The times have changed. Governments around the world are taking stringent measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), and people’s lives have been profoundly disrupted.
Every day, people discover new social restrictions when they wake up to flatten the coronavirus contamination curve. Courts and public gatherings have been suspended. The international borders are closed, and airlines are no longer operating. Major sporting events are postponed. Deliveries or take-out meals have substituted dinners in the restaurant. Evolution is dazzling.
As physical movement and social interaction will remain limited in the short term, omnichannel marketing loses one of its assets: exchanges in real life (IRL). And the marketing industry is already feeling the repercussions on several levels.
While no one can yet predict what post-pandemic reality will look like for marketers, one thing is certain. In an environment where physical interactions are limited for an extended period, digital channels are more influential than ever.
From what has been observed in countries severely affected by the pandemic, online channels will play an increasingly crucial role when the majority of the population is confined to their homes. In Italy, where the terrifying number of cases resulted in complete lockdown, Internet traffic has exploded. During the first stages of intervention, traffic to the Internet increased by 8 to 20% in Italy. As soon as the government quarantined the whole country in mid-March, it jumped 30% from the usual figures.
This is where marketers can make a difference. Marketing technologies will be vital when providing consumers with the type of personalized, relevant and current information they are looking for on the web.
At the moment, brands and companies are hurrying to modify their marketing tactics in order to achieve their business purposes in this strange environment. Kingsmen Agency, therefore, offers marketers five digital marketing strategies to readjust during the coronavirus pandemic and to implement without delay.
Redefine Your Business Goals
The destabilization of the marketing landscape must lead to a complete re-evaluation of the marketing strategy and commercial objectives in general. Marketers can take advantage of the time people are spending at their homes to think about the wellbeing of their brand- especially in the context of the lockdown due to COVID-19 – and define a new range of messages.
Reserve Your Outgoing Messages for Essential Communications
Before sending an email linked to the coronavirus to your entire mailing list, remember that you are communicating in an environment currently flooded with messages and that an avalanche of decisive news arrives in the form of articles press, email, and text messages sent simultaneously. Consumers are drowning in words from their employers, doctors, mayors, governors and principals of their children’s schools. They must also install new applications to be able to work and study at home. Therefore, make sure you get your message across and use segmentation wisely during this time, so as not to make your clientele fed-up.
Use Omni channel to Your Advantage
Redefining your business goals will also help you identify the strengths of your brand’s Omni channel offering. All brands with physical outlets are forced to redirect visitors to their online stores due to the government-imposed lockdown. And even before these massive closures, traffic in American shopping centers was already declining because 40% of consumers shunned them. Marketers, therefore, had a little time to respond.
Test Your Inbound Marketing For COVID-19
While keeping in mind the expected increase in traffic on the web, are you ready to welcome a crowd of consumers who are actively looking for your business? Or who land indirectly on one of your pages thanks to the magic of SEO and sponsored links? Get rid of uncertainties by testing all of your inbound marketing – websites, chatbots, resources, videos, educational materials, brochures, etc. – for a wide range of analysis pathways.
Analyze and Monitor Everything
These days, shaken by COVID-19, new research patterns and trends will appear almost every day. This is why analyzing and reporting data is more essential than ever. Finding out what pages your consumers are viewing and what type of research they are doing will help you refine your marketing message and deliver relevant content that will do the magic.
Today, we have tools that allow us to know what consumers need at the moment, and to respond to them in a coherent way on an unprecedented scale. This is a significant advantage because buyers distance themselves physically, but remain in digital contact, sometimes even more now than formerly. Get your digital marketing strategies aligned with today’s needs and contact the Kingsmen Agency for professional support.