How to Approach Marketing Planning for the Balance of 2020

Developing sound marketing plans is never easy, but it becomes a herculean task when a global pandemic turns the business world upside down. Scenario planning enables marketing leaders to manage marketing effectively in the face of unprecedented uncertainty.

The momentum for reopening the U.S. economy is steadily building, and it now appears the process is likely to begin within the next few weeks. On April 16th, President Trump released guidelines for restarting the economy. These guidelines lay out a set of conditions for reopening the economy, but leave most of the specific decisions (including timing) to state governors.

So far, three groups of governors - one involving six Northeastern states, one involving three West Coast states, and one involving seven Midwestern states - have announced they will work together to coordinate plans to restart the economy in their respective regions.

The reopening of the economy marks the beginning of the "recovery" phase of the coronavirus saga, and the task now facing marketing leaders is to develop a marketing plan for the balance of 2020. The challenge is, there is still a huge amount of uncertainty about how the restart of the economy will be managed and how quickly economic growth will recover. For example:

• When will the reopening process actually begin in the markets we serve?
• What conditions will be imposed on our business, and how will those conditions affect our operations, our ability to generate revenue, and our profit margins?
• How quickly will the demand for our products and services return to more "normal" levels?

So how can marketing leaders create appropriate marketing plans in the face of these uncertainties? One approach that has been used effectively for strategic planning is known formally as scenario planning. With scenario planning, business leaders construct a set of alternative strategies that are based on a range of possible future conditions.

Given the current level of uncertainty, scenario planning is the best tool marketing leaders can use to approach planning for the balance of 2020, but to use it effectively, marketing leaders must be able to construct a set of realistic scenarios. And that requires a clear understanding of the major factors that will shape future economic and business conditions.

In normal circumstances, the first step in a scenario planning process is to look at estimates of future macroeconomic conditions such as GDP growth, employment levels, and consumer spending. Then business leaders drill down to estimate the growth prospects for their industry and company.

In the circumstances we face today, however, the most important factors to consider when constructing scenarios are potential medical and scientific developments pertaining to the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and the processes used by states to reopen the economy. More specifically, the pace of the economic recovery will be largely dictated by three factors:

1. The availability of an effective vaccine for COVID-19
2. The availability of effective medical treatments for COVID-19
3. How restrictive the reopening "rules" adopted by states are, and when the reopening begins

Vaccine Availability - The availability of an effective vaccine for COVID-19 is the true "end game" for the coronavirus pandemic. Most health experts agree that we can't really call the pandemic over until we have an effective vaccine, and many economists say that we will not get a complete economic recovery until a vaccine is available. Unfortunately, most health experts also agree that the development of a COVID-19 vaccine will require 12 to 18 months. Therefore, all marketing scenarios for the balance of 2020 should reflect that no COVID-19 vaccine will be available.

Treatment Availability - The race is already on to identify and/or develop treatments that will reduce the severity of COVID-19 and save lives. Having an effective treatment is important economically because it will make people feel more comfortable about returning to work, shopping, and engaging in other economic activities. Many health experts believe that we may have an effective treatment by late summer, but there are no guarantees. Therefore, when planning for the balance of 2020, marketing leaders should use three treatment scenarios:

1. At least one effective treatment for COVID-19 is widely available by September 1st.
2. At least one effective treatment for COVID-19 is widely available by November 1st.
3. No effective treatments for COVID-19 become available in 2020.

Reopening Rules - As I noted earlier, President Trump's reopening guidelines leave most of the decisions about reopening the economy to state governors. Therefore, there will actually be multiple "reopenings" that begin at different times and have different rules. It's fair to think that most governors will be cautious about when to begin the reopening and how quickly to relax the restrictions they currently have in place. For marketing planning purposes, the baseline scenario should be that the reopening process will begin in many states sometime in May and will be implemented gradually at least until an effective treatment for COVID-19 is available.

