With the COVID-19 outbreak raging on, people are facing quarantines, travel bans, event cancellations, and many more restrictions on the way they live their lives. The outbreak has also seen a lot of uncertainty and misinformation that has negatively impacted the world.
Just like people, businesses also need to engage in proactive planning in order to adjust and adapt to this pandemic. Rapid changes have been made in the way companies interact with their employees &customers and manage their brand. Marketing departments have begun responding to the pandemic, and their response is being reflected in every ad campaign, message, and channel. Efficient marketing professionals are effectively setting the tone for how customers perceive their brand during this difficult time. It is important for companies to operate with integrity in these trying times by making the right decisions and propagating the right message.
The greatest challenge faced by marketing teams is knowing what the customer wants, needs, and expects. Marketing professionals constantly aim to influence the purchasing decisions of their target demographics. To do so effectively, they must develop a clear plan and message, monitor customers, and plan for challenges.
Marketing teams should not only focus on high-level corporate scenarios but also aim to further the image of their brand. Marketersmustidentify and address the specific challenges that customers deal with in difficult scenarios by offering solutions. By listening to customers, noting their sentiments, and designing customer-centric campaigns, marketing professionals can establish trust and enhance the image of their brand.
Social listening techniques can be used to effectively monitor customer discussions about the brand. Sales management teams can listen to social media chatter and analyze customer care emails, phone calls, and service chats to gauge customer sentiment accurately. Protecting customer relationships offers long-term growth, while short-term gain at the expense of customer trust often leads to failure. Marketing messages should reflect ground reality while staying true to the brand’s values. Effective messages may even account for closed factories and supply chains disrupted by this crisis.
Customer expectations around service levels, product launch dates, product availability, and other similar factors need to be managed effectively, current customer-facing policies need to be evaluated, and rational changes need to be considered in terms of cancellations or extension of payment terms, as needed. The volume of customer queries and traffic on customer service channels need to be looked into—email, social media, and the web may be useful for answering common questions and handling sensitive one-on-one interactions.
Digital apps, mobile-based tools and services, online transactions, and digital interactions can help solve common customer issues. Innovate ways to deliver products and services online are the need of the hour. The pandemic may have negatively impacted marketing processes, but organizations can still account for the best, worst, and moderate-case scenarios in order to take alternative actions.
This is an opportune time to develop alternative marketing ideas and relaunch informative and high-potential experiments that leverage digital media. The forced cancellation or postponement of large in-person events, such as tradeshows, has presented a significant challenge for traditional marketing executives. Digital marketing can help overcome the need for people to be present in-person. Many organizations were allocating their marketing budgets to digital outreach efforts—these businesses are likely to see production growth due to their digital presence, especially if they are quicker than their competitors.
RoI on digital marketing efforts could be calculated using factors such as unique monthly visitors, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and cost per lead. Online webinars, live or recorded video content, and written content can help bolster outreach efforts. If a company has been using digital marketing tactics for some time before the pandemic, this could be a great time for it to review and potentially refocus marketing and sales strategies in order to adapt to the current situation.
Digital marketing efforts are extremely important for businesses to overcome the marketing challenges presented by the COVID-19 epidemic. Any efforts towards optimizing digital strategy are bound to be productive, creating the potential for long-term growth.
