Entrepreneurs Guide: B2C Sales & Marketing Strategies During A Crisis

The scale of the pandemic’s impact is drastically sinking in. Companies/ organizations of all types are feeling the pressure to simultaneously wrestle with surviving the immediate crisis and planning for a radically changed future. How do they plan accordingly with the change in consumer behaviour? How should they prepare for a post-crisis recovery strategy?

Continuing our group mentoring series aiming to support entrepreneurs in navigating through this crisis, we hosted a webinar to discuss B2C Sales & Marketing Strategies.

Here are our key takeaways:

1. On pursuing a new marketing strategy in a turbulent environment:

• Prior to making any new marketing initiative, find out your ability to invest (e.g. cash flow and human resource) in new marketing channels and initiative efforts.

• Create a few scenarios based on a collection of credible information. Have some ‘no-regret’ scenario plans in which certain new initiatives can be still ongoing even though the situation did not go as planned.

• Credibility of information is crucial for scenario planning and decision making. Choose only to respond to credible information with reliable sources.

2. Shifting consumer trends:

• Face-to-face meetings are drastically reduced, and people tend to be germaphobic.

• Search trends are skewed towards more commercial related searches than ever before.

• More online shoppers and fewer buyers.

3. Exploring more opportunities and discovering new market niche:

• Look at how shifting consumer trends could drive differences in consumer behavior and sentiments. Ask how you could adapt your product/services sales and marketing plans to capture these new uprising market segments.

• Create inhouse consumer insights by engaging customers directly through calls and offer them complimentary rewards in return. Look internally and map out your current consumer behavior by identifying customer pools that are currently still making purchases from your sales channels. Find out the reason for the purchase. Is it the same as before? Or are you seeing a shift in purchase sentiments?

• Untapped market opportunities can be found by correlating a single group of consumer’s persona and state of mind to the adjacent and previously untargeted market segments that share common attributes.

• Tap on players and partners that could potentially open up new market opportunities. (e.g. give out discount vouchers via food delivery services)

4. Creating awareness for products/services that requires education:

• Find ways to trigger curiosity, feed information that could satisfy consumers’ curiosity, and finally to develop purchase intent. Consumers that are in a curious state of mind are usually most receptive to new information and engagement.

• Memories are made by habits. Remarketing and constant reminders of consistent messaging content will create a sticky impression towards a brand or product.

5. There are no right/wrong answers to resolving the quantity-quality-innovation market positioning paradox.

• Each component has its own USP and market segments, so does the set of metrics it should be benchmarked against.

• Ask yourself who would be paying for quality and innovation. Product-pricing pairing is key to identify consumer’s willingness to purchase.

• Do not ponder too much on this paradox but rather find different ways for you to market the same product to different segments.

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Endeavor is a global entrepreneur support organisation that spans across 37 markets. We help entrepreneurs grow and scale by providing them access to mentorship, talent, capital & markets. To entrepreneurs, we have launched ‘Ask E Anything!’, a weekly 20-minute session for entrepreneurs to seek advice from Endeavor mentors or entrepreneurs on their challenges during this crisis. To sign up, click here.