Part of the requirements of being a marketing and design agency is, on the one hand, to plan for our clients and ensure we have a solid marketing strategy in place. Yet, on the other hand, we learn to adapt to current environments, which means we can be ready to mobilise in an agile way. Not only does this mean that we need a skilled team who can adapt, but also the confidence in changing our strategy as a team and company for our clients.
Like thousands of companies and employees who are following government guidance, we have also been working remotely for six weeks now. We wanted to use this time as an opportunity to be proactive and positive during these unusual times.
Just three months into the new decade, 2020 took a sharp turn and the UK came to a sudden stop. What did we, Creative Pod do as a company to adapt to the current environment? First off we split things out into the team, the working environment, existing clients and how we can help other businesses (who aren’t part of our client base).
- Coronavirus SOS Marketing Support (New client support)
To kick-off, we wanted to offer businesses a solution that would make their life a little easier during this unprecedented period. With this in mind, we created a three month, short term package, which includes the following:
We’ve had an incredible response from this support package and in light of everything that has been going on we’ve taken on new clients. We’ve taken them through a faster on-boarding process and we’ve kickstarted their marketing activity. We’ve even presented our first marketing plan presentation over Zoom, which was a new experience for our marketing team.
- Working Remotely
I’m sure many people can relate to this one! Our team has been set up to work from home since Wednesday 18th March (a week ahead of many businesses), so we are going into our sixth week now. We’re all very lucky that we have space to work at home and to set up our equipment. As the weeks have gone on, we’ve come up with a few suggested tips for your work environment:
- Where possible, make sure you work in a brightly-lit room
- Try to replicate your desk at work at home. If this means having a pen pot or a desk plant, then so be it. For some of us, we are working at our dining room tables, so it’s important to set up your station as a desk and not a place that you usually eat
- Start your day by writing a to-do list
- Take regular tea breaks, as you would in the office! - A great tip for this one is to have a tea break over Zoom with your colleagues
- Get dressed as if you were going into the office. As much as we would all love to work in our comfortable clothes, it’s all about the mindset
- Team Strategy
Before we started working remotely, our management team came up with a strategy as to how we would stay connected as a team. Since day one, we have had regular video meetings twice a day;
- Once in the morning at 09:00 am to run through our to-do list, catch up on tasks, go through any questions
- Once in the afternoon at 16:00 pm to see how our days went, what clients we caught up with, and to run through any challenges we faced
This has worked really well for us as a team! We also keep in touch throughout the day via one-to-one phone calls and we chat on What’s App.
- How we Adapted Marketing Plans for our Clients (Existing client support)
As an agency, one of our core focuses is to support our clients and this can be done in many ways;
- Planning their marketing strategy
- Having weekly calls
- Being ready for ad-hoc
- Being ready to react to the current climate and this is the one we focused on when coronavirus took the full storm
Like many agencies, we had a marketing plan in place that we work towards, whether that is planning an Easter campaign, summer campaign, a competition or an open day, there is always marketing and design activity going on.
After the government announced on Monday 23rd of March, we all rallied round and reached out to every single one of our clients, to see if they were ok and to see if they wanted to put out relevant communications across their social channels for their clients and customers. Through this process, we found that some clients needed us to come up with creative ideas, whilst others just wanted us to be a listening ear!
We changed the strategy for a few clients who unfortunately had to temporarily close their business, we put a few campaigns on hold and overall, we shifted the strategy to ensure each client was happy with the new plan we had in place.
- The Extras
It’s all well and good having a great strategy in place, but this only works if the team is willing to respond to it and it's in situations like these, that in fact, you are unsure of how you will react to a pandemic. Nevertheless, we as a team responded well together! With the huge support of the management team who reacted quickly to this situation, we were set up at home and ready to start working.
Plus on the second week in, our CEO Matt Turner surprised each team member with a Dominos. We’ve also celebrated two birthdays over Zoom, and enjoyed a couple of drinks on a Friday afternoon together.
We are looking forward to hopefully returning to the office soon, but in the meantime, we are sticking to the plan we have in place, whilst being mindful that we might need to react to a change at any time. If you have any questions about the above or would like to discuss your marketing strategy with us, please feel free to contact us on hello@creativepod.net and we’d be happy to help.
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