All of this suggests that the recovery of the overall economy is likely to be sluggish through most of the third quarter of 2020, but may pick up steam in the fourth quarter. With these scenarios as a backdrop, marketing leaders will then need to analyze the growth prospects under each scenario for their industry and their company.

The most successful marketers in 2020 will be those who are best prepared for a range of possible futures. Scenario planning can help you be ready to respond quickly when the shape of the future becomes more clear.

Image courtesy of Dan Moyle via Flickr CC.

When Can We Reopen the Economy?

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." 

Winston Churchill made this famous statement after the British defeated German forces at the battle of El Alamein in 1942. As Governor Andrew Cuomo observed in his daily briefing yesterday, Churchill's words seem to be a fairly apt description of where we are today in the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the past week, there were glimmers of hope that the initial wave of the pandemic may be subsiding in some parts of Europe. Here in the U.S., New York may be near or at the apex of the coronavirus epidemic curve. On Friday, for example, New York's net increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations (daily admissions less daily discharges) was just 85, down from 1,095 one week earlier. A few other states appear to be in a similar position.

These developments have prompted a growing number of discussions about when and how the U.S. economy can be "reopened." Over the next few weeks, governmental leaders will be under increasing pressure to end or at least relax the "stay at home" orders and mandatory business closings.

The restart of the economy will be a critical milestone for marketing leaders because it will signal the beginning of the "recovery" phase of the coronavirus crisis. To maximize revenue growth, marketing leaders will need to be ready to launch appropriate marketing programs as soon as possible after the recovery phase begins. And that means planning must begin before the economy is reopened.

As with many aspects of the coronavirus pandemic, the determination of when and how to restart the economy is a complex issue. There are already conflicting opinions on this issue, and the debate is likely to become more contentious before any decision is made. However, there appears to be an emerging high-level consensus - at least among most health professionals - about what preconditions should exist before the economy is reopened.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and was the Food and Drug Administration commissioner from 2017 to 2019. On March 28, 2020, AEI published a report by Dr. Gottlieb and four colleagues titled National Coronavirus Response:  A Road Map to Reopening. 

In this report, Dr. Gottlieb and his co-authors described how the United States can transition to tools and approaches that target individuals with the coronavirus infection rather than target entire populations in areas where the transmission of the virus is widespread and not controlled.

The report also lays out four prerequisites that should exist before any state ends or relaxes the "social distancing" measures currently in use. (Note:  The authors wrote that these prerequisites can be applied to localities in a state under certain circumstances.)

Prerequisite 1:  A Reduction in Cases - The first requirement for reopening the economy in a state is when the state reports a sustained reduction in COVID-19 cases for at least 14 days. Fourteen days is the generally accepted incubation period of the coronavirus.

Prerequisite 2:  Sufficient Hospital Capacity - Hospitals in the state must be able to treat all patients requiring hospitalization (both COVID and non-COVID) without resorting to crisis standards of care. This means having an adequate number of beds, adequate staffing, and adequate equipment and supplies.

Prerequisite 3:  Adequate Testing - A state must have the ability to test all hospitalized individuals, health care workers, and workers in other essential services (e.g. first responders), the close contacts of individuals with confirmed cases of COVID-19, and all symptomatic individuals. The authors estimate that the U.S. would need a national capacity of at least 750,000 test per week to meet this requirement.

Prerequisite 4:  Adequate Monitoring - A state must be able to identify all infected individuals (through testing), identify (through tracing) and test the close contacts of infected individuals, and actively monitor all confirmed cases to ensure compliance with quarantines.

Fully satisfying all four of these prerequisites will be a challenging undertaking. It will take time for any state or locality to meed these requirements, and not everyone will meet them at the same time. Therefore, restarting the economy is likely to be an uneven process, with some states or localities reopening before others.

It seems likely that most governmental authorities will adopt some version of these prerequisites. The key for marketing leaders is to monitor the progress being made on these four factors so that they can begin planning in time to have programs ready to launch when the reopening occurs.

