How To Embrace Digital Marketing After The Covid-19 Pandemic
No one could predict how the Coronavirus pandemic would shake the world of PR and Marketing, but it has become clear that the pandemic has accelerated the world’s transition towards a digital-first future. Whilst it is evident that our ways of working are changing, one thing remains certain: our habits will not revert back to the previous status quo.
Management consulting firm McKinsey & Company agree, claiming: “As businesses step into the post-coronavirus future, they need to find a balance between what worked before and what needs to happen to succeed in the next normal.”
Figure 1: WordStream Data from Cloudflare
Data from web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare suggests there is an upward trend in internet traffic across the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, notably from 18th March 2020 onwards. During this period, it became the norm in many countries for individuals to isolate themselves to stop the spread of coronavirus. Many individuals during their isolation period replaced their regular forms of in-person communication with digital alternatives as a result of necessity, which could explain this rise in online website traffic.
With more people having an online presence than ever before, we need to adopt new practices to grow and nurture our relationships. We need to do this quickly and efficiently as the new digital world waits for no one!
So, how can we do this?
- Valuable content can position your brand as an authority within an industry. Absolute know’s that the quality of content can make a huge difference towards how it’s perceived by an audience. So, it’s important to ask the following questions:
a.) Is the tone of voice for the article written and targeted towards the correct audience?
b.) Has someone with authority provided facts and statistics?
c.) Who is the main target demographic and how will they react to this piece of content?
d.) Can the audience respond and engage with this content, thereby encouraging two-way communication and nurturing relationships?
- Interacting with your audience and engaging them in conversations through private messages, Twitter, Facebook, or even Linkedin, can all have positive impacts that resonate with your audience and can create a memorable and lasting impression of your brand.
- Encouraging and publishing user-generated content can help brands foster a tight-knit community. By posting user-generated content, businesses honour their customers by putting them front and center. User-generated content also validates your company, encouraging other customers to purchase your products.
Adopting these practices in your content marketing strategy can have a positive effect on your business.
With the move to a more digital and connected world, it’s clear that the pandemic has significantly altered individuals’ habits. As a result of this, it may be more effective from a monetary perspective to shift towards more digital forms of social media advertising. These include but are not limited to platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter.
Using conventional adverts such as billboards and radio advertisements may provide a lower return on investment as a result of workers shifting their attention online compared to before the pandemic, when a majority of people regularly commuted.
As a result, brands will need to constantly review and reprioritise their strategies reflecting ever-changing trends and reaching target audiences differently and dynamically beyond 2021.
McKinsey & Company has reported similar findings noting that “Consumers vaulted five years in the adoption of digital in just eight weeks” as a result of the pandemic. McKinsey & Company predict that the shift to digital will continue to stick as modern technological alternatives such as “e-commerce is often more efficient, less expensive, and safer for customers than shopping in physical stores.”
Figure 2: The Reimagined Marketing Playbook.
McKinsey & Company also suggested that marketers need to allow their decisions to be informed by real-time insights, driven by data and creatively crafted content, through a collection of media, customer experience, and personalisation from product and pricing. The customer experience is incredibly important and personalisation through multiple touchpoints of a customer’s journey towards buying your product remains more challenging to do correctly than ever before.
McKinsey & Company has suggested that refocusing your marketing efforts, into the digital realm has created an opportunity that some companies are struggling to utilise effectively. Sound familiar?
If your company is struggling to create digital-first content, Absolute PR & Marketing has you covered. With decades of experience creating purpose-driven stand-out content across multimedia platforms, we are helping our clients to adapt to a post-pandemic world. Now more than ever, a digital marketing focus has become an incredible asset for any business to utilise. If you would like to learn more or find out how we can help you, please call our team on 01392 680 740 or email info@absoluteprandmarketing.com to find out more.
Sources:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/10/27/post-pandemic-marketing-strategies
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/traffic-levels-lower-than-before-post-pandemic-duncan-stewart
https://deloitte.wsj.com/articles/creating-a-future-of-work-that-supports-employees-01626289209
https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/consulting/articles/state-of-the-worker-remote-working.html
https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/risk/articles/digital-risk-trends-retail.html