Are you revamping your marketing plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
Well, you should definitely consider it if you haven’t started yet.
In the face of the coronavirus, the preferences of the people from all around the world have taken a huge turn. More than likely, your pre-COVID-19 marketing strategies are no longer applicable in today’s environment. In fact, many marketers have already started to reconsider their existing marketing strategies with 45% of them ending or pulling a marketing campaign mid-flight, according to the recent survey conducted by eMarketer on March 26, 2020.
From this data collected from US marketing agencies and marketing professionals, we can see that many have implemented changes in the marketing campaigns with some cancelled or postponed.
In this blog, we will review some critical insights that you will need to help prepare your marketing plans for these unusual times.
How Do You Approach Your Marketing Plans Now?
The first step starts with accepting the fact that the customers aren’t necessarily the same today as they were yesterday. You may have full knowledge of your ideal customer’s behaviour and preferences like the back of your hand, but this pandemic has changed everything. You need to accept that your customers’ choices will vary, which could have a massive impact on your marketing and sales.
It’s time to step back, assess the situation, regroup and replan your entire marketing strategy for what looks to be the “new normal” over the next few months.
Re-Create Customer Profiles
It’s important, more now than ever, to truly get inside the minds of your target customers and understand how they are thinking today. Go beyond the usual profile characteristics of likes and dislikes. Try to get an idea into what they are feeling during these times and what they expect businesses like yours to do in response.
You can do by so by conducting simple surveys through:
- emails to your existing customers.
- social media platforms by asking questions directly to followers through Q&A and simple multichoice survey features.
- Simple software applications like Survey Monkey or JotForm
This will give you a good start as you begin analyzing the data and creating customer profiles. With the basic idea of what the customers expect, you can start revamping your marketing campaigns.
Re-Visit Current Marketing Strategies
With the new insights obtained directly from your customers, you can now analyze your current and near-future strategies that you had previously planned. Cross-reference the motives and the methods of the strategy and try to look at it from the eyes of customers backed by the insights you gathered.
You will get a clear idea of what will and won’t work during these times. You can then move to modify your strategies accordingly.
Get a Fresh Pair of Eyes for Feedback
These are sensitive times and one wrong move could lead to an avalanche of problems. So it’s best to ensure that whatever new marketing campaign you have in place would work as you intended and wouldn’t be misunderstood by customers.
Explain your marketing plans to a third person who is not related to your business but would be your ideal customer. Get their first-hand opinion on what they think about it. Refine your strategy accordingly before you implement it.
What Should Be Your Focus in Marketing Campaigns?
As you are creating your marketing plans, you should focus on a few ideas that will give you the best response in these uncertain times caused by CoronaVirus pandemic. At YellowFin Digital, we are working with various startups and small businesses, helping them adjust and revamp their marketing to the current scenario.
Through our practical experience in online marketing and from the research we have conducted in the past few weeks, we have gathered useful information on the best marketing strategies that will work during these times. Here are a few such ideas:
Creating New and Better Content Regularly
Sales of many businesses have been hit due to the fear of coming into contact with contaminated people or products. With stay-at-home orders in many countries, it has made it extremely difficult to make sales for any items other than those deemed essential. This is also translating to the website traffic.
In a recent blog by Neil Patel, he has charted the growth or decline in traffic according to various industries.
It’s clear that the essential industries like Food, Healthcare, Media, Pharma and Finance have seen an increase in the traffic while the non-essential sectors like Travel, Real Estate, Insurance and many others have seen a noticeable decline in just a week’s time.
- The measures you are taking to help your employees during the pandemic.
- The safety precautions you are implementing if your business involves physical products or direct interactions.
- Stories about the struggles and successes of your business and employees. Take this as an opportunity to open up more about your business.
- Facts about how you are trying to help the customers during this difficult time.
- Make a mix of various types of content and promote it regularly in your social media channels and through email marketing.
Engage with Customers
Take this as an opportunity to spend more time with your customers. Interact with customers online through social media comments, statuses and messages. Respond to customers who have posted reviews of your products. If you hadn’t done it earlier, use this time to revisit old reviews and leave good responses on it even when the reviews are not positive.
Conduct discussions with customers about themselves and what they expect from you and your business. You may get great insights for new business ideas or better ways to serve the customers.
Re-Evaluate and Republish the Old Content
All of the old content you created and didn’t get much exposure, well, it’s time to take another look at it. You can refurbish old content with new ideas and statistics and republish them. Add a few details to make it current and relevant for the audience. This will also give you a break from creating brand-new content.
Measure and Keep Modifying Your Marketing Plan
Last of all, when you are implementing a solid marketing plan, keep measuring the responses and modify your campaign accordingly. Analyze the statistics from individual sources like Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. It’s understandable that your budget can be a bit tight. So, having an eye on your analytics and modifying it regularly will ensure that the money is well spent.
Analyze how each of your marketing plans is adding to your revenue. Have a scale to measure the response from campaigns and keep tweaking the campaign to get a better response.
Right now when customers are being asked to stay at home due to COVID-19, you can use this opportunity to better connect with your customers. Even if you cannot increase your sales right now, you can create valuable connections that will help your business grow as we begin to get back to business as usual.