Image courtesy of Levan Ramishvili via Flickr (Public Domain)

It's Time for Senior Leaders to Begin Planning for the "Next Battle"

In his 1989 best seller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote that effective people practice the habit of "putting first things first." By this, Covey meant that highly effective people focus most of their attention on things that are truly important.

Covey used a 2 x 2 matrix to illustrate that we spend our time and energy in one of four ways. Below is my version of Covey's diagram.

In this matrix, Quadrant I contains tasks, issues, and problems that are both urgent and important, while Quadrant II includes things that are important but not urgent. Quadrant III issues are urgent but not important, and Quadrant IV issues are neither important nor urgent.

Covey argued that most of us tend to spend most of our time in Quadrant I, while highly effective people find ways to give more of their attention to issues that are important but not urgent (Quadrant II). Highly effective people also stay away from Quadrants III and IV as much as possible because, urgent or not, these issues aren't important.

When a major crisis erupts, the number of issues in Quadrant I increases quickly and drastically. Issues or problems that were not particularly urgent or important a week or a month earlier suddenly demand immediate attention. Many of these issues feel like they are critical to survival, and some of them can be. Under these circumstances, most of us would be spending most - if not essentially all - of our time dealing with the urgent and important issues in Quadrant I.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health and economic crisis of immense proportions, and business leaders bear the responsibility for leading their company through the crisis. Most leaders are responding to COVID-19 by focusing most of their time and attention on the urgent and important issues that are critical for business continuity. But it's vitally important for senior leaders - including senior marketing leaders - to begin looking to the future as quickly as possible.

Anticipating the future and making appropriate plans is the particular responsibility of senior leaders. One of the best expressions of this truth can be found in Into the Storm by Tom Clancy and General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.). General Franks was the commander of the U.S. Army's VII Corp during Operation Desert Storm. Clancy and General Franks wrote:

"One of the greatest skills of senior commanders is the ability to forecast. The more senior you are, the farther into the future you have to force yourself to look. You must be able to see beyond what others see. You must be involved in the present to know what is going on, but you must also discipline yourself to leave those actions for your subordinates to handle while you forecast the next battle, and the one after that."

During the initial stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, everyone in a company from the CEO down was working intensely on those issues that were both extremely urgent and critically important. That focus was entirely appropriate, first because immediate actions may have been necessary to keep the company functioning, and second because there was simply no visibility about how the outbreak would progress, which made it impossible to plan for the future.

There are still many unknowns about how the COVID-19 epidemic will evolve, but we know more today than we knew a month ago, and we should know much more a month from now than we know today. For example, as I am writing this on April 4th, there appears to be an emerging view among infectious disease professionals that the overall national peak of demand on hospital resources (beds, ICU beds, ventilators, etc.) in the U.S. will be reached sometime this month. If this projection turns out to be reasonably accurate, it's likely that we will begin to hear discussions in May about "reopening" the U.S. economy.

The key for senior leaders is to be prepared to respond quickly when business conditions begin to change. The most effective way to achieve this level of readiness is to be thinking in advance about how conditions may change and developing preliminary plans for each of those possibilities. In management circles, this is known formally as "scenario planning," and it becomes vitally important when senior leaders are working through a crisis.

So, senior leaders have two critical tasks to perform to respond effectively to COVID-19:

• First, they must develop and implement the actions that are necessary in the very short term to ensure business continuity.
• And second, as quickly as possible, they must transfer the management of the "very short-term plan" to others so that the senior leadership team can begin planning for the business conditions that may exist in the relatively near future.

Senior marketing leaders should play a major role in scenario planning, and I'll have more to say about that in a future post.

Top image courtesy of Naval Surface Warriors via Flickr CC.

A Temporary Change of Direction

For only the second time in over five years, I did not publish a post here last week. Over the past few weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to create posts that I truly believe are timely, relevant, and useful for my readers.

The reason for my difficulty is COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. One way that I keep myself on a regular writing and publishing schedule is to always have several topics lined up for future posts. So when February began, I had already identified what I thought at the time were several solid topics.

