I am writing this post in March 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.

I am not going to write about how fake this pandemic is, you know that already.

Nevertheless, governments behave as if it would be a serious illness and pass measures that prevent or at least make business difficult. In Italy there is a military enforced mandatory “self isolation” in place (everyone has to stay home), voluntary self isolation is advised, there are travel bans, quarantines, etc.

People are in fear, distracted, and attention is stuck on “surviving the pandemic”.

Business owners have this same problem, and another one: Keeping the business going!

(You can read about how to manage your business through this time period responsibly here.)

Based on my observations in mine and my friend’s companies, there is no problem with the willingness of employees. They want to work and make money and no-one wants to lose their jobs “just because there is a pandemic”.

Customers and potential customers are a whole different story: We could observe a clear market segmentation that was not there before the whole “coronavirus terror” started.

The two main market segments in a national or global crisis:

The impact this situation has to a certain business depends on the industry sector. But because we are working with people and this market segmentation has to do with the reaction of people to the pandemic we can differentiate between potential customers based on the below segmentation.

1. Withdrawn, frightened – no go segment

Majority of people are afraid of an uncertain outcome of events that they can not predict. They are distracted to the degree that we can not have their attention. They do not seem to be able to make a decision (which is a prerequisite of signing any contract) until they can predict the future, at least to some degree.

Furthermore, because the crisis has to do with an infection these people find it rude when we even bring up to meet and do business. They find it “irresponsible to spread the virus by simply being around them”. So their attitude has to do with their certainty and conviction that the right thing to do is to withdraw from business and withdraw from people. This is very difficult to argue with so we simply respect their viewpoint. But this attitude is the one that kills the economy the same time.

(This segment will still want food, housing, telecommunication so these sectors won’t be affected much.)

2. The active, motivated ones – who still want to make things work

There is, however, a clear segment who keep pressing on along their projects and try to figure out how to make things work. This category is out there and looking for your products and services. Do not fall for thoughts like “everyone is staying at home”, “people stoped spending”, etc.

There is a market segment, potential customers and clients who have reserves, are still motivated and want your services or products. You have to make sure they can find you and that you are looking for them, they are your main target audience in a crisis.

So keep marketing and contacting people gently, and you’ll find business. I was the most surprised to see how many people want to do and complete certain projects, get things done, built, fixed, organised, etc before any mandatory self isolation hits the country. Monitoring these inquiries it seems we can close them with a 50% conversion rate. There are significantly less potential customers, but with a much higher conversion rate we are almost there where we were before the pandemic. My company is busy and I am very happy about that.

This was a good session for us. Simply knowing what to expect from people in a crisis, and having worked out how to switch to your new target audience quickly (from broad shooting to a very targeted marketing) can save a lot of headache.