Empathy, Leadership, Innovation, and Context in These Uncertain Moments

We, the marketers, are trying to figure out what will be next, what will be tomorrow and what we should do in order to make the future better.

Some of us think that the system should be led by leaders. Others are thinking that we need to break the system because the system is already broken. And there are other marketers who are just waiting for someone to take the lead and do something.

The thing is that we are living through times and events we couldn’t imagine or expect to happen a few months or years ago. We have lived our lives and tried to make something special for us and our close ones. Some of us wanted to build businesses, change lives or just build a legacy for their family.

But today everything changed. Priorities changed. Tasks changed. Dreams have changed. All we want now is just to stay safe and take care of each other, especially our family and friends. This is our main priority right now.

So, thinking about these moments we are living today I sat down and wrote 4 words we need to take into consideration right now.

I don’t know if you will find yourself in these words if you know someone who can use these ideas to make a better day, but this is something I thought about and will do in the next few days.

1. Empathy

First is empathy.

Before we have started our second season of the podcast The Drag & Drop, we thought about what should be the best topic we should focus on. We knew that we wanted to talk with top lead women who made a change in their industry. But to talk about what?

Empowering women is such an important topic, but at the same time, we were aware that we wanted something different. A different angle that almost nobody touched. The kind of angle everybody should listen to. The kind of topic everybody should talk about. And this was empathy.

Empathy is such a graceful and thankful word. People with empathy can take care of each other, can leave in/and have peace and they are able to think a little deeper in a crisis situation.

Empathy is something that everybody should think about every day.

Especially now.

And I think today that we should show more empathy around us. We should show more empathy to the customer service employee who is trying to solve every problem, even if they need to go by the company rules and they can refund every airplane ticket 100%. We must show more empathy to the person who might look at us strangely after we cough. We must show empathy for the small businesses who try to survive these days and don’t judge their discount or don’t judge the content creator that is putting out more content than before.

Leaders and team managers need more empathy. Because for some of us, maybe working from home creates anxiety and after the 8 hours of work, Netflix or Youtube is just not enough.

That’s why the true leaders will look deeper into the weekly one-on-one conversation and will say “if there is anything I can do for you, just let me know, I’m here for you. You are not alone”

2. Leadership

The second word that came into my mind these days was leadership.

Simon Sinek wrote in his book “Start with Why” the next paragraph “There are many talented executives with the ability to manage operations, but great leadership is not based solely on great operational ability. Leading is not the same as being the leader…Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you – not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.”

In these moments of insecurity, people are looking for comfort, peace, and a vision. Companies are shaking, the economy is insecure and there is a big question for the next day. So, who can give comfort and vision in these blurry days? I’ll tell you who. It’s the ones that can lead. The ones who are not afraid to rise and lead the community with courage.

I’m not talking about people like Mel Gibson in Braveheart or Samuel L. Jackson in Coach Carter where they give a motivational speech to encourage their people to go on that battlefield or basketball court.

There are hundreds and thousands of motivational content templates on the internet. All you have to do just search on Google, copy/paste, edit the company name and you are ready.

The kind of leaders we need these days are the intentional ones. They don’t need a position to lead. They don’t need a platform to communicate with their peers. They just have that gut to make the step and lead the people around them.

These kinds of leaders had a vision for their community and in these situations, they managed to adapt their way of lead but never change the vision.

Being a leader today doesn’t mean that you need a position, a role in your company or organization, or even a platform.

Leading your community is to be intentional, to identify and understand people’s emotions and connect with everyone in a certain way or another.

In 2004 there was the final NBA game between Detroit Pistons and Los Angeles Lakers. Lakers had Kobe Briant and Shaq, 2 all-star players who lead the team in various victories and also in winning the championship. But this time the Lakers confronted the Pistons, a team with no all-star players that won the championship. However, there was Ben Wallace, the person who lead the entire team to play as a team. It was a team win, not a one-star win. It was about doing this together. And they won. Ben Wallace was the lead the Detroit Pistons needed in that situation. He guarded Shaq, he motivated the team on the court, he passed and gave others the points he couldn’t get. It wasn’t about having a certain point in your career, it was about leading the team to win the championship.

Being a leader it means to lead in hard times, even if you are not an acclaimed leader in your own organization and you think that that’s the CEO or the manager’s job.

If you are not the CEO it doesn’t mean you can’t lead. If you are not the manager it doesn’t mean you can’t lead.

