It can be tricky judging how to pitch a new offer in times of crisis. There’s a fine line between being genuinely helpful and appearing exploitative.
Sometimes you have to just jump in and try things, knowing they may be misinterpreted by the minority. In business, indecision can be crippling. While people’s lives are undoubtedly the most precious thing, livelihoods are worth saving too.
A number of our clients - particularly those in the retail sector - have been hit hard by recent events. As a consequence, our business has suffered too. It feels like every email and phone call carries the threat of a pause or cancellation. Like many other companies, we’ve been compelled to reexamine our business model and consider steps we may not have taken otherwise.
Historically we’ve only ever worked on a retained basis, on the grounds that long-term engagements give us not only the most financial security, but the best chance of delivering value. We firmly believe analytics is an ongoing endeavour, not a one-time fix. The tenure of most clients, and the proportion of our business that comes from referrals, suggests our judgement has been sound.
These aren’t normal times though, and business is anything but usual.
I’m pretty sure there’s a number of companies out there with digital marketing and analytics teams depleted for one reason or another. It could be that key staff are unwell, or have their hands full caring for dependants. We’re starting to hear of entire teams being furloughed, and many companies have put in place a headcount freeze for the foreseeable future.
And yet the demand for up-to-date information and insight is greater than ever. When physical stores close, there’s even more attention focused on digital properties. These same companies desperately need to understand new behaviours and establish new baselines. They need to automate daily reports in case the people aren’t there to produce them and accurately predict demand so the moment they see an uptick, they’re ready to ramp ad spends, reorder stock or get production lines producing.
We need to do what we can to keep businesses moving. Closer to home, we need to keep people busy and productive. That’s why we’ve taken the decision to offer free 20-minute remote consultations to UK-based companies to provide support on the core Google tools that we have expertise in: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio and Google BigQuery.
Book a session and our certified experts will do their best to answer your questions or solve your problem on the spot. It could be setting up a custom report in Google Analytics, debugging a tag in GTM, checking a connection in Data Studio or doing a quick code review for BigQuery. If we can’t fix it there and then, we’ll quote for completing the work as soon as we can divert time away from our retained clients.
There’s no catch. The consultation is genuinely free and any estimate given comes with no obligation. However we naturally hope at least one or two paid projects result from the time we invest in helping people. If not straight away, then maybe down the line when times are better and budgets are replenished.
Let’s all hope those times come sooner rather than later. Keep calm and carry on measuring!
