The world is going through a tough time; with the coronavirus spreading faster than ever before. With infecting more than 280,000 people over 172 countries, it has been a major pandemic that is shifting the world’s balance out of order.
While this has disrupted the daily lives of billions of people worldwide, it has also uprooted the very concepts of society that we’ve established. During the times ongoing turmoil, everyone has to rethink how they live their lives and how they go about their work.
For marketers, this is a time of disaster. With sales falling for most products (except medicines, groceries, and necessities), marketers have to think about new ways to encourage the buying behavior of people without exploiting the situation.
This means that we need to think about new channels for marketing, along with innovations all across the customer acquisition journey. The traditional ways of marketing aren’t going to meet the results we want, and with the given situation of business, sales are plummeting for most major brands.
How does the Digital Marketing Landscape look?
With people more panicking over the pandemic looming over us, it’s obvious that the digital marketing landscape for most brands will look poor. It’s certainly the case for most brands over multiple industries.
This is a graph that shows the traffic growth decline due to Covid-19 for major industries. We can clearly see that the traffic growth for businesses dealing with daily necessities has increased quite a lot. This includes industries such as finance, food, healthcare and most importantly, the media. Other than these, all the rest industries took a major hit, with the majority losing around 20% or more traffic altogether.
The weakening digital marketing landscape can also be proven from the conversion rates growth of brands across different industries.
The declining conversion rates for most industries mean that consumers are not interested in the products or services that the brands have to offer as they’re more concerned about preventing the coronavirus spreading.
What Should Marketers Do?
Given the situation of the pandemic, it’s best to wait until the cloud clears off. However, with the ongoing pressure of keeping the business afloat, marketers have already started trying to find new ways of reaching the panicked consumers without making the situation worse.
Given the situation of the world market and possibility of a great recession, it’s very important for marketers to encourage people to spend.
Well, many people might argue that dealing with coronavirus is more important than replenishing the economy. However, if the economy is hit, most of the people will be hit pretty badly. This will slow down the pace at which we’re trying to prevent the coronavirus (or any type of pandemic) from spreading.
By encouraging people spending along with government spending, we can leverage the theory of fiscal multiplier to overcome the looming recession. The theory states that if one dollar is spent into the economy, the dollar turns into a profit of 10 dollars. This rotates in a circle and the multiplier is affects more people as more money is pumped into the economy.
To encourage people to spend, marketers must play a critical role here. We must make people believe that this situation will soon pass over and that our consumers gain confidence over the market.
Tracking Consumer Behavior
With the pandemic still going on, it’s very hard to identify and strategize digital marketing for brands. During this time, we can assess the current situation and gain insights into the consumer behavior to enhance the sales funnel.
Finding it difficult to track your consumer behavior? Well, there are a few things that you can consider:
- People are being forced to stay in self-quarantine: This means that they have a lot of time to spare, and most of your consumers are lurking online either scrolling through social media or surfing the web.
- Home office has become the norm: The race to stabilize the economy has led to people working from home. This indicates that an increasing number of people will be online and working from home.
- Socializiing is limited to social media only: As we must detach ourselves from our social lives, our social lives are limited to our social media platforms. People will be spending much more time trying to recoup their social time, mainly into the major social media platforms.
- Stocking is widespread: To avoid human contact during times of self-quarantine, people have been stocking their supplies to last a month or two. The immediate effect of this has led to shortage of supply and unstable markets.
Marketing Channels To Use
During times of crisis, it’s best to experiment with channels that have a potential of reaching to your desired consumers. From the consumer behaviour perspective, your best bet is surely leveraging the social media platforms.
Let’s now talk about the marketing channels you can use to reach out to your consumers effectively.
Social Media
Discussed earlier, social media platforms are the proven ways of generating sales (if any) for your brands. This pairs up with fewer competitors than usual – 40% of less ads revenue on social media for all major industries. Most companies are speculating; this is the best time you can invest into the platforms. And, most importantly, you can get a worldwide reach with better results if you can target your audience properly – mainly because people will be spending more time on these platforms.
Blogs
With more time to spare, people are trying to bring a bit of productivity into their lives. This is why the time spent on blogs and news sites have increased significantly. This means that you can leverage the power of blogs to connect with your consumers. Through blogs, you can explain why your consumers need what you have to offer. A lot can be done, effective use is critically important.
Video Streaming Platforms
Home quarantine has led to an increase in demand for entertainment, especially video content. This has sparked a rise in the usage of YouTube and other major video streaming platforms. Marketers can easily leverage the consumer behavior of video consumption during this time (mainly entertainment and news), and target ads to reach their target audience.
Influencer Marketing
While most influencers are now baffled by the recent coronovirus situation and most brands backing off from influencer marketing for the time being, it’s most certain that all’s not over yet. From a recent survey conducted by IZEA Insights, it’s said that 86% of social media consumers recommend Influencer Marketing as a means of product advertising during crisis. It’s most certain that this sector will provide a good ROI for product promotion for most industries.
Ending Thoughts
The coronavirus is still a looming threat to civilization, and while we’re trying to stop this virus from spreading, we must help rebuild the economy to get things back to normal. As Digital Marketers, we have a big responsibility of creating the consumer need once again. This is why we must use effective marketing and ensure that consumers are regaining confidence in the economy.
Clearly, having a healthy economy will help us contain the virus from spreading. This is why it’s crucial to leverage digital marketing to reach to as many people as possible. By spreading a positive message, it’s possible to initiate strong digital marketing campaigns.
This is why Digital Marketing Agencies should identify the current circumstances and design digital marketing campaigns that convert. Consequently, if you’re thinking to create a killer digital marketing strategy for your business, you can contact our marketing experts and we can go over the custom digital marketing plan for your brand!
