When the pandemic hit just over a year ago, businesses quickly adapted to their surroundings. Restaurants suddenly transformed their sit down dining into takeaway food, and many retailers switched to home delivery or curbside pick-up — we realised how agile business could really be.
So as vaccines are rolled out, and the economy restarts, how can your business adapt to marketing for a new normal?
Don’t just sell; listen too
Consumer behaviour changes, particularly once we all return to our daily routines. That’s why it’s essential to understand what your customers are thinking and feeling so you can proactively edit your marketing strategies.
Using social listening tools such as Hootsuite, Brandwatch or Buffer, can help you understand what your audience wants. Set up keyword-specific streams and monitor brand mentions so you can reactively respond to any comment about your brand.
Social listening tools should be used in conjunction with your offline marketing campaigns. For example, if you have a leaflet distribution campaign, you’ll want to monitor brand mentions across social media. Social media can help you understand the impact your offline marketing campaigns have on your audience — if you don’t measure audience engagement across all channels, you won’t know what to change for next time.
Focus on value
According to McKinsey, there’s been a shift to value and essentials over lockdown; McKinsey stated, “given consumers’ price sensitivity, value remains the primary reason for consumers to try new brands as well as new places to shop.” Consumers are still focused on value for money, so don’t forget that when you’re crafting a marketing campaign for maximum impact.
At the moment, consumers aren’t focused on frivolous purchases; show them how your business can add real value to their lives in this new normal.
But it’s not just about the value your product brings; think about the value you can add to your audiences’ lives. According to Digital Pulse, “overall, emotionally connected consumers are 52% more valuable to a brand than those who are just satisfied.” So you need to connect with your consumers on a personal level; you can do this by initiating conversations around mutual passions and values.
Don’t discount the power of offline marketing
Everyone switched to digital marketing when the pandemic hit, which makes sense; everyone was inside and online. But now we’re coming back out into the open, some of us will return to city-centre office blocks, the world will start shopping on the high street once again, and you can be there to welcome them with an impactful street flyer distribution campaign.
Offline marketing can be incredibly powerful, even in a post-pandemic world. Eataly, an Italian food marketplace, wanted a campaign that generated in-store custom in December 2020 to capitalise on the Christmas trade at their Paris location. Their leaflet distribution campaign achieved a conversion rate of 30% — their campaign had to be reactively amended because they converted too much passing trade; that’s a pretty good problem to have!
Here’s what the Operational Marketing Manager at Eataly Paris had to say about the campaign:
“Oppizi’s technology offers a new dimension to offline marketing as everything is managed online via an application and a platform. Flyering can therefore be up to date in a world where digital is taking more and more space.”
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