But over the past two months as we have been bombarded with negative COVID-19 news on a daily if not an hourly basis, the topics I was writing about began to feel, well, almost trivial in light of unfolding events.

When I work with clients to develop marketing content, I stress that the most important attributes of good content are relevance and usefulness. The core idea is that your content should be helpful to your customers and prospects.

My goal for this blog has always been to provide useful information and thought-provoking ideas, but the business and economic repercussions of COVID-19 have fundamentally changed what constitutes "useful" and "thought-provoking," at least in the short term. Therefore, the content of this blog is going to be different for the next several weeks.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, marketers will need to rapidly adapt their strategies and tactics to meet changing business conditions. Time will become a precious commodity, and many marketers will find it difficult to keep up with all the information that could be vital for making sound business and marketing decisions.

Part of my work has always involved finding information and insights from sources that most marketers would not routinely encounter and making that information more accessible to the marketing community. This type of information will play a larger role in my posts for the next several weeks.

Some of my posts will address topics that don't directly relate to the day-to-day practice of marketing. But during this period, it's important for marketing leaders to play a central role in formulating their company's strategic response to COVID-19. Therefore, one of my objectives will be to identify and communicate information that will help marketing leaders fulfill this critical role.

In this post, I want to provide a few basic common-sense guidelines for communicating with customers and prospects during the COVID-19 outbreak. These guidelines are not earth shattering, and they are far from exhaustive. But they do provide a good starting point.

Provide Relevant, Useful, Timely, and Concise Information

I've already alluded to this point, but its importance cannot be overstated. Every communication you send, and every content resource you publish should be measured by these essential attributes. During a difficult period, the most effective way to approach content development and communications is to constantly ask:  "What information do our customers need right now?" Relevance and usefulness are always essential for good content, but they have a shorter shelf life during a crisis period.

When stress and uncertainty are high and time and attention are limited, it's also important to use clear and precise language and to make communications as concise as possible. Make your content easy to scan by using bullet points and headers to highlight the most critical information.

Avoid Promotional Content

For the next few weeks, customers and prospects will be especially sensitive to anything that smacks of brand opportunism. Therefore, avoid using any messages or content that is self-serving or promotional in tone or substance. Of course, there can be exceptions to this guideline. For example, I've already received at least a dozen emails from SaaS software companies offering free use of their apps for fairly significant periods of time. If your company has decided to provide customers and prospects with something that has substantial, out-of-the-ordinary value, it's both necessary and appropriate to communicate that offer.

Stay Connected to Customers

The extent and contours of the COVID-19 epidemic are changing every day, and that will likely continue for the next several weeks. As the situation evolves, customer needs and attitudes will also change. So it's vitally important for company leaders to listen closely to customers throughout this event. For most companies, the listening will necessarily be informal. Now is not the time to run a large survey, and in-person focus groups are an obvious no-no. But by continuing to talk with and listen to customers and prospects regularly, business and marketing leaders can get valuable insights on how to communicate effectively.

Illustration courtesy of William Allen via Flickr CC.

A Worthwhile Perspective on the Economic Impact of Coronavirus

This will be a shorter post than you normally see here. For the past several days, I've been debating whether or not to write a post dealing with some economic aspect of the coronavirus outbreak, which the World Health Organization classified as a global pandemic last week.

My internal debate has revolved around two issues. First, I'm somewhat uncomfortable writing about the business impact of the outbreak while the virus is still causing widespread illness and a significant number of deaths around the world. That being said, it's undeniable that the economic aspects of the outbreak are vitally important to all of us.

The second challenge associated with writing about the outbreak is maintaining the right perspective. In a crisis such as this, we have a tendency to overemphasize the extreme possibilities and to largely ignore the much more likely probabilities. Focusing on extreme possibilities can easily lead us to (a) unreasonably minimize risks on one hand, or (b) an irrational panic on the other.

So with those considerations in mind, I'm using this post to recommend an analysis by McKinsey & Company that addresses the economic implications of the coronavirus outbreak. This analysis was published on March 9th, and McKinsey indicates that it will be updated regularly as the situation evolves. It's not clear how frequently these updates will occur, so you'll want to check this site every few days to get the firm's current thinking.

