COVID-19 pandemic-related shutdowns have affected a host of industries and businesses in various ways.
As the businesses have been impacted, the marketing strategy to the companies needs a change too.
What will change, and how?
Strategy
There have been definite changes to supply and demand online. The product-market fit has also been modified for almost every category on some level due to the ripple effect of COVID-19.
Every business should study their customers in a defined way and study each segment of the funnel to generate and maintain customers.
Keep a close eye on:
If your customer base has changed?
What’s the new marketing budget for you?
What offers do you have for your previous buyers?
How do you want to remarket your product to your existing customers?
What’s the funnel or sales analysis to acquire new customers?
What is the tone of customer service in this pandemic situation?
Keeping a closer look at the product-market fit and that of the customers will be essential through the rest of 2020.
You need to take a closer look at your customer and refine your strategy around their new pain points.
For example, customers now seek home “delivery” with minimum physical contact.
The marketing campaigns will have to be modified in order to take your business to market; your services and pricing should be compatible with your ideal buyer.
Your business must have a dedicated page on your website, directly addressing COVID-19 and how you are addressing the customers’ needs.
Your business needs to highlight its new messaging strategy in your advertising creatives, content marketing, and email marketing.
The campaign that clearly states how you are helping your customer is the need of the hour— and you need to track the results.
If the results are right, the same can be a part of your follow-up marketing campaign later in 2020.
Organization
The way organizations operate will change in the short-term due to COVID19. With “work from home” becoming the new normal, employees and employers to get used to this. If customers don’t want to meet in your office and the staff wants to work from home, this means significant savings. This money can be used to invest more in client and employee success.
Not having an office brings other significant challenges: lack of team/company culture, lack of community, collaboration, etc.
It is up to each business owner to decide, and time will tell how important the office is long term. But for now, video calls are addressing the issue.
Communication
Client communication is changing day by day. Clients generally love in-person meetings. That has all changed now. This would require everyone to show up for meetings via video call, rather than in person.
The video call is an experience, so it is an entirely new skill set, and this is quite a new and unique experience in a professional environment.
Conclusion
COVID-19 is a crisis like many others before, but it is also unlike others — different as it seemed like it could be short-lived, with various pundits predicting the so-called “V” and “U” and “boat-shaped” recoveries. It almost seems unreal due to its sheer magnitude and impacts it has had on the world. As we progress, it is essential to adapt. For businesses, think about your new customer needs, employee needs, and communication strategy.
An important question coming to mind was with the significant change in lifestyles with working from home, whether this would impact all businesses or just some.
Within a few weeks, we got the answer to this question. While specific industries like Travel and Hospitality, and Retail were struck and it felt like they may take a while to restart, many other industries it seemed could see a tremendous need and opportunity to invest in Digital Marketing technology.
For some others, due to their businesses’ changing nature, they would be forced to rethink archaic marketing strategies, tools, and processes that they had been using.
Entrepreneurship Is About Solving Problems
In the end, entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Businesses need to find innovative solutions to their questions during this terrible pandemic and use digital marketing to create their COVID-19 shuffle.
Though the coronavirus crisis may seem like a massive threat to businesses and jobs, and health, digital marketing may take a great leap forward as a result of Covid 19.
How can digital marketing help businesses sustain during COVID 19?
Business is all about adaptability and dealing with challenges. Now due to technical advancement, digital marketing is providing a new horizon to businesses to survive during such unpredictable times.
In such times digital marketing showcases the following advantages:
Allows shopping from the comfort of their homes, giving them the safety to avoid physical contact and enable them to stay indoors.
Digital marketing can help open new channels over the web or social media platforms where introductions can be made, and relationships are fostered.
Social distancing is likely to keep a majority of people away from physical meetings, which will prompt companies to turn to digital channels to sell their products and services. In all likelihood, we would see massive growth in companies wishing to create or update websites, launch new e-commerce channels, and create social media campaigns focused on home-workers and a real focus on using influencers and SEO to reach new audiences.
How to create a market for non-essential products?
Providing offers, discounts & gift cards can incentivize shoppers to return to your store to make more purchases.
Prompting increased use of social media
By maximizing your social media channels and providing customers with tips on using your products, educating them about their different features more and more and about the safety measures you’re following.
Communicate with existing customers
Communication is always, will play a significant role in a company’s quest to market its products. Since delivery periods will not be the same as before, you need to reassure the customer that their order has been processed and inform them when they will receive it.
The significance and need for digital channels have grown substantially in the past few years and particularly since the time the COVID-19 crisis began. In the times to come, businesses will become more reliant on their digital strategy than ever before.
Digital marketing will be a critical factor in deciding whether companies make it through the tough times ahead.
It will grab the lion’s share of all marketing efforts of a company – including the ones that may not have been so tech-savvy earlier and might not have had a Facebook page before – will need to move into social marketing, content marketing, and SEO.
