Brands across the globe are slowly coming to terms with the volatile business environment we have found ourselves in with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether your company has temporarily frozen operations or is ‘working from home’, your digital marketing strategy should be a primary focus in these worrying times ahead – if it is not already.
Many of those things you knew about your target audience are different now. People are feeling communal anxiety and grief, their daily routines have likely changed completely, and some have either lost their jobs or are risking their health to keep essential services functioning.
Newspapers, billboards, leaflets, outdoor campaigns are all running on reduced reach – Digital Marketing is on the rise!
Reinvent digital marketing for your business, if you want to
- Increase your digital visibility
- Improve sales
- Enhance brand identity
- Beat the competition
- To meet the evolving needs of customers
Posting online only goes so far, if it’s without purpose.
Let’s look at some of the steps you can take to re-evaluate your marketing plans in light of coronavirus and make decisions on how to move forward in these challenging times.
Navigate your business to reach the target audience in the lockdown.
- Digital marketing: Using marketing tools like Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation and activities such as a constant content update on your website and onsite SEO.
- Social media marketing: Social media content curation & posting, out of which boosting specific posts will help your business create positive awareness to the targeted audience that you want to reach.
- Digital media interviews: Schedule webinars or fun interactions for your audience so as to reach more of your targeted market.
- Online media articles: During the lockdown, digital media, in the form of online news portals and websites has more readers, far more than print media, so it is important for companies to produce media releases, opinion pieces, and analytics articles that can be published online during these times.
- Social media engagements: In the age of instant messaging and conversations online, live updates and posts are vital for strengthening relations between companies and their potential clients.
Using social media to engage with customers when physical touchpoints are absent. With easy internet access, a number of different social media platforms, and an estimated 375 million+ social media users in India, it would be well advised to use social media to increase your brand visibility and customer engagement.
- Reinvent your social media. Help your business during the pandemic
During these times, every action you take could be good or detrimental to your brand. However, by using empathy to craft an informative social media campaign, you could reach your audience organically. Your focus right now should be more on sharing factual information and educating your audience. This is an opportunity for your brand to show that it genuinely cares about its customers.
We are at a stage today where your social media is the face of your business, probably the ONLY FACE due to the pandemic!
Some pointers to keep in mind while launching/relaunching your social media during these COVID times.
- Market research on the current audience and using it to inform your launch/relaunch.
Do market research before planning your next content, so as to be able to gauge what the market is expecting/wants off you. For example, assuring COVID-safety of services and products you give is a must for every business unless you are purely digital. - Choose which social media platforms to engage with, according to your target audience.
According to your target audience, study social media platforms to understand which platforms will work better for your business. Try to find out if your audience is more likely to do what online now that people have more time due to lockdowns. Did you know WhatsApp works amazingly for some businesses? - Personalize the posting & stay on top of current trends
Curate content for your pages keeping in mind the delicate situation created by Covid-19, so as not to look insensitive in the posts. Connect with the audience, you don’t always have to speak about your products or services. Show them you care and are doing your best to beat the pandemic. - Repurpose content
Repurpose old content and use them in new ways to promote your brand. This is a huge money saver as you already have the content. - The need to network – create a website/page with contact details.
Sometimes the most basic things are very much relevant. Networking is a dire need in a period where our major selling area is social media. Having a website leads probable customers to directly get in touch with you as well as a leave in their information in the website directory. - Create a smooth system for managing contacts collected.
The collected contacts can later be used for email marketing, so it is necessary to save the data collected in a smooth-easy-to-access-&-handle manner.
- Pandemic or no pandemic – Stay in business with Digital Marketing
Digital media is the most sought after media currently with the whole world depending on the same for news, shopping, new product launches, and sales.
If your business improves its image on social media during these times, that image can persist online even after this pandemic is over, which can further be used for marketing.
Our Fanatisch team puts it as “In difficulty, lies the opportunity”.
Take this opportunity to build a strong social media base, which will help your brand in the future years to come.
With new digital marketing firms coming up every day, if you have a company where carrying out your own digital marketing is a strain, you can always look to outsource it. And yes, we do that 🙂
We here at Fanatisch believe in providing the best of Digital Marketing services available, with eye to the tiniest of details that can work wonders in attracting customer attention.
An outline of how Fanatisch can help you fare well in the Digital Market :
- Rebuild/ rebrand your business
Rebranding of a business according to how you would like its face to be online as well as in a way that shall catch the attention of a probable customer.
- Brush up on your social media presence
Focus on your social media channels, changing the face of these pages according to the current trends and keeping in mind the COVID situation.
Posts/Content should be created according to SEO tools and other digital optimization tools. - Promote your brand but do not be seen as taking advantage
If you have a product that could sell a lot during this period, reassess the communication as the message could come as insensitive and over opportunistic. With people already under a lot of stress due to Covid-19, some messages could come off as a tactic to increase sales, if not executed in a tasteful manner.
Now is precisely the time to be proactive.
Don’t let the pandemic define your company’s customer experience by pushing you through a series of haphazard, reactive moves. Instead, be deliberate and intentional, take the lead in designing and actualizing a customer experience that will set your business apart today, tomorrow, and well into the future. Remember, these are testing times!
The Plus Plum 