Two aspects of the McKinsey approach are particularly important for all of us to remember over the next few/several weeks. First, McKinsey displayed a significant amount of humility about its ability to see the future clearly. The authors of the analysis wrote, "The next phases of the outbreak are profoundly uncertain . . . Our perspective is based on our analysis of past emergencies and on our industry expertise. It is only one view, however. Others could view the same facts and emerge with a different view."

The second important characteristic of the McKinsey analysis is that it presents a range of possible economic outcomes. The authors of the analysis observed, "In our view, the prevalent narrative, focused on pandemic, to which both markets and policy makers have gravitated as they respond to the virus, is possible but underweights the possibility of a more optimistic outcome."

In the March 9th analysis, McKinsey descried three economic scenarios - a "quick recovery," a "global slowdown," and a "global pandemic and recession." It will be interesting to see whether or how McKinsey's thinking will change when the firm updates its analysis.

Image courtesy of Alachua County via Flickr (Public Domain).

Should Sustainability Be Part of Your Brand Story?

The political debate surrounding climate change has been raging for the past two decades and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. However, several recent developments indicate that the leaders of many large business enterprises have accepted the reality of climate change and recognized they need to step up their focus on environmental sustainability.

August 2019 - The Business Roundtable, an organization whose members are the CEOs of major U.S. companies, issues a new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. The new statement says that corporations must serve the interests of a broad set of stakeholders, including "communities." The CEOs signing the statement committed to supporting communities by "embracing sustainable practices across our businesses."

January 2020 - Microsoft announces that it will become carbon negative by 2030, and it pledged that by 2050, it will remove from the environment as much carbon as the company has emitted since it was founded on 1975.

January 2020 - BlackRock, the world's largest money manager with over $7 trillion of assets under management, announces that will will make sustainability a major component of its investment strategy. In a letter to clients, BlackRock's global executive committee wrote, "We believe that sustainability should be our new standard for investing."

The general public is also becoming more concerned about the environment and climate change. In January, Pew Research Center polled a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. In this research, 64% of the respondents said that the environment should be a top priority for the President and Congress. That was up from 47% in a 2016 Pew Research poll. Fifty-two percent of the respondents said that climate change should be a top priority, up from 38% in the 2016 poll.

Several recent studies have also found that B2B buyers - particularly younger buyers - are placing greater importance on the environmental and social practices of their prospective suppliers and business partners. For example, in a 2019 Marketo survey of 910 B2B buyers in the U.K., Germany, and France, 67% of the respondents said they seek to work with companies that are striving to reduce their impact on the environment.

In response to heightened buyer interest in environmental issues, some B2B marketers have made sustainability a part of their messaging strategy. Including sustainability in brand messaging can be effective, but it's also a tactic that must be used carefully in order to avoid being perceived as engaging in greenwashing.

Marketing that focuses on sustainability is one form of purpose marketing. Purpose marketing is strongly supported by some marketing pundits and strongly criticized by others. But one thing is clear. When a company engages in purpose marketing, it also invites close scrutiny. Therefore, it's critical for marketers to be sure their company is "walking the walk" before they begin "talking the talk."

There are two specific steps that marketers should take when adding sustainability to their messaging strategy.

Know Where You Stand - Before making sustainability part of their brand messaging, marketers should thoroughly understand what actions their company has taken to improve the sustainability of its operations. This analysis should also cover the company's supply chain because the company's reputation for sustainability will be significantly affected by the environmental practices of its suppliers.

Don't Exaggerate - When it comes to marketing messages around sustainability, it's best to use a conservative approach and be prepared to demonstrate the accuracy of any statements or claims that marketing messages contain. And if messages include commitments for future actions, marketers need to ensure that senior company leaders are fully onboard with those commitments

In today's business environment, it's increasingly important for B2B companies to have programs in place to improve the sustainability of their operations and to make customers and prospects aware of those programs. But marketers must be careful not to "overpromise and under deliver."

