Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - May/June 2020

64 Promote and prosper In these unprecedented challenging times, it is now more important than ever to tell consumers about your business and your products. If we look back just a few months ago when the Spring trade show season started, none of us could have comprehended we would find ourselves in this situation – businesses closed or working part-time, bricks & mortar stores shut, everyone secluded in their homes. If there is any comfort it is this, it’s that it’s happening all over the world, with some countries and industries more advanced and potentially starting to ‘flatten the curve’, as the increasingly familiar phrase goes. However, in the UK we still have some way to go. Home schooling will probably continue until September at least, putting pressure on personnel from businesses of all sizes. The lockdown remains in force and might even tighten unless more people ditch the cycling Lycra or suntan cream and stay indoors. A tough ask if you’re stuck in a house or flat with no garden, but #stayathome is the message. The Government has announced financial schemes of varying degrees and levels of satisfaction, but industry associations are probably your best bet for advice, with some even extending that advice to non-members for a limited period. And your trade press – read them, communicate with them so they can tell your customers or suppliers, existing or potential, where you’re up to. It may seem a hopeless situation if you have a small business – retail or supplier – as you find yourselves in a chain that is seeing orders grind to a very sudden halt. But it is all about communication. PROMOTE AND CARRY ON PR Direct is a small business, now back working out of our home but finding that our usual communication channels in the consumer media are still very much open and hungry for stories! We work with newspapers and magazines, in print and online, TV, bloggers and influencers. With the exception of TV production companies, who rely on filming groups of contestants (I’m sure you can name a few major ones), everyone else is keen to write about something, anything, other than COVID-19. Even the TV studios who usually do live pieces with the presenters and an expert on the latest kitchen kit are adapting to doing home-filmed segments. In the past few weeks, as everyone adjusts to working from home, we have had requests from digital newspaper platforms looking for ‘baking’, ‘chopping boards’, ‘can openers’; weekly and monthly print magazines asking for trends pieces, colours, outdoor dining; bloggers & influencers (some very high profile ones) looking for giveaways, makeover kit and upbeat content. If you have an online presence, whether website and/or social media, then now is the time to use it! If you’re a small retailer who just hadn’t quite managed to get online – it was always on your to do list but so many other things were priorities – now is the time. Look at your local networks through social media and promote the heck out of it. Maybe offer an NHS discount, giveaway, a virtual demo, art class, or storytelling. Check out affiliate programmes with organisations like trouva.com , although that is likely to take you further afield than your home territory. If you can manage that, then do it. If you’re a supplier then hopefully not all of your retail customers have gone silent. We have heard some heart-warming stories of big players who have, at the start of the third week into lockdown, contacted suppliers and placed forward orders. They are out there! Keep communicating and look to your industry association for advice too. The key is to explore every which way to make sure that when this is over – and it will be – that we have an industry. It won’t be as strong and robust as it was and there will be inevitable failures: COVID-19 could be the veritable straw that broke the camel’s back for some businesses. But there will be a huge willingness to get back to normal and the chain will be mended – consumers will buy from stores whose buyers have bought from suppliers who have stocked up. And the media will be there to write about it. Sarah Selzer, managing director of specialist housewares PR agency PR Direct, explains why continuing to promote and raise awareness of your product is vital in a bid to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic PR DIRECT www.prdirect.net