What Northeast Florida Businesses Can Do With Their Marketing To Help Survive Hurricane Irma

As is witnessed by the tragedy of hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, no one wants to endure a horrible disaster as a hurricane. And while people in Northeast Florida are preparing for the safety of their families and homes, it is important to also prepare to protect your business.

Even with such a critical event as a hurricane, there are distinct marketing advantages for businesses. First, it is a very focused event, one that affects everyone. Second, people want updated information about the storm. So they are watching, listening and searching in large numbers.

To begin with, in Northeast Florida, it never hurts to start promoting your business services and products before a major storm hits. Hurricane preparation marketing should begin in June and continue through October. For retailers, this is an opportunity to conduct “hurricane sales events” to boost summer sales.

But what should you do now that you know hurricane Irma could be bearing down on us by next week?

The following is a brief, general marketing outline to help you take advantage of capturing a large audience focused on a specific event and through specific advertising channels:

TV Advertising - Contact your TV and Comcast rep immediately to place your TV commercials in weather-related programming. For cable, you should buy the Weather channel and news networks. For broadcast stations, buy around the weather reports in the news and buy rotations into the on-going local news/weather coverage.

Radio Advertising - WOKV news station is where you want to be with your radio spots. But also include news and traffic updates on iHEART and Cox stations.

ON-LINE Advertising Strategy - Start by putting your message on your website’s home page. Then consider Google ads utilizing keywords such as “hurricane,”  “storm,” or “Irma.”  Use messages on online weather sources. These can range from weather.com to weather notices on any of the local news media sites such as Jacksonville.com. In using these sources, you can utilize geographic and behavioral targeting to reach the Northeast Florida audience. You can use a similar strategy with Facebook ads.

Social Media - Keep your customers updated through a current Facebook page and blog, plus posting messages on LinkedIn. And reach your existing customers through email blasts.

Public Relations - Particularly if you have a unique product or service relating to storms, write up a news release about what you do, how you can help customers and how customers can find you. In addition to posting this on your social sites, send it to the local media. Be sure to include your name, title and after hours contact information to let the media know you are available for interviews.