For the most part people think of marketing during the good times. You send out press releases when sales are good and quarter earnings are up, when your business expands or when you support a good cause. But what about when things are (gasp!) bad? When money is tight? Or even, when crisis strikes? What happens to your marketing campaign then?
When money is tight obviously you should seek affordable public relations strategies to keep your marketing efforts going. As for crisis, that’s actually the time to go full steam ahead with your public relations efforts. By crisis I am talking about those things that happen to a company resulting in the shaking of consumer confidence, like when a product gets recalled or when a CEO gets in trouble. That’s when you should go all out, hire the best crisis public relations professional and try to get through it with your reputation intact.
The first thing that should happen is you should send out a press release. It should be brief, to the point, and it should avoid going into too much detail about the original incident. Instead, concentrate more on what you are doing to fix or change things and what you will be doing to once again become the company that your consumers relied on.
After you get the press release out, your next steps would be to start a public relations campaign that will once again shine the halo over your corporate head. Co-brand with a cause. Start a movement to help offset your carbon footprint. Buy a big-eyed puppy and make it your mascot. Start making headlines in a positive way.
The best thing to do when negative publicity threatens your business is to face it head on and take charge. Start by issuing a press release.