COVID-19, popularly known as Coronavirus, has caused a global shift across the business environment. As the world is focused on its fight against COVID-19, business owners are facing new challenges. Under such conditions, PR & Marketing professionals are required to formulate new strategies for sustaining their businesses.
Following are some digital marketing strategies that can help business owners in Mississauga, Brampton and other Lower Mainland areas in BC during the time of ‘social-distancing’:
People Have Time To Listen: It is true that people are following practices like working from home, staying at home, social distancing, etc. But it also creates an opportunity for marketing professionals because people now have time to listen. A good strategy is to create good content to convey your marketing message in an entertaining way.
Evaluate The Graphics: Pay attention to the imagery used in your advertizements or social media posts. Remove the images of crowds or people touching each other. These may be images of social gatherings, people working at offices, etc. If you are unsure of any image, consider swapping it with an appropriate one. You can retain your permanent brand elements such as brand logo. In case your logo includes a crowd of people, you may skip using it in your campaigns for sometime.
Don’t Capitalize On The Crisis: It is imperative for business owners to seek an opportunity to earn profit, but it is advised to refrain from capitalizing on the crisis. It may put your brand in bad light. While designing your posts or strategy, pay attention to following points:
- Create posts and communication material (emails, messages, etc.) to keep people informed about precautionary measures you are taking, store closures, policy updates, etc. This would help in strengthening customer relationships. You can also create news-centric content to keep your customers informed about prevailing situations but research thoroughly before publishing such content.
- Refrain from creating any content that may cause panic in the public.
Convey How You Can Help: Tap into your product’s features and see if it can help people in this time. If yes! Focus on such features and highlight them in your posts and marketing material. You may consider features such as does your product help people in doing their job without face-to-face interactions, does your product give people something to do while at home, does your product help in maintain health while at home, etc. In case your product can not be of direct help to people, you can still be helpful as a brand. Create and publish useful material to educate