Your Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Marketing Contingency Plan
During extraordinary times, like the pandemic that we are all facing now, every business, whether big or small, should now know the importance of a marketing contingency plan.
Global crises, such as the global health crisis COVID-19, can lead to a marketing crisis. The implementation of lockdowns and community quarantines can affect most businesses in many ways.
When you have a marketing contingency plan in place, your company will be able to respond to changes and challenges brought about by pandemics and natural disasters as quickly as possible and at the same time, protect it from risks and damages. Aside from that, it will allow your business to return to its usual operations once the crisis is over.
What to include in your contingency plan?
Step 1: Analyze the risks
Take note of all the possible challenges or changes that will disrupt your operations. These include employee absenteeism, logistics, delivery of supplies, etc.
Step 2: Determine the impact of those risks
Once you have all the things that could possibly have an adverse effect on your business, you need to determine how much they are going to affect your company. Rank them from least significant to most to be able to create the best contingency plan.
Step 3: Draft the actions to be taken and resources needed for each type of problem
During a marketing crisis, it’s important to have a contingency plan, starting with what’s most critical to your organization. It’s also important that all key players are well-informed of such a plan to allow the whole team to move towards the same direction, which is to survive any crisis.
Step 4: Foolproof your backup plan
Make sure that you go over the marketing contingency plan as many times as possible to ensure that any loopholes are addressed before the implementation. It should also be updated from time to time to adapt to any new changes.
Bottom line
Contingency planning is also managing risks. It’s about mitigating risks that can gravely affect your company. By doing so, your business can go back to its daily operations as soon as possible.
We’re Here To Help
As crucial as it is to develop a marketing contingency plan, it is often difficult finding the time to actually create one and that is why we’re here to help. At LJ Consulting, we have all the necessary tools and expertise to ensure that you walk away with a well-developed plan. Click here to reach out to us and get started.