What Your Digital Marketing Plan Should be like Until a Vaccine is Developed
The strong wave of COVID-19 has hit almost all the industries. After months of lockdown, the “unlock” and “begin again” situations resemble a silver lining to the dark clouds that we were covered with. Central and State governments are lifting the lockdown with various SOPs and guidelines. But easing the lockdown doesn’t mean businesses will take off immediately; it’s definitely going to take some time before things return to normal and companies begin to increase their bottom line. Being extra careful with the finances, the way we run businesses and altering our daily functions will all be a part of the #NewNormal scenario; at least until a vaccine is developed.
The good news, for now, is that businesses can restore their functions. So the main focus for entrepreneurs and business owners will be to resume operations by getting hold of the existing customers again and acquiring new clients. However, businesses will be cautious to reduce their marketing expenditure significantly. Therefore, reaching out to new markets with a limited marketing budget is a challenge, especially for those businesses that have been relying mainly on traditional forms of marketing. So until a solid solution is developed for the coronavirus, here are some ways to propel your business in the right direction.
Send Out Newsletters
Whether you are still working remotely or have just started working from your office space, sending newsletters to your business connections is a smart way to tell them about your brand. You can send out regular newsletters to your current clients, past clients, and the potential leads that were left in the pipeline. When your past clients and potential leads look at what the new services you have to offer and how you can help them, they may want to reach out to you. You can begin with a monthly newsletter. When creating a monthly newsletter, choose a theme based on the latest developments in the market. As a result, businesses may find your newsletter relatable to the current scenario that they are facing. You can provide tips, solutions, an overview of the current business environment, or the shift in your functions due to coronavirus. And no, your newsletters don’t have to be content-heavy! Use different content types to keep your employees engaged.
Use some infographics to compress the information you wish to put and a snippet of info with a link that directs them to an external, descriptive blog.
You can always take help from a digital marketing agency that will create content for you, add graphics to newsletters, use the right platform to publish them, and send out to the right list of recipients. An agency can be your one-stop solution instead of hiring multiple employees or freelancers to do the job.
Be Ready to Present
Depending on the type of business you run, you may already have a brochure or a presentation that highlights key aspects of your brand. Because of social distancing, your sales executives cannot visit your clients to handover the marketing material or present your slides. A lot of clients won’t be willing to meet with your business development executives until a solid cure is discovered for coronavirus. But that shouldn’t keep you from connecting with your prospects. Make the most of digital means to get in touch with your potential clients and be ready with resources to convert them into clients. By “resources,” we mean presentations. Therefore, you’ll have to create a new presentation that makes things easier to understand and pitch the same to your potential clients. The business development team can always get on an audio and/or video call for an e-meeting. But explaining things digitally is still different than meeting in person, which is why your presentation needs to reflect everything you wish to communicate.
Embrace Social Media
The dramatic change during the lockdown period can also be seen with social media usage. Since the first phase of the nation-wide lockdown, there has been a significant spike in the usage of social media and networking applications. According to one of the multinational studies by GlobalWebIndex, one in seven social media users (15%) say they expect to continue spending more time using social media. This is an outstanding situation to make the most of.
No matter who your target audience is, up your social media game with little to no investment. Brainstorm and come up with exemplary ideas that will bring you success.
Use creative methods of putting out important information – try infographics, GIFs, and slideshows.
Interact more with your audience to rebuild the connection that faded. Focus more on content that is current, that reflects your services, and that will be valuable to your readers.
If you wish to generate more leads without spending any money, then the easiest way is to join groups and communities and follow relevant hashtags related to your business. Look for groups where people may need the products or services you provide. For instance, some of our employees use their time to join various content writing and editing-related groups on Facebook. They also follow hashtags like #ContentRequired #ContentWriterNeeded. Whenever there’s a new requirement for content, we pitch them and take things ahead. You, too, can look for such communities, be alert, and respond to any queries and requirements. Don’t refrain from initiating a conversation!
Pre-book Your Customers
If you want to make sure your products are sold or your stores are occupied with buyers, you should start preparing early. If your brand’s functions aren’t in full force yet, use the time to attract customers already. Whether you are a salon, an amusement park, theatre, clothing store, or any kind of service provider or product seller, this trick will work amazingly for you.
Look at Imagica’s strategy.
