—
The coronavirus crisis has shifted the paradigms of conducting business and marketing strategies in an unprecedented way. In this pandemic, Work From Home (WFH) or remote working has become the new normal for 2020. With these changes across industrial niches, marketing professionals have also re-adjusted their marketing plans to adjust with the transitional customer buying behaviours. In today’s Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) world, marketers globally have adopted new tactics to sustain brand performance and keep the businesses agile in COVID.
As a transfer from offline traditional marketing, online digital marketing has contributed to the rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) approach. Marketing through social media, virtual tracking of consumer patterns, a shift in product release, online conferences with clients are some surging trends of 2020. A captivating and visually impactful PowerPoint presentation is a requisite to hosting webinars for investors and stakeholders by marketers. A plethora of Marketing PowerPoint templates are available online on sites like Slidemodel which can assist the marketers in creating a top-notch presentation.
Here are 10 strategies and insights for marketers to function in the new normal:
Prioritize And Engage With Customers
To foster long-term brand awareness, it is imperative to build a loyal customer base. In this global economic shutdown, customers are shopping online to manage social distance. Marketers should develop a sense of customer motivation to recalibrate their brand’s message considering shifting choices of consumers.
Focus on customer retention of the product by leveraging on-site messaging, tools like emails and text messages, creative and attractive advertising, excellent customer support and delivering product information through engaging videos. Now is the time to speak to your audience and do smart marketing by interacting with them.
Focus on Digital Marketing
Marketers should ramp up their digital presence and promote social media advertising in full swing. Since the customers are hesitant to shop offline fearing the pandemic, novel ways can be adapted to reach them. Targeted ads based on SEO, conducting live polls on social media handles like Twitter or Facebook, offering virtual fittings go a long way.
Rethink and create digital marketing plans, focus on funnel ads, invest the branding budget on your company’s website, partner up with e-commerce sites and influencers to boost product reach. Maintain search rankings by investing in paid searches and increasing SEO budgets.
Diversify, and add business models
At times, adjusting the business model may help resonate with the changing market. In other words, by broadening the scope of offerings, businesses can reach larger traffic. Although the foot traffic to your business might be less today, there are other avenues that one can utilize to generate revenue. If a business doesn't have an online presence, establishing the same should be a priority.
We are seeing businesses struggling to survive and businesses thriving on growth in the last few months. It's time to respond to the crisis and adapt to changes. The right marketing strategy and flexible business model can help you stay relevant and accomplish business goals. It is only then a business can stay resilient against whatever lies ahead.
Smart Advertising
With the majority of people being locked inside their homes, conventional advertising on billboards is out of context. Smartly advertise your product by creating aesthetically pleasing product websites, extend on-site pop-ups, establish alluring landing pages and research on customer patterns.
By infusing your advertisements with taglines like “Direct to Door”, “At Your Doorstep”, “Free shipping” customers are assured of hassle-free and safe delivery of the product. With people spending more time online, insightful video advertising through channels like YouTube will aid you in increasing your sales.
Hosting Webinars And Online Conferences
Because of the global office shut down due to COVID, organizations are adopting remote working facilities for employees to work comfortably from home. There is an escalation of webinars and online audio-video conferences to pitch sales deck and marketing plans to stakeholders and investors.
Platforms such as Google Meet, Zoom, Skype are being utilized to conduct meetings and work collaboratively with peers. To complement the webinar, marketing professionals should design professional PowerPoint presentations reinforcing their branding strategy to leave a long-lasting impact on the audience.
Adopt a Marketing Plan
With catalyzing changes in marketing strategies, traditional marketing plans have become obsolete in the short term. Alternative marketing plans focusing on capitalising and expanding the brand’s digital presence and implementing new promotional strategies should be prioritized.
A Marketing Plan guide imbibed with ideas for online product selling, online transaction, determining the competition, increasing organic website traffic should be constructed by marketers. To keep the businesses afloat and attract customers incentives like gift cards or discounts can also be added to the marketing plans.
Optimize Content Marketing
Content Marketing is the creation, publishing and distribution of the branding content to increase brand awareness, improve SEO rankings and garner the audience’s interest. With changing consumer habits, brands need to unleash their creativity in presenting their products online through blogs, infographics and photos.
Marketers should exhibit their organizations’ branding with powerful messages in their product advertisements which cater to the sentiments of consumers. Assimilate the advertisements with taglines like “We’re together in this” or “Together we can” to attract consumer’s feelings and expand brand credibility.
Transparency In Inventory Management
With the supply chains and logistics being affected in the pandemic, brands often face the problem of low inventory on their essential items. Products may run out of stock or only a few pieces might be left. This would certainly affect the purchasing power of the customers.
On the backend, marketers should make sure that the products displayed on the website are appropriately tagged with information. Marketers should ensure transparency by providing expected delivery dates, restocking dates of products, sending informational emails to customers, offering discount codes on the sites.
Optimize The Buyer's Journey
When it comes to purchasing your products or services, the buyer's journey is a crucial process. Right from Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Purchase to Growth, the buyer journey should encompass relevant and useful content. This journey should have enough touch-points with customers so that you can guide them in making a purchase. Depending on the business, the steps in the buyer's journey might vary. Marketers should assess current marketing efforts by analyzing ROI and ROAS.
With the new normal kicking in, a buyer's interaction with the brand should be as seamless as possible. Successful marketing is about continuously testing, analyzing, and improvising the tactics to resonate with an evolving audience. Gathering metrics and studying data regularly equips marketers to have a better understanding of buyers. The customer might not be buying now, but it's not the time to slow down. Marketers should keep nurturing their leads with a long-term perspective in mind.
Customer Testimonials And Feedback
While browsing online for a product purchase, consumers always look for customer reviews and testimonials to affirm its validity. Social proof with a positive digital footprint of consumers holds the key to the brand’s prestige. Reading praise for a brand automatically piques the interest of the customers.
Marketers should incorporate customer reviews, case studies and testimonials on their website and other digital platforms for a cumulative audience base. Advance a strong stack of a positive product survey on review sites like Trustpilot, TrustRadius, G2 Crowd and many more.
Dynamic Website Upkeep
Online retailers should prioritize websites as their new platforms for selling their products. A slow-loading website with a cluttered user-interface can cost marketers their potential customers as it leads to frustration. Polish your website by providing conversational chatbots to interact live with the visitors.
Ensure performance improvements, speed settings of the site and easy navigation to make shopping an unforgettable experience for the customers. An easy tip here is to reduce the media-size, delay loading off-screen content and removal of excessive page weight due to plug-ins.
Proactive Marketing Budgets
Marketers need to gear themselves for the post-pandemic world as well. They should create plans to decisively manage costs and boost productivity. With consumers spending less, analyse the product segments with the best demand generation and allocate the funds into those products.
Take resources from less prioritised categories by the consumer to quickly move it to on-demand products. Smartly dispense the marketing budget by cutting down paper advertisements and shifting it to a digital base. Conduct online campaigns, digitally advertise the product and use social media to interact with the customers.
In times of COVID crisis, marketers have to adopt new measures for amplifying sales and build a strong brand presence. With an acceleration in digital marketing, customers are reliant on online platforms to buy products. Organize marketing strategies, build trust with the customers by increasing communication and plan your marketing policies efficiently to profit in this pandemic. Focus on your website, mobile marketing, developing an online presence and ingenuous budget allocations.
Release ID: 88980552
Google
RSS