Digital marketing tips for the post pandemic era

This guide outlines the best digital marketing tips for the new era of remote communications and transactions.

Broadway theaters in New York are scheduled to resume performances in September 2021 – 18 months after closing in the first days of the pandemic. It’s one of the clearest signs that a “new normal” is on the horizon. Indeed, with nearly 110 million Americans fully vaccinated as of May 2021, other pandemic-era restrictions are beginning to ease in public spaces such as bars, restaurants, gyms and stadiums across the country. With this return, it is possible to draw some lessons that should help companies to be willing to sell more, in a post-pandemic moment that should soon arrive here. Here are some digital marketing tips for investing in the future.

The pre-pandemic normality of Covid-19 around the world has already been ruled out by several specialists, who are still analyzing how the production and consumption market should be impacted by the disease outbreak. The “New Normal” made changes for the future come faster than imagined and imposed “adapt or disappear” style challenges for companies. But good digital marketing strategies are available to tread the paths between economic crisis, confinement and budget reduction. And it is possible to plan an exit.

With the crisis, which would take years to be implemented and consolidated in companies, came in an imposing way, without major reflections on what is the best digital format for your reality. This proves that now is the time to take a closer look at your upcoming digital moves. Follow the digital marketing tips and keep an eye on the insights.

The pandemic (and, more precisely, the quarantine) only highlighted what professionals in the field have been pointing out for over 15 years: being digital is no longer an option. It’s a necessity. However, with the crisis, which would take years to be implemented and consolidated in companies, came in an imposing manner, without major reflections on what is the best digital format for your reality.

After all, more than 60% of the population has access to the internet and most were at home, with consumption habits also changing due to the scenario. Just to give you an idea, according to data from Kantar, there was a 39% increase in delivery, which indicates that people have not stopped consuming (especially in the case of food and hygiene products), they have only changed the way they do it.

So, if on the one hand, the crisis highlighted the need for digital transformation of brands, on the other hand, it meant that those who were not yet experiencing digital processes had to adapt overnight for the sake of survival. And this can lead to less assertive choices, as each type of business has a specific digital demand. In practice, therefore, we will have a market investing in digital in different sectors, but that will not necessarily imply companies really prepared to understand how digital works.

Managing a business when everyone is still keen on self-isolating is a new challenge that your business career never prepared you for. Your activities need to be entirely focused online to reach out to your audience. However, you need to do a lot more than establishing brand visibility. Getting noticed when every business is embracing digital marketing and services requires strategic thinking.

Staying alive with relevant content, engaging with the customers that make up your community and monitoring social media are among the digital marketing tips from the experts.

Digital marketing tips for the new era

If you are still in the process of sorting out your online quarantined business, here’s the first of the digital marketing tips to help you: Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Indeed, digital competition is higher than it’s ever been. Therefore, if you’re going to get noticed, put your customers’ needs first. Answering their lockdown questions and offering help and a supportive community need to become your priorities. Adapting to the situation is all about understanding how lockdown changes people’s requirements and expectations.

Tap into your ‘community’

One of the crucial digital marketing tips is to listen to your community. See what users are saying about your brand, market and competitors. This greatly decreases the chances of making a faux pas or missing the timing of an interesting action. Another tip is to act instead of react. Digital marketing actions in this period must consider the communities related to the brand, in order to support consumers and improve their experiences during the period; production of relevant content, to remain in the users’ minds; and approaching influencers who can positively contribute to awareness. Finally, digital media monitoring can help the brand gain relevant insights and follow user conversations about issues related to products, services and trends.

Tackle their most urgent searches

Self-isolation has affected Google searches. Typical users are now looking for services and products that can be used during the lockdown. As such, you will need to create dedicated landing pages to target new search terms, which can include ‘food delivery’, ‘beauty expert on call’, or even ‘social distancing fitness trainer’. Many businesses find it helpful to reach out to a professional PPC Agency to ensure that their lockdown-friendly services receive optimized visibility. Google Trends can highlight new keyword phrases, or you can ask your social media followers.

While PPC is a great strategy that can help with immediate results, brands should also look to power their organic SEO capabilities. According to experts at Igloo digital marketing agency, the lockdown is throwing up new and interesting search trends and patterns from consumers. Understanding why this is so and then using the same to inform your digital strategy can help you master your optimizations. This can hold good even after the lockdown has ended as digital behavior is more often than not irreversible in nature. While paid is a good option, brands should not forget about organically performing through SEO as well.

Share your story

Social media gives you a voice to engage with your audience and let them know how you handle the lockdown. As an entrepreneur looking for digital marketing tips, it’s the platform you need to support your quarantined presence. Your customers want to know that you’re staying safe and doing everything you can to reduce risks. More importantly, they also need guidance regarding new lockdown-friendly processes. You can share your business story and mojo on Instagram, for instance, making sure you answer questions and create engaging Instagram Stories. A weekly story to share your situation and progress is a reminder to your followers that your business is still open.

The first point of the digital marketing tips for social media is to understand that digital presence is not about being in all social media. It’s understanding which ones are most relevant to your brand and your audience. Thus, the ideal is for the company to map the possibilities and see which media are the most strategic.

For example, if you’re in the clothing and food industry, two interesting media are Instagram and Pinterest. Although the former is more popular, the latter is a valuable source of organic traffic, which can help you boost your business on an e-commerce or website. Another tip is to know your limit. Generally, we end up getting excited about new media and create accounts, not thinking about whether we will have the content and staff to handle so many profiles. Therefore, it is better to have a few profiles, but with relevant content, posted regularly and frequently,

Embrace video tutorials

When people can’t call your customer services or pop to the shop to sort out issues, they turn to the digital sphere. Therefore, one of the msot effective digital marketing tips is that providing educational material on your services and products online can be a game-changer. Instructional videos, especially, can address burning queries and provide solutions to common issues. Whether you opt for training videos on how to maximize your products or tutorial instructions explaining how to troubleshoot a particular problem, your video channel will bridge the gap between your brand and your customers.

Online challenges and games with your audience

Let’s be honest when evaluating the potential of digital marketing tips. People are looking for engaging and mood-boosting activities. As the division between work and everyday life has temporarily disappeared, now’s the best time to supercharge your feeds with social activities. Why not launch a selfie contest, asking your followers to share a selfie of them using your product, for instance? You could set fun home tasks for your followers. The idea is to let people engage with each other and create a supportive platform during self-isolation.

Which formats should you use?

Having an e-commerce or even a marketplace on social networks, as well as direct selling tools, are ideal to keep your business running right now. However, these aren’t the only digital marketing tips that work regarding formats. A good content strategy, bringing relevant information to your consumers not only about your products and services, but also about issues about society, charitable actions and engagement with your community are strategies that maintain awareness and are effective.

Internationally, the food brand Chipotle (they distributed food for free and had the support of celebrities in the United States), Burger King (in Italy, the brand closed its stores and distributed its hamburgers to NGOs) and Tmall (the Chinese company successfully brought all its events to digital) stand our for engagement. Brands must remember as one of the crucial digital marketing tips that this is the time to sow actions that will echo what has been called the “New normal”. Consumers will remember the brands that used digital only for sales and not for more humane actions.

There is no data to prove that companies have invested more in digital marketing. However, the perception is that they started to invest more in digital marketing tips and strategies, which consist of branding actions (with an emphasis on positioning) and digital presence, establishing new channels for the brand or rethinking its content.

Overall, the market realized that a unique sales-based digital marketing approach could generate a negative impression for consumers. Thus, they balanced their actions on points that could help to get through this moment of crisis in the best way possible. A point that many professionals in the field noticed is that the demand for monitoring social media has grown a lot at this time. During a crisis, knowing what users say about your brand, competitors and the market is fundamental for choosing an assertive strategy. Therefore, many companies resorted to actions like this to identify bottlenecks and possibilities in the midst of the pandemic.

Conclusion

Digital marketing during the post-pandemic era needs to offer comfort and guidance to your audience. When people are staying at home, they need to know that your business can answer their queries, take preventive measures to reduce contagion risks, and offer support. Your lockdown marketing strategy has to consider both professional and emotional needs.