It would be untrue to say the digital marketing landscape hasn't faced the impact of COVID-19 – no industry has been spared. While brands & companies struggle to streamline operations and deal with the impact on sales, campaigns are discontinued and online ad platforms face delays in go-live times due to reduced manpower. In the end, all businesses are powered by people and must take a step back, put people first and focus on coming out of this intact.
So while you’re not alone in putting your previously-planned digital marketing strategy on hiatus, there are small steps you can take to keep your brand recall and relevancy.
In the spirit of coming out of this intact, we’re sharing 5 small ways you can keep your brand going online (organically!) while you focus on the business repercussions of COVID-19.
- 1. Publish content-
Take this chance to create & publish a bulk of content, something we find so difficult to make time for in our day-to-day course of work. Work on blog posts, infographics, emails that will add value to your customers/clients, and keep updating it all on your social media profiles.
- 2. Get in the spirit of goodwill and offer promotions-
If your products/services can help people stay entertained/healthy/occupied/sane during this time of social distancing, offer a discount or some sort of promotion. Digital media is an easy way to communicate it and people will appreciate it long term.
- 3. Bring the people of your brand front and centre-
This is a time when empathy and relatability needs to be at its highest, when your audience and customers don’t want to hear from your company but wouldn’t mind hearing from you. Videos from leaders and employees work great, and if relevant to your brand, Facebook Live and Instagram Live make for great platforms.
- 4. Try to harness User Generated Content (UGC) –
Social media usage is sky high at the moment, and having users generate content relevant to your field is something that can create a distraction in times of isolation while keeping the brand conversation going. Suggestions: Contests, polls, video snippets around a common theme (that you can stitch together & publish), question & answer series, etc.
- 5. Stay reachable and helpful –
Respond promptly to users who reach out to you on social media and if you sell products of any kind, publish guides and answers to frequently asked questions to ensure customers can continue to use your products without a hitch (and without feeling like they have no one to reach out to if they can’t).
front & centre
Content (UGC)
Also don’t forget to re-evaluate any campaigns you may have had lined up, to ensure they’re still politically correct in this environment. Conversations, content and empathy are your friends at this time – it’s more important now than ever that you put people first, and we all focus on how we’ll pull out of this together.