Image courtesy of Ron Mader via Flickr CC.

How to Make Personalization Work in a Privacy-Conscious World

In my last post, I wrote that it's time for marketers to rethink their approach to personalization. The value of personalized marketing has been widely recognized for nearly two decades, and most marketing pundits are recommending that marketers expand their use of personalization. They contend that marketers should make personalization more specific and use it more frequently, in more channels, and for more types of communications and experiences.

The problem with this "more personalization" approach is that it fails to account for widespread and growing privacy concerns among both consumers and business buyers. Personalized marketing will not reach its full potential unless marketers use an approach that addresses these privacy concerns. Simply increasing the use of personalization will be ineffective at best, and may do more harm than good.

Personalization has been the subject of numerous research studies over the past few years, and these studies provide a good picture of what is required for personalized marketing to produce maximum results. There are three major components of an effective personalization strategy.

Make Personalization Useful

The first requirement for effective personalized marketing is that it must deliver meaningful and pragmatic value to the recipient. A 2018 study by Gartner/CEB documents the business value of personalization that is perceived by customers and prospects to be helpful. I've previously discussed this research, so I won't repeat that material here. For a more detailed description of the Gartner/CEB study see this post.

Make Personalization "Relationship-Appropriate"

The second component of an effective personalization strategy is to use a level of personalization that is appropriate for each customer or prospect. By appropriate, I mean that the level of personalization should match the real-world status of the relationship. A message or offer sent to a long-time customer can and should be more personalized than a first outreach to a new prospect.

To be effective, personalized marketing must be based on genuine insights about your customers and prospects. When you take personalization beyond such insights, it becomes inauthentic and will tend to be perceived as presumptuous. Corporate Visions recently conducted a field trial involving this principle, and you can read more about that research in this post.

Get Meaningful Permission for Personalization

Much of the concern about data privacy and personalization revolves around the issues of transparency and control. Many consumers and business buyers aren't confident they know what personal data companies are collecting about them or how that data is used. And many feel they don't have any meaningful control over those data practices.

Several recent research studies have shown how important transparency and control are for customers and prospects. For example, in a 2019 survey of 3,000 people in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., The Harris Poll asked participants about the importance of several data privacy practices. The following table shows the percentage of survey respondents who rated four transparency and control practices as very important or absolutely essential:

These research findings point the way to the third important component of an effective personalization strategy. In a world where privacy concerns are heightened, permission is critical to successful personalized marketing. If all the research about personalization tells us anything, it tells us that most consumers and business buyers will welcome and value personalized content when it is helpful, authentic, and based on permission that is willingly and consciously given.

So, how can marketers gain this kind of permission? There are three key steps.

Use Personalization "Programs" - In most cases, personalization efforts should be organized into discrete programs, each of which is designed to provide a specific type of value to a specific type of customer or prospect. This approach leads marketers to focus on the purpose of personalized marketing from the recipient's perspective.

Invite Participation - Invite your customers and/or prospects to "subscribe" to personalized content on a program-by-program basis, and reassure them that subscribing to one program won't open the floodgates to other marketing communications.

Be Transparent - It's important to be "radically" transparent in your invitation about the details of the personalization program. The main objective of the invitation is to persuade customers or prospects to participate in the program. So it should include:

• Why the program will be useful and valuable for the recipient
• What personal information will be used, and how the information will be used
• How the personalized content will be delivered (format)
• How frequently the personalized content will be delivered
• The duration of the program
• A clear statement that the recipient has the option to "unsubscribe" at any time

It's About How - Not Whether - to Personalize 

The issue for marketers is not whether to personalize marketing content and customer experiences. The evidence is clear that customers and prospects want and appreciate the increased relevance that personalization can provide. The real issue is how to deliver personalization in a way that respects privacy. By making personalization helpful, authentic, and permission-based, marketers will reap the maximum benefits of personalized marketing.

Top image courtesy of Josh Hallett via Flickr CC.

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