How to prepare a contingency plan for your marketing department?

How to prepare a contingency plan for your marketing department?

A well-built marketing contingency plan can save any business function in case of an emergency. However, most companies focus on business as usual rather than back-up strategies. As a result, a number of industries, including tech, may suffer once the crisis is present – the recent COVID-19 pandemic, accompanied by shrinking economies, is a perfect example.

Basically, we can see marketing departments as a certain ‘face’ of any company. In other words, the marketing team can perfectly reflect the company culture, crisis management skills, and many other details, important for employees or clients. All in all, every organization can benefit from paying extra attention to various marketing risk management strategies.

Consider all potential risks for your marketing department

It may be useful to conduct small research of various crises similar companies and their marketing teams have faced so far. This will not only expand your knowledge of these situations but also allow you to learn from others’ best and worst experiences.

Before starting any research, it is also good to think about the most realistic scenarios of emergencies for your company specifically. As mentioned above, there is a wide range of situations – starting from such less predictable ones as natural disasters, outbreaks or accidental/intentional communication crises, and finishing with more usual cases as economic hardships or security threats.

Prioritize risks if possible

However, this may not be the case every time: all preparation and analysis of potential outcomes are time-consuming. Once again, knowledge of your company and the commercial environment will help. Additionally, you can look at best practices from the past to check the history of crisis management at your tech company.

Create the marketing contingency plan for each emergency

For these ones, you can rely on external consultants (such as Cloudsuppliers) or work with the internal team – both options are fine; also, you can equally rely on the combination of them.

Bear in mind that your marketing department should deal with the emergency along with exercising the business as usual approach further. In order to achieve that, implement as many parts as possible beforehand.

For example, in case of cybersecurity threats or other unexpected disasters, have back-up software and hardware for each team member along with securing all sensitive files in the cloud or any other safe location. The designed guide for crisis communication can be very beneficial if the company suffers from any brand reputation damages. Any financial issues can be solved easier with the help of budget priorities and cuts – this can be set up as a list too.

Last but not least, any plan must be introduced and explained to all team members in advance. This step is necessary to ensure the smooth preparation for critical situations, as everyone in the company will be aware of how to perform and behave.

What’s next?

The diversity of marketing departments and the issues they experience areis quite wide. It is complicated to find one size fitting all – however, some steps are pretty universal and helpful. Finally, regular reviews keep the plan relevant to the situation – openness to changes demonstrates excellent adaptability skills, which also help to be on top in any business.

Cloudsuppliers team is ready to help there – contact us today and discover how you can make the most of any crisis.