You basically have 2 situations that your customers could be experiencing.

1. They just don't have the budget right now because their business has been hit by the recession.
2. They have the budget, but they are afraid to spend it.

My advice is a little different in each situation.

If they don't have the budget, there's not much you can do as far as making it profitable for yourself. However, you can continue to be a resource and stay in communication if you are financially able to do so.

• Check in regularly — you don't know when this is going to change.
• See if you can offer other services that might help them generate revenue so they can afford your services.
• See, if you can offer discounts or free services and consultation during this time to help them — BUT, don't put yourself out of business to help.

If they do have the budget, but are afraid to spend it, then just have a conversation with them. See what you can do to help them be comfortable and make sure you're providing value.

Now it's the time to push lengthy contracts or strict exit clauses in your contracts. You might have to make some adjustments to help you and your customers make it through this.

If you have an email list already and you can provide a quick resource list, that might work. It does kind of depend on your target customers right now.

Larger companies will value different resources than smaller companies. 

We are seeing a lot of manufacturers using this time to reinforce their customer relationships, provide staff training, and perform machines maintenance.

Marketing in a pandemic or recession is no different than every other day. There's no so such thing as too much communication or saying too much.

The biggest thing to remember is that you need to provide value in your communication. You could send emails multiple times a day if each message is tailored to your audience and helps them solve a problem or reach a goal.

Right now we are seeing people that are hungry for information, so get out there and answer questions, provide resources, and share your knowledge.

I would say absolutely — as long as it fits in with your strategy. If you're just buying it with no idea or intention to use it, then hold off until you can get a strategy assembled.

Right now many companies are offering discounts on software, so if you have a plan, you can save money and take advantage of those.

You should be talking with your employees daily. There's a lot going on right now and some employees are working remotely. It's easy for things to fall through the cracks.

Employees are missing out on the "water cooler conversations" right now, so you should provide ways to encourage team building.

We do formal meetings with our staff weekly and monthly. We also use https://slack.com to facilitate regular communications. 

You can also utilize most of your marketing software to help you with employee communication — such as using your email software to send mass emails to employees.

The biggest advantage is searchability and organization. You can use multiple workspaces and channels to organize conversations. And you can search within workspaces or channels to find messages.

There are also some automation tools and integrations that can make it easier and save you time.

Don't be absurdly less professional — no live streaming in your underwear.

However, it is good to mirror your audience's reality and be human. We're all in this together. Don't worry about your background in your video, kids in the background, pets barking, etc.

People are more forgiving of a less professional setting than every before, so it's actually a great opportunity to test out video if you haven't before.

Not necessarily. It's more important that your message resonates with your target audience. 

You need to provide value and use messaging that will capture attention. Stories can be a bit harder to put out there though. You have to have more of a story with those, they are multiple panes and people scroll through, so creating them is more involved.

Be more active on social media. Use this time to build your audience and build your list. Be transparent, be human, and be down-to-earth.

This is a great time to start a blog, build your email list, and get in touch with your target market. You might even find ways to offer your products and services remotely when you talk with your audience.

This is a great time to do cleaning, organization, reach out to past customers to check on them, work on business processes, and train your team.

If you have revenue to ride this out, then invest in your team and your business and use this time to grow.

Don't put anything out there that's not applicable during the current client. For example, it wouldn't be smart for me to publish an article on how to leverage trade shows right now when they are all cancelled.

However, keep publishing on your blog. Most articles take 6 to 9 months to get picked up and ranked on Google, so you want to keep those strategies going.

You might choose not to share those on social or email right now, but you can continue to publish them on your website.

If you can write content that's applicable to the current climate and would still be applicable when this ends, that's a great addition. For example, we wrote one with tips for working remotely that is great right now, but would still be a viable piece after this starts to turn around.