How Smart Companies Are Marketing Through COVID-19 & Beyond
The COVID pandemic has changed the marketing industry in unprecedented ways. Trade shows and in-person events were canceled indefinitely, budget cuts and layoffs permeated virtually every industry, and businesses had to quickly adapt their marketing strategies and tactics to stay relevant and competitive in a completely virtual and digital world.
Now, as we begin to emerge from the pandemic, here are the key trends that are here to stay. Make them a part of your marketing blueprint to successfully engage and convert your customers in the COVID era and beyond.
- Personalization: During rough times like a global pandemic, sensitivities are heightened. Your customers expect you to not only understand their needs, but to anticipate them. It is essential for companies to intimately understand their buyer’s needs and respond with the right messages and solutions that meet those needs. In a survey of marketing professionals conducted by Evergage, 61% said that personalization led to a better customer experience. Further, according to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences.
- Social and thought leadership over product content: According to a joint LinkedIn/Vision Critical Study of 450 marketing professionals about how COVID is impacting marketing strategies and budgets, more than half of respondents say they’re increasing focus on social (55%) and thought leadership (53%) in their content marketing strategies, while product-focused content has seen the largest decline (19%).
- Webinars: According to that same LinkedIn/Vision Critical Study, 67% of marketers say they are increasing their focus on webinars. Conversely, 80% have decreased their focus on events and experiential marketing. Webinars are ideal for showcasing thought leadership and increasing brand visibility in an interactive format, and the content can be repurposed in free YouTube commercials and gated full versions of the recordings hosted at your site to capture more targeted leads into the future.
- Marketing automation: Frost & Sullivan predicts that the marketing automation solutions (MAS such as HubSpot, Pardot, and MailChimp to name but a few) market will grow by 50% over the next five years. Marketing automation platforms enable marketing departments to scale their campaigns across multiple channels and target buyer personas with personalized content. Using a MAS is linked to a 14% increase in sales productivity and 12% drop in marketing overhead costs (Invesp).
- Video: As the world adapted to a 100% virtual world, video became the marketing payload of choice for marketers, businesses, and consumers to stay connected in lieu of in-person interactions. In fact, Cisco estimates that by 2022, 82% of all created content will be video. Mobile devices and social video platforms like TikTok and YouTube, have made creating and sharing videos a ubiquitous and must-have part of the marketing mix.
The pandemic has undoubtedly created extraordinary challenges and changes for businesses and marketers alike. Companies that can embrace them as opportunities that will survive and thrive as we navigate a new, post-pandemic world.
Need to adapt your marketing strategy for this new era? ResultRocket’s team of experts are ready to help!
