In difficult times, a company might find its marketing strategies useless and irrelevant. The pandemic has shown the weaknesses of these marketing strategies, but it has also revealed new ways that businesses and industries could win. Many companies realized that they had largely ignored the potential of digital marketing, and now many are exploring strategies that would help them survive this global crisis.
The internet has made marketing easier, but that does not mean it’s been easy to make customers and clients out of leads. The average customer is bombarded by thousands of messages and ads every day, and the chance that they would choose any brand is slim.
Many companies in cities like New York, London, and even Perth are now using different methods to stay competitive, and many of these strategies focus on data management, customer engagement, and even marketing consultants that could re-brand your product or services.
Create a Presence
Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti had always wanted to create a media business that was similar to Paramount Pictures and Ted Turner’s CNN. In 2014 Peretti realized Buzzfeed should not compete with other websites or social media sites. Instead, he used these sites to post Buzzfeed’s original content, which enabled the website to create a presence that spanned different platforms, social channels, and even countries. Buzzfeed also used this presence to tailor its content to suit different countries and territories, creating content tailored to suit their audience. Now Buzzfeed has a global audience of more than 650 million, and their content is visible across every platform.
Pivot Your Strategy or the Business
A business could use an old marketing strategy and get results for a few years, but sometimes it needs to make a fundamental shift in its business approach to stay relevant.
One example is the video industry and Netflix. As technology changed the medium for videos, rental video companies started to lose business. Netflix was a DVD-by-mail rental company, but as soon as the Internet and technology proved to be a viable medium, they took the chance to pivot their business strategy. Netflix offered a streaming service that allowed viewers to watch their favorite films and TV shows for a minimal monthly fee. Now ‘Netflix and chill’ is a phrase that has become all the more relevant in this global crisis.
Explore E-commerce
Nothing has grown more significantly in recent months than E-commerce. As many countries are in lockdown and people are staying at home, online sales rose to 30 percent in eight weeks, a significant increase when you consider that the growth from 2009 to 2019 was only 10 percent.
Brands that offered online shopping saw exponential sales growth in the past weeks. And it was not only for their share of the local market; many brands that had a global reach saw growth in their e-commerce sales. For example, eShopWorld saw orders from countries such as Australia, France, and Israel in April, showing 92 to 178 percent growth in orders.
Businesses can survive the current crisis, but only if they are willing to explore different strategies, technologies, recognize the need to change and do it.