Disaster Marketing - Should You or Shouldn't You?

Should you take advantage of a disaster, pandemic, or similar emergency?

Unfortunately disasters, just like other events are known to spike certain keywords online.

As soon as an earthquake or tsunami occurs, you can bet that the most searched keywords will have something to do with earthquakes, tsunami, disaster, emergency or 72 hour kits.


As marketers we all know that news or world events can provide
a prime marketing opportunity. But how do you take advantage of the internet's focus on the disaster without feeling guilty?

Disaster Marketing 101 - what not to do:

1)Do not over hype the tragedy - State the facts. No fear mongering.

2)Always make it a win win situation. Provide value in the product or service you offer.

3)Don’t target disaster keywords if your product or service aren’t closly tied to the keywords searched for.

4)Consider creating separate blogs or sites that contain just information, links or other resources that can help disaster victims or those related to victims.

5)Monitor the severity of the disaster closely . If things begin to get seriously out of control and strike a little too close to home, don’t continue your marketing efforts. Instead see what you can personally do to help, whether it be donating funds, food, blood or your own labor.

6)To help you sleep at night, if you generate a significant amount of cash during your disaster marketing, consider donating a portion of the proceeds to a disaster relief fund or organisation. Try and target organisations that are actually sending people or resources to the striken area.

7)In your disaster marketing efforts, you may make more money by letting buyers know that a portion of your earnings will go to help those that have been affected.

Finally, Natural or man-made disasters are a part of life. If you manage your disaster marketing efforts correctly, you can feel good about yourself at the end of the day. You’ll know that you actually helped people become informed and feel safer. Or better yet, maybe you were actually able to provide a product or service to those that were actually affected.

*** Please note that I am neither recommending this type of marketing, nor am I discouraging it. I wrote this post mainly as a warning to those who do. I feel that there's a fine line between taking advantage of a situation and actually being able to provide a product or service that may help. I think it's a sticky problem with this type of stuff.

If you do delve into this territory, are you actually helping or taking advantage? I remember a few years ago in New York, we had a huge power outage and while it was widely reported that a vast region of the metro area had no power and phones - there were still a huge amount of people that still had access to their internet service, and were able to go online - myself included. Could many of these people have been searching online for help or safety tips during this type of emergency?
Who knows? Indeed, during the worst disasters, most of those affected would have no access to the internet.

I know that with the recent quakes around the world, many people have felt at least a little safer knowing that they either have or have ordered preparedness kits online for themselves or their families. Will that make a difference? Probably not for the worst scenarios, but it does help them feel safer knowing they have food, water and supplies on hand that can at least give them a chance at survival.

Anyway, I posted this to encourage a lively debate and see what other marketers think about this type of ambulance chasing marketing. ****