Are you stocked up with the milk, bread, and eggs of marketing and advertising?
As boy scouts and elves know, being prepared makes life much simpler, and in business, it provides you an opportunity to take advantage of immediate reaction to get the jump on your competition.
My region’s imminent Winter Storm Warning Snowpocalypse offers you a perfect example of a triggering event – any such thing that flips a switch in your brain that causes you to act in a certain manner.
“Winter storm? Time to run to the grocery store. How are my tires? Is our furnace ready to go? Do I have a shovel.”
Each need comes as a direct result of the trigger that sets off the avalanche of consumerism in much the same way December 25th and its preceding weeks launches us into gift-buying mode to get just the right aftershave for Uncle Harold.
As a business, have you considered a strategic planning session with your staff and a calendar?
Go through and recognize such events and create ads in advance, so when the fine weather folks (as in this example) announce such an impending winter storm, you can simply call your media buying agency or your rep at the radio or tv station or newspaper and have them insert your already created ad that properly pulls the trigger. You’ll know what to roll out for social media because you’ll already have it planned and (at least some of it) put together.
These messages will have even greater impact if your business is already considered the one in your category that consumers think of first and like the most when such a need arises.
Think about it. Then act.
Speaking of which, I gotta run. We’re almost out of bread, milk, benadryl and cupcakes.
Oh, and PS: Best way to get the very latest weather information? Follow your local meteorologists on twitter. If you’re in central Missouri, here the active weathertweeters:
Be careful out there!
UPDATE: If you’re interested in the whole twitter thing, the state of Missouri’s got an official hashtag for the snowpocalypse: #mosnow … clicking here will send you to a twitter search for it so you can follow along.
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