This is a successful way to pre-book your customers. You can also send a voucher or give them an offer that they can use once you are open and ready to serve. Offer a discount to them so that they can avail it now but use it later. This way, you are ensuring sureshot purchases or footfall in your store.
Start an online gateway to get tokens or passes to your store if you own a departmental store, a multi-brand store, or even a salon. People can book their slots online or on social media channels and visit you as per their convenience. This will also help you to manage limited customers in your store. Try one of these plugins to make the task smooth and easy-to-manage.
If you sell products, you can consider starting your online store until people can visit your store like before. There are two ways to do so – either list your products on an e-commerce website or start a provision of online buying from your own website. So until a vaccine is ready and people can shop safely, they can buy from your online store and try your products. Don’t make people wait before they can visit and shop from you.
“Talk” to Your Audience
The online world is never too small to accommodate another channel of webinars or informative videos. If you have something informative to share with people, then don’t think who’s doing what. Share valuable insights through email and social media. Videos are a pretty cool option to provide thought leadership content. Get a plain background, use a decent audio and video recorder, pick a specific topic, research a bit, and start talking. This requires minimum investment but a bit more effort.
Once your video is ready, put it up on YouTube, your company’s and your personal social handles, and share it as much as you can. Try these helpful ways to promote your webinars and videos.
Don’t just stop at one video; keep creating regular videos to keep your audience glued. Doing so at equal intervals will position you as a thought leader, and your audience may want to know more about what you have to say. Encourage them to share their questions and views and try to answer those concerns in your following videos. This way, you will also build a trustful relationship with your audience.
You don’t always have to rely on webinars or videos where you are talking constantly. Make videos that have images and graphics with content running over them. Except that the script has to be well-written and editing needs to be on point. Again, you can hire a digital marketing agency to create amazing videos for you.
Modify Your Email Strategy
Understand that our new normal has changed, and what people perceive is also different in the current situation. Try to build your messaging around the need or role that your service or product can fulfill. This is about promoting your products and services subtly. Now let’s see how you can use emails for promotional purposes without writing a sales email.
Most of our daily schedules have been upended. We are missing our daily commutes, regular meetings, early morning coffee, and are learning to adapt to working from home. This means you cannot send your emails to potential clients at any point, unless you want them to go unread or land in Spam. Therefore, consider sending them between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm. For quick communication with your existing clients, send emails during the times shown in this image.
These schedules will have to be revisited once you return to your usual business routine.
You can tweak your email signatures with something informative or include something that you want to promote. For instance, we have this YouTube video of 6 COVID Strategies for Your Brand that we have embedded in every Spacebarian’s email signature.
Before this, we had a quick guide about COVID. All these things help us to promote our efforts and communicate our intent to everyone.
You, too, can do something like this which will allow you to – promote your content and educate your target audience.
Lastly, turn off automated emails like automated follow-up and automated responses for certain emails. Follow-ups and repeated promotional emails need to be more personalised. The same should be the response for every email you get so that people know a “person” is answering them. It’s easy to forget about those automated emails, which may not make sense during this time. Doing so may only disinterest your recipients and cost you money unnecessarily.
Start Capitalising on Digital Ads
DataReportal analysis indicates that 4.57 billion people now use the internet, an increase of more than 7% since this time last year. Right from checking which store is open to finding out delivery options in their zones, people have been turning to the internet. Not everybody is going out to shop currently for new clothes, footwear, bags, and other items. Those who are still under the lockdown will soon get on their shopping spree for the new trends, the new season, and their new size. Currently, they are looking for options online so that they can get their shopping list ready. You have to give them options so that they shop from you once you run your operations as before. Whether you sell your products online or not, you must promote the same with PPC ads to target people at the location you are functioning in. This is a cost-efficient marketing option as you will have to pay only when a person clicks on your digital ad. Make sure you use all the right factors so that interested people can see these ads.
Likewise, if you are a service provider, use digital ads to spread the word and promote sales. You can run digital ads starting from a small amount and effectively optimise your campaigns for better results. Consider hiring a digital marketing agency to run online ads for you if you do not know how to get started.
There’s a lot of scope for running your business, promoting your brand, and increasing sales with digital marketing. Even if you want to make small investments, digital marketing tactics will give you serious returns. All you have to do is decide what can work well for you and what is unnecessary at this point. Or you can always talk to a digital marketing agency that can tell you which tricks will give valuable benefits for your business specifically until a vaccine is developed and things go back to the “old normal.”