The covid19 pandemic has had an impact on so many things. From our daily lives to the lives of businesses. In this article we’re going to focus on the latter, the lives of businesses and specifically, how marketing has been affected.
Internet advertising
During lockdown, we were all desperate for any sort of entertainment. Therefore, the one thing we could use to meet our needs was the internet and thus the internet usage reached an all time high. Since then it has become more and more important to be able to properly advertise to your target audience using the internet as that’s where they are spending their time.
In the UK, internet usage went up by 78% since the beginning of the pandemic – so this is by far the best time to embrace digital marketing. Not only is it super effective as most of your audience will be on the internet, it is also very easy to reach your target audience thanks to how simple digital marketing is.
Thanks to modern online advertising, it is now easier than ever to reach your target audience using digital marketing. You are able to create your ad in minutes thanks to products such as Canva, or if you are unsure you can reach out to a marketing company. Once that’s done you can use social media to target your audience specifically instead of showing your ad to everyone through ad targeting.
Not only that, but if someone then engages with your advert or visits your website, remarketing allows you to continue placing adverts on their screens for many months after, great for those longer converting products & services.
SEO
While Google was always a major tool for the discovery of new products and services, the closure of the highstreets and less word-of-mouth through socialising has meant it holds even more of a monopoly in the buyer discovery and decision making journey. With the use of the internet increasing, many new businesses have also caught on to this digital trend. This means that now it’s more important than ever to be able to stand out from the competition and having good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key.
SEO is a method used to put your business at the top of search engine results. So what you want is for your business to be the first to come up when a potential customer searches for the product/service you provide. This is one of the most important factors of online marketing as it helps your business stand above the competition which is now even more important as businesses are all moving online.
Social media
More internet usage also means more social media usage. So now it’s time to use this to your advantage. It is so much easier now to relate to and reach your target audience. Have a look on social media to see where your target audience is and what they are doing and then utilize this info to make the best possible social media marketing campaign.
Customer expectations
Before the pandemic, customers would often just pop down to a shop and hope that whatever they were looking for was going to be in stock. Now however, times have changed. With so many businesses out there and online. Customer expectations have also gone up. If you do not have what they are looking for, they will simply move on to another business who does.
With businesses such as Amazon out there, delivery and return expectations have increased. Prime lets you just order an item and it will appear on your doorstep on the next if not the same day. Same with returns, it is very easy to return an item on Amazon as you just print a return label and ship it back. This has now become the standard and therefore if customers see that it would take a whole week for shipping or that there are no refunds, they will just move on.
Many more factors are also at play here. Such as your customer service and website friendliness. Do you have 24 hours support? Well Amazon does so you must find a way to compensate you do not with your website friendliness and other aspects of customer service.
Customer loyalty
Customer loyalty has now become very important and more difficult to maintain. With the market becoming more saturated customers have a lot more room to compare between businesses and therefore it is a lot harder for businesses to keep them loyal. So if they see that another business is offering the same product/service you are but at a better price, they are going to leave for the option which seems better for them.
Counteract this by working hard on your existing customer brand awareness. Don’t just sell to them once and forget about them – they are now your customer. Reach out, engage, remind them of the amazing service or product that you provided for them so that, next time they need more, or something similar, you’re at the forefront of their mind.
Shopping locally
Due to the pandemic, with travelling any real distance being temporarily outlawed, many consumers turned to shopping locally rather than going to larger shopping centres and business parks, and this seems to be a trend that will continue way beyond the unlocking. Shopping local seems safer for them to do so as they are not exposing themselves to as big of a risk as if they were to go to a more populated shopping centre. It is also becoming more of a trend to support small businesses and shops in 2021 as it quickly became clear that these important parts of any retail ecosystem were rapidly becoming endangered by the pandemic.
The pandemic has had a huge impact on the field of marketing. From moving more and more toward online digital marketing to it having an effect of customer loyalty and expectation and also increasing local business sales. It is now more important than ever to get that perfect marketing campaign. If that is what you would like, feel free to reach out and contact us.