The crisis management plan for industrial companies

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Regardless of the sector in which a company operates, it is more than likely that at some point every company will have to face a crisis situation.
Digital marketing is often seen as a mere sales channel and a way of generating traffic to our website. Beyond this, a good digital marketing strategy must also consider, among other things, how the company should act in difficult times because, sooner or later, it is very likely that this moment will occur. A crisis management plan for B2B industrial companies must consider all possible situations as well as the significance of a difficult situation to public opinion . In short, a crisis management plan must anticipate a series of risk scenarios that a company would have to face in the future in an unfailing manner.

At the same time, this plan should include strategic responses to the crisis situation iraq email list in the different usual media, emphasizing timely and diligent communication in order to minimize a negative impact and preserve the corporate reputation and therefore the trust of the different interest groups or stakeholders . Sometimes, it is not even necessary for a real problem to exist for a company to feel cornered by public opinion, since unfortunately rumours and market expectations can transfer a high level of nervousness to stakeholders .

Characteristics of a crisis
Obviously, any company faces countless challenges and problems on a daily basis and that is why it is considered a business crisis when one of these problems of a certain magnitude transcends public opinion since the company can easily lose control of corporate communication. In addition, the viralization of any content on social networks can easily contribute to an exponential spread of a business crisis situation . On the contrary, and although it may seem unlikely, it may happen that a company is facing one or several problems of a certain magnitude but since none of them have transcended public opinion, we cannot grant the situation the category of crisis.

Although each crisis situation may have different characteristics and triggers, most of them are situations that share the following properties to a greater or lesser extent:

Unpredictable and unexpected . Although certain team members may sometimes foresee a potential problem that could be reported to the media, the truth is that any anticipation strategy may not be sufficient due to a lack of calculation of the magnitude of the problem or simply when it appears suddenly.
Relevance . Every business crisis begins with a problem of a certain relevance that can quickly spread within the company or even within the same sector. That is why it is vital to know how to distinguish the day-to-day problems and challenges of the company from relevant problems of a certain magnitude that could lead to a crisis.
Public . As we have previously mentioned, any problematic situation within the company will become a crisis as soon as the information reaches the public, a fact that can trigger panic among stakeholders as well as the general public depending on the company's sector.
What are the objectives of a crisis management plan?
Any crisis management plan, whether designed for B2B industrial companies or B2C companies, must answer the following questions: What are we going to communicate? Through which communication channels? Who will be in charge of communicating? Who do we want to address?

Just as each crisis is different, so are each company, so each particular case may have different answers to the above questions. On the other hand, regardless of the company's sector, the ultimate goal of the crisis management plan is to reduce the media impact of a crisis and reassure stakeholders who may have panicked. Although there is no exact strategy that defines what a crisis management plan should be like, another objective that should be considered is the recovery of corporate reputation that may have been affected by a loss of credibility following a crisis episode.

The crisis management plan and social media
Nowadays, any crisis that occurs in a company will automatically jump to the world of social media even if the company in question does not have a presence on them. Social media is a weapon that can destroy a company's reputation in a matter of minutes with false or unclear information and that is why we must pay special attention to how a company should act on social media during a crisis.

A common mistake companies make in these situations is to communicate reactive responses to the situation that only make the problem worse . On the contrary, the crisis management plan must include information regarding social networks about who, how, where and when the relevant communication will be made to avoid at all costs a possible catastrophe in our online brand reputation.