Consumer Behavior During Covid-19

You are an established business owner with customers who love you.  Then all of a sudden, it seems like a 5-year-old took over the script of the world and wrote:

… And then a virus struck the earth, all shops closed, and we couldn’t go to school either. We stayed at home with mum and dad, and fought for toilet paper.

For your side of the story, sales dropped, views and consumer engagement plummeted; everyone keeps making assumptions and baseless projections on what businesses can and should do to survive the pandemic. You are caught in the middle of all those projections, groping and iterating different brand messages with the hope of gaining some traction and making sales again.

Well, you don’t need to agonize in uncertainty anymore, because we are about to give you the unbiased truth. Truth based solely on facts that will offer your business certainty. 

Our guest this week is Phillip Stutts, the CEO of Win Big and Go Big Media, and we’re diving into data-driven evidence, the three key brand messages that you must incorporate into your business to grab the attention of your consumers once again. Even if the pandemic has not affected your business as much, you can still take on this consumer behavior marketing strategy and multiply your return of investment with just three messages that work for any brand.

Phillip Stutts comes from the world of political marketing. He has two decades of campaign experience working with over 1273 election victories, which includes hundreds of U.S house campaigns, dozens of U.S Senate campaigns and even 3 U.S. Presidential victories. He is the founder and Executive Chairman of a political media firm Go Big Media and the founder of Win Big Media. His two brands together have won over 42 national awards for marketing and creative content.

What is the model of your marketing and how effective is it for businesses?

Phillip Stutts’ marketing career was based on the political system until he got opportunities to start marketing for corporate firms. Phillip used a 5-step system when helping politicians to campaign for positions. When he got into corporate marketing, he noticed that their marketing system was different than his, which led to his discovery of a new and more efficient marketing strategy. 

Phillip Stutts says, “It is all rooted in the data. When politicians say they want to run for a position, I focus on the policy positions that they believe will get them elected.” 

“I ask them about their agenda and the policies that match their vision and they always give up to ten or twenty of those.”

Phillip Stutts takes that information and then conducts a survey in the concerned States or districts and finds out what the voters truly care about. “Ultimately, you will find out that there is always an alignment between the aspirations of the politicians and that of the voters.” People only care about a few things, and those are the things we use to strategize and implement the campaign.

Phillip Stutts says it was the same steps he used when he got into corporate marketing. “We liaised with the largest data analytics and AI company in America.” 

He would compare your customer list/avatar with what the data has to say about the consumer behavior. This gives a factual basis to run a marketing campaign for his clients.

In a bid to help businesses during this pandemic, Phillip Stutts conducted the first-ever National Consumer Survey. He created a data research report in the last week of March when the lockdown started. The survey covered 4,888 American consumers across all districts. The survey has been periodical. These consumers were also part of the market survey done in January. 

These surveys are conducted on a periodic basis just to keep abreast with market changes. 

On May 15th, Phillip Stutts also released the Second Covid-19 consumer report and with a detailed analysis for all his subscriber list. 

The bottom line of the report is “we are in a new economy and the economy is not going back to what it used to be in the past years.” Consumers will no longer play status games, but will buy what they need – this is the new marketing. This marketing will be based on – CARING, TRUST, SAFETY and HELPING OTHERS.

How long is this new brand strategy going to last?

“For long.” Phillip Stutts says, the fact that we cannot have a vaccine as soon as possible because of the clinical steps it takes to make one (if having a vaccine is likely) tells you how long the world is going to remain in this economy. Even if everything settled, there would be a kind of post-hesitation like PTSD for consumers; hence, brand messages will center around caring and helping maintain trust, and safety.

“The data we are going to release in May proves it. Even though it comes with a twist,” If you can position your business with this messaging, you will out-maneuver your competition. So far, we have had over thirty-six thousand downloads for both Covid-19 consumer reports, which is nothing equated to the businesses’ bazillions in the market. Hence, the earlier you use this brand messaging in your business, the better.

How can brands who may have nothing related to these messages strategize?

Phillip Stutts narrates how he used his experience to 4x the sales of the National Pest Control Company – a company that should not be affected by the pandemic. They made an attempt at the end of March (when the lockdown just started) to change their marketing strategy. Already, the National Pest Control Company was doing fine without their current marketing strategy. But then, they decided to curate their strategy with these three brand messages.

They focused on protecting the family from bugs and insects promised to make sure they are safe with a high immunity system in the summer. They promised to fumigate the houses with green-products and also promised to make them safe during the process. These ads ran alongside the old ads, and when the metrics of both were compared, the new strategy out-performed by a 4X margin. Those ads based their messages on the fact that people were cutting their budget, posed the services as a need, and offered to provide help and support.

You have to include the needfulness of your services during the lockdown and not a want of luxury.

What should be the marketing mindset for business owners?

Simply put, commitment. Phillip Stutts says that business owners should be committed to passing on these messages to their consumers. Depending on the business, some can start seeing results almost immediately. For some others, results can spread out in a longer span. Using these three messages in your marketing will get your brand lead generations and unparalleled customer loyalty. Hence, businesses should play a long game of commitment.

How can you incorporate these messages into your marketing?

Depending on the brand and what the customers want, it is very easy for business owners to brag about their products and services without putting the needs of the consumer at heart. The major focus of businesses should not be from the perspective of their accomplishments, offers, and values, but should be from the eye of the customer, how to attend to those needs, and make sure they are empathetic.

Phillip Stutts also talks about the five-step process used in political campaigns. The first need is researching and finding out what customers think. The second involves building a strategic marketing plan, which focuses marketing on the sites/social media where potential customers spend their time and their activity in those outlets. The third step is work on the brand. The brand needs to make a connection with the consumers, even in designs. The branding here is going to become more strategic and factual because you already know what your customers need, how they behave, their interests, where they spend most of their time, and what they do on those platforms. There should be an alignment with what the customer wants and your brand vision.

The fourth step is to test a message. The message can be done in the most frugal way possible. Phillip Stutts said they use banner ads at first for the message testing. “If someone clicks through a banner ad, that assures me, it is a wonderful message.” “Typically, I test about ten messages at a low cost, and we can figure out what gets the most clicks.” The fifth step is to build the brand and marketing strategy on what works best.

What is the twist in the new data to be released?

Earlier, Phillip Stutts talked about a twist in the new data released on May 15th. “Though the brand messages – Care, Trust, and Safety – still stands, we noticed an intimate relationship between consumers and local products. Because of the mistrust in global security, customers are settling for local products. Business owners should make sure that their brand messages come off with authenticity, intimacy, and empathy.

How can small businesses with small capital access data for their business?

Understandably, you may not have the amount it takes to have access to certain data, but every business owner should be resourceful. You can run surveys online, or even step out to ask a few people about their views and interests. You can also use the data reports to adjust your judgment on how best to go about your marketing and brand curation.

Whatever brand you own, your marketing should be in line with the factual data. You don’t need to mention, care, trust, and safety. But you can have your brand messaging pointed in that direction.