As many brands have learned recently, marketing and crisis communications are not the same. Do you know the difference?

If COVID-19 has taught us nothing else about marketing, it is that planning campaigns and budgeting media for an entire year is old-school strategy that should find its final resting place between printed phone books and promotional-only social media.

Although it is certainly easier to plan far in advance, the pandemic has demonstrated that when hard times unexpectedly hit, it is not smart. You spend more time and money—and potentially alienate your customers—when you cannot react quickly to changes.

Worse, continuing “operations as normal” during a crisis can make your brand look out of touch and insensitive. Even if your customers’ worries—like tenants not paying rent, contractors not being able to finish jobs, or property days on market stretching longer—don’t affect you yet, you need to be sensitive to where their minds are and be able to reach them accordingly.

If you did not have them already, you need a new set of crisis communication moves for your marketing playbook.

Whether the crisis you’re dealing with is internal or external, look to these phases as you navigate it:

1. Containment
   Assess your current and upcoming risks. Interview and catalogue the feelings and thoughts of those who are most affected by the crisis, including customers, affiliates and partners.

From there, create a document that contains specific answers to common concerns as well as practices for speaking to customers and the press. Circulate the document to anyone who has an externally facing role, or who handles external communication. All touchpoints the public can have with your brand should be covered, including phone, interpersonal emails, website, social media, eblasts, newsletters, digital ads, outdoor ads and print media.

Shift the focus of your other communication toward the ethos of the customer instead
of only generating sales. If you focus too much on sales and retention during a crisis, you will look insensitive and out of touch, permanently damaging your brand in the minds of consumers. It is important to find a balance between the two ends of the spectrum: harping too much on the crisis and refusing to talk about it at all. During the COVID-19 crisis, some of the most successful campaigns gave their audiences a “break” from dealing with and thinking about the pandemic.

One practice we all saw a lot of during the pandemic and should be put to bed is the blanket “how we are handling the crisis” email. Segment your audience according to who crucially must know the information and when they need to know it, rather than to your whole list.

You should also direct your audience to a place other than your usual sales or customer service channels. Instead, pave a direct path to a person who speaks on behalf of your company. Typically, this is the leader of the company or someone who is well-versed in public relations.

Finally, do not forget internal communication. What do your employees need to know? While you may not be able to tell them everything about how the crisis will be handled, they do need to know you are handling it, which policies and procedures have changed, and what you expect of them.

2. Resolution
Once the crisis begins to move toward an end point, your communication should change

tone and start to focus on rebuilding or advancement. Think of it as a bridge back to your normal communication—you’re trying to strike a tone between respecting that people are still dealing with the aftermath of the crisis while working to put it behind you. Especially for internal crises, include any new procedures put into place to prevent it from happening again.

3. Assessment
   When the crisis is well and truly put to bed, review your company’s performance. Did your communication work effectively? What could you have done better? What worked well? Are there things you learned that you could bring into your daily marketing practices? Document and add them to your records for future use.

Importantly, revisit your crisis plan at least annually with an eye toward:

• The do’s and do not’s you have seen from other companies as they have handled crises that your own company may eventually need to navigate.
• Refreshing your media/touchpoint checklist for what your crisis plan covers (changing accounts, new social media outlets, etc.) so you can tackle communication in these areas quickly.
• Creating or expanding your crisis communication documentation to include how you will respond to different kinds of crises.

In the end, the best thing you can do to protect your company against future crises is to take advantage of your hard-won COVID-19 experience. You did not get through this for nothing. You saw, you learned and you are better equipped to handle something similar in the future. But, only if you use that experience and digest those lessons into a new modus operandi.