There’s no going back.

I’ve been a fan of Simon Sinek since I first watched his 2011 TED talk about The Golden Circle. In a short conversation (just over five minutes) posted recently, Sinek talks about the importance of businesses adapting and adjusting to our current state of affairs.

Business owners challenged with keeping their doors open may want to check it out. COVID-19 has upended the experience of being a business owner, a customer or client, an employee – of even being human. The status quo is no more. We hear talk of the “new normal.” But what does that mean for your brand?

If your customers are used to hearing from you, now’s not the time to pull back. What it may be time to do is reconsider how you’re talking to them.

• LISTEN to your customers and take your cues from what they want to see and hear right now. Are you answering a customer’s needs? Or does your messaging need to shift to address their current concerns? At the very least, make sure that yesterday’s marketing messages aren’t coming across as insensitive or tone deaf today.

• EXPLAIN what you’re doing and why. Respond quickly and appropriately to what customers want and how they feel. Consider connecting with them in ways that you may not have used pre-Covid. If you’re not using social media, now may be the time to explore and develop a digital marketing strategy.

• FOCUS on helping customers by creating purpose- rather than product-led marketing messages. Evaluate your messages from a new point of view – one that takes in record-high employment and economic uncertainty and even higher general anxiety.

Very few of us welcome change. But in the sage words of the late George Carlin, “the status quo sucks.” (At Firebrand Creative, we prefer to say “it no longer serves.”) We’d love to develop messaging for you that delivers beyond that status quo.