1/ Marketing in a Pandemic; First rule, ignore all marketing experts. Old rules do not apply. In most cases, you SHOULD NOT think about creating demand, but responding to demand. In fact, "selling" during a pandemic is gauche or vulgar. Satisfying existing demand is uplifting.
2/ Advice to the sales and mkting people during COVID crisis has been, "Do not sell. Be to the point. Say we have sanitizer and masks in stock and shipping". No sales pitch is needed or desired. Creative approaches stress availability. TELL DON'T SELL.
3/ My sister, the ultimate pitch lady on video toned it down and did not "yell and sell" like most pitched, but was more descriptive and more of a "show and tell". Youtube ranks her video on KN95 masks for search ""KN95 masks" as the #2 because not a sales pitch, but how to wear.
4/ Marketing in a pandemic becomes more of a logistics issue. There are huuuuge shortages of ingredients, components, products. Concentrate on securing supply. Demand is there. 80% of effort is in securing supply.
5/ If supply is secure, you will INSTANTLY UNDERSTAND WHY owning your own media is important as you control messaging, cannot be kicked off platform (Amazon, eBay, Google, FB, etc.). But new ad rules emerge in a crisis.
6/ IN BEST OF TIMES, 85% of ad inventory goes unsold. In a pandemic, who is even advertising? What % of businesses are closed down? Are they advertising? Of course not. The 85% unsold online ad inventory is now 95% unsold. And that extra 10% extra unsold is has nonlinear benefits
7/ Hammurabi actually had a cure for the online media market (or radio & television for that matter). Media are now willing to share risk. For more detail, read: jafferaliblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/ham…
8/ #1 rule of marketing in a Pandemic is to be FAST. If you operate under conventional rules with deliberate processes, you will get chewed up. Crisis marketing (really distribution) is different. You better charge enough as well because supply chains pricing is fluid.
9/ Fluidity in pricing isn't generally understood. Traders & drug dealers*get it* get it. Guys that wear ties are often left holding their d*cks in their hands. Your market may not understand fluidity in pricing but if YOU do not understand it, go home and take the short cut.
10/ Satisfying demand in a Pandemic (this is a better phrase than marketing) is short term. You WILL piss off a lot of people along the way, even as they pay you. Do not be "King Rat" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat_… but approach what you are doing with eyes open.
11/ Be prepared for 24-7 work cycle and take naps when body demands. I cannot emphasize this enough. Selling in a Pandemic is grueling as issues pop up several times a day. You must manage your health. If you drink, STOP during this time.
12/ Managing costs takes a back seat to speed. If you are flexible to charging more, costs is not much of a factor. A week ago, our costs for the surgical face masks went up 7% in 3 hours. We raised price immediately. The "elasticity of demand" doesn't obey conventional times
13/ Time is precious. Brokers in the middle who do do not take risk and are trying to make a market and not purchase product will eat your time. My sister was offered our own Purifize sanitizer by a clown. Get rid of intermediaries and sell direct when you can
14/ Huge media opportunities so you can sell direct to consumers if you have a website. You can wholesale directly to end users easily in a Pandemic. As we said repeatedly, it does not take genius salesmanship to get someone on the phone and say, "we have masks"
15/ So, the end to this tweet storm is really a distillation. What is in most demand and how can you supply it? My cousin couldn't find hand sanitizer at 4 stores, we solved the supply issue and the rest took care of itself.