If you are called to lead, you will lead.

Because this is in yourself, in your gut and in your vision.

3. Innovation

The third idea I’m thinking about right now is – INNOVATION.

We’ve been hearing it lately maybe a hundred times. If you are in the SaaS (software as a service) industry you get to hear it at every conference, read it in every newsletter or talk about it maybe at every coffee shop.

Innovation is part of our daily lives.

But what should we do with Innovation these days?

Not everybody can think about innovation. There are people who can innovate their lifestyle, others who can adapt and there are others who are following the ones who innovate or adapt.

There will be innovation in business.

More small businesses that are foot-shops were forced to close their doors during the past few weeks and they are trying to figure out how to innovate and help their customers. There are coffee shops where you can order every morning your coffee. There are pasta shops who can make your own pasta, send you the ingredients and you can cook your own meal. There are restaurants who are packing the ingredients and sending you the recipe so you can cook your own dinner.

There is this article where Noah Kagan and co. are showcasing how they build a recession-proof business these days.

It’s interesting to see how some people can see opportunities even in hard times.

And maybe this is something we all need to do.

See opportunities even in hard times. That’s what innovation means.

There will be innovation in marketing.

Marketing won’t be the same as it was before. Finally, there will be a big shift between marketing and advertising. Business people, entrepreneurs, managers, and CMOs will finally get that marketing is a thing and advertising is another thing.

Marketers won’t market their brands. Marketers will innovate to help their customers.

Smart marketers will understand that content marketing is not just a trend that you need to use to get in front of your customers. They will know that content marketing must be the core of their marketing strategies. And when I talk about content marketing, I’m not focusing only on blog articles, podcast episodes or videos on Youtube.

Marketers will understand that they need to focus more on Brand Affinity – how to make the people who consume my content to care more about me.

And most of it, marketers will need to redefine their purposes. Every marketing department and sub-department need to redefine its purpose. Or, maybe now is the right time to sit down and think about their purpose: why do they do what they do. It’s simple. But they need guidance. They need to understand that reality isn’t anymore the thing they see on Youtube or they hear at a Starbucks coffee-shop. The reality is that everything will change (nobody knows how and in what way) but if they don’t have a documented strategy, a written down purpose and a definition, they won’t make it through these times.

Some of us will innovate and some of us will adapt.

4. Context

And everything correlated and combined with context.

In December 2018, I wrote an article where I presented why “user intent is important in content marketing”. It was an article where I showcased how marketers should think about user intent. I think that there are 4 types of user intent: navigational, informational, commercial and transactional, content marketers should think about when creating their content strategy in this context.

What’s the intent of your user when they are searching for a certain topic on Google and why your content should be the answer for it?

However, if we are thinking of what’s happening in this pandemic situation, it’s not only the intention of that certain person who’s searching something on Google, it’s also all about the context they are living in.

Context should be the glasses, we as marketers should be using these days.

Having emotional intelligence today and trying to understand the context of our community will help us understand how to do marketing.

I don’t believe marketing should stop or should take a break in these situations. I believe that the right marketing can help people get through it. Think about content marketing and all the articles that are written even right now. There are articles that can inspire, articles that can motivate or even educate. Just think about how many people are looking now to level up their professional skills and are searching to learn a new business skill, a new way to design something or do something practically. There is only one way to learn it using the internet, and this is the content the creators are publishing and have been published until now.

But marketers are also human beings and they are working for other human beings. That means that everything they do, even if it’s social media, content marketing, email marketing, SEO or whatever, they are doing for other people. And people these days are living in different situations which might have caught them unprepared. There are people who have a certain context of living their lives. There are people who changed their lives entirely and now their context is way more different than a few weeks ago.

Understanding their context will help you do a better job.

I don’t have a magic spell on what to say, do or think in order to understand their contexts. But maybe the best way to understand them is just pick up the phone or open that “New Email” tab and start reaching one-on-one to them. Just talk with them. Don’t sell anything. Don’t ask anything. Just talk with them and see how they are, what changed lately in their lives and how they are managing with this situation.

Be there for them.

This is the kind of article that I wrote, not only for the readers of this blog but also for myself.

It’s more a personal note that I took during these pandemic moments, and maybe in a few years when I will come back and read it, it will make me think differently.

And why not, isn’t this why we’ve started blogging? Even if this is a marketing blog.

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