COVID-19 challenges webinar - how to deal with uncertainty during this pandemic.

2020 has been an incredibly tough year. Now, everyone is feeling the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Individuals and businesses have all suffered from the fallout, but we’re here to do what we can to help you navigate the challenges caused by COVID-19. 

Rikki, Digital 22’s Founder and Director, received some amazing feedback when he was asked to be a guest speaker recently. So to do our bit and continue providing you all with value, we brought along five industry leaders in our webinar series: helping marketing and sales professionals navigate the challenges caused by COVID-19.

Our second guest speaker was Olivia Kirwan, Channel Account Manager at HubSpot, who discussed how we can all deal with the uncertainty surrounding coronavirus. Don’t worry if you couldn’t attend the live webinar, you can check it out below - totally free and ungated.

Olivia mentioned that now is the time to be human. You need to ask your prospects and existing customers how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking and what you can do to help them. What’s key during these difficult times is that you need to be empathetic in your approach. You need to be honest, transparent and avoid being sales-y. That’s not going to work.

A big takeaway is you shouldn’t stop marketing entirely. The honest truth? Your numbers and KPIs are potentially going to suffer but you’re not alone. On the flip side, if you stop creating relevant content and stop marketing entirely, you’ll actually cause more long-term harm.

Remember, in inbound, what you do now is going to impact what happens six to nine months down the line. If you can keep up your marketing efforts, be empathetic and provide valuable content to your customers, your Q3 and Q4 will hopefully look much stronger.

Another interesting thing Olivia mentioned was how you should lead on the fundamentals - using the LAER acronym to address objections with empathy.

• Listen: let your customer have the floor and don’t make assumptions.

• Acknowledge: show your customers you’ve heard them.

• Explore: ask open-ended questions to learn more about their concerns.

• Respond: respond only when you’ve done the appropriate exploration.

She also advised how you can target different companies in various industries, depending on which category they’re in during this pandemic. Check out the video above to find out how you should approach businesses at the survive, adapt and grow stages.

HubSpot is actually doing a lot to help businesses during this difficult period. We’ve highlighted some of the big changes they’ve already made in this blog by adding tools and lifting certain restrictions, but that’s not all. They’re not a fully remote workforce, the executives take part in Ask Me Anything sessions, they support parents with activities for their children, conduct mental health seminars and more.

To hear about each one in more depth, make sure to hit the play button at the top of this blog. Olivia also offered some great work from home tools if you need some inspiration, such as a team collaboration tool like Slack, a strong internet connection, a second monitor, stand-up desk and loads more.

There were also some great questions asked during this webinar by those that attended. So stick around to the end of the video in case Olivia managed to answer a query you had.

We know it’s not an easy situation right now, so we wanted to offer as much value as possible. That’s why Olivia was one of five expert guests who joined our webinar series to help you in these testing times. We were also joined by:

• Yaniv Siegel from Vidyard - 6 videos you need to create today.
• Mike Donnelly from Seventh Sense - making the most of email whilst being respectful to the situation.
• Peter Caputa from Databox - predicting your company’s performance in unpredictable times.
• Fernando Angulo from SEMrush - the impact of COVID-19 on organic search.

One thing I’ve mentioned a couple of times in this blog is the importance of your marketing efforts. Inbound is a long game where results don’t happen overnight. The more effort you put in, the more rewards you eventually get.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of moving parts that all need to work together so your strategy gets the results it deserves. Your content marketing, SEO, PPC, social media, video - all of it needs to be aligned. To understand the inbound process in more detail, I recommend you bookmark and read our all-in-one guide to inbound marketing.

Check it out using the button below.