optimism that, you know, and not to be, look, it's a, we live in a, in a big connected world, but I think as Americans in that entrepreneurial spirit, and I think we are at our best when we're faced with our worst.

And I think you're going to see that. And what I will say this, is more of an outreach than normal. If I can be of service, Robbie can be of service, look us up online. We're both on LinkedIn, Ryan Offord and Robbie Fitzwater on LinkedIn. I think we're both available to anyone hearing this. That's one thing, too. We're doing this.

We want to give back to people. Find ways to give back and share your gifts with people. There's never been a better time to do it because those are like, if people want to find information, reach out to us, like ask us questions, ask people. And because everybody wants to give in some ways and they're looking for reasons and ways to do that. So we don't always think about it in a straightforward way, but if you have a question, if somebody has a question, reach out to them, reach out to us. And like, that's one thing that people are just looking for ways to help and give. You're probably going to get a response from somebody pretty quickly

because this is a time where people want to lean in and kind of help each other. So especially from the business perspective, reach out to us. Creep on LinkedIn. It's not creeping. DM anytime. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find Rad. DM anytime. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find Radical at radical.company. Reach out.

Love to help in any way that we can. You can find me on Instagram at Ryan Alford. And I think that's all we've got for today, Robbie. I appreciate you being here. And let's keep fighting the good fight. And hey, man, everybody be good to each other. Yeah, that's, again, keep doing good stuff. That's it for today on the Radical Company Podcast.

We'll see you next time. Thank you, guys.