Marketing In The Post-Covid Era

Many shifts in our day-to-day life have occurred this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bearing these shifts in mind, it is important for business owners, marketers and brand managers alike to sufficiently address these changes and come up with new innovative ways to problem-solve that can help them push forward during these unprecedented times.

The pandemic has left us with a lot of uncertainty. The impact has resulted in a very unpredictable economy that will most probably remain in the post-COVID-19 era. However, these unique challenges and obstacles provide business CEO’s and entrepreneurs with an opportunity to better their marketing strategies. Keep reading to view a checklist of things that can help you get one step ahead of the curve!

Brand vision and strategy that is informed by real-time insights.

Real-time marketing is about engaging with the customer whenever and wherever they are in their purchasing journey. Maximizing customer data by using analytics to better understand who your customers are (and what they want) can help you create better real-time customer experiences. These real-time customer insights can help you strengthen your brand marketing strategy post COVID-19.

Successful real-time marketing is being able to smartly narrow the likely options a customer will be offered based on what you already know about them or about customers like them.

60% of enterprise business leaders say customer analytics is extremely important today, jumping to 79% by 2020 with a key driver being personalization at scale. Enterprises successfully adopting customer analytics today are concentrating on the goal of providing personalization at scale by continually fine-tuning every aspect of the marketing mix for every customer audience or persona in real-time. The highest achieving enterprises have developed machine learning algorithms that learn when and how to offer upsell and product recommendations, adjust pricing based on demand, and competitive pricing strategies.

– Forbes, How To Improve Customer Experiences With Real-Time Analytics

Content that’s driven by analytics.

The value of data in the context of content marketing cannot be overstated. So how can marketers best incorporate data into their content strategies? Beyond just tracking the success of content efforts, data can help guide marketers through the creative process itself.

In other words, you must not only consider how data will help you determine whether and to what degree your content is connecting with its audience, but also how data can help guide your content creation process in its initial stages.

Why is this important for marketing in a post-covid world?

A data-driven approach to a content strategy can help brands avoid wasting resources on the wrong audiences. Data can help identify target audiences and their trending topics, channel-specific preferences of potential customers, and the influencers most relevant to those groups.

Personalized customer experience!

Customers today expect a highly personalized experience when they interact with a brand, through all of its channels. This applies to customer service as well, and that’s not likely to change. A report from Epsilon revealed that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when brands provide a personalized experience.

Customers, like everyone else, have been heavily impacted by the pandemic. Although customers understand that brands are also impacted, they still expect them to be empathetic to their needs and desires. That’s the gap your brand can fill with effective marketing in this post covid era.

One of the simplest ways to do this is with AI chatbots.

A 2020 MIT Technology Review survey of 1,004 business leaders indicated that customer service chatbots are the leading application of AI being used today. AI Chatbots are used today to enhance customer service. This is achieved by putting customer data in the hands of employees when they can make the biggest impact.

But there’s one thing businesses must remember before introducing AI chatbots to their website. Chatbots do not eliminate the need for human customer service agents. They must be balanced with the ability to understand when to refer a customer to a customer service agent when more complicated issues arise. Chatbots can provide personalized responses to basic inquiries, leaving customer service staff to tackle more serious inquiries.

Updated product pricing, with timely innovations.

One of the best ways a business can show its concern to its customers is through flexible pricing. To accomplish this, many companies have also resorted to more creative routes. For example, many online brands are lowering the cost to serve by reducing delivery speed or frequency, or by fulfilling orders through alternate channels.

Some have also taken the ‘temporary discounts’ route. For example, many companies reflexively slash list prices in a downturn. Flexing discounts while holding list prices constant is often better at stimulating demand.

Simplified Tip During an economic slowdown, companies should review their pricing policies more frequently and adjust them as conditions change. Without this extra attention and quick action, every step in a transaction can destroy profits.

The current crisis can also teach us a lot about our recent history. Many companies have a limited vision of what efficiency means. They primarily focus on short-term cost reductions at the micro-level. Little or no attention is given to the production factors used in their operational processes. To conclude, this era offers many opportunities for marketers to demonstrate their value for companies, which either are hurt by COVID-19 or are doing exceptionally well by implementing new marketing strategies that work to empathize with their customer’s challenges as well as effectively meet their needs during the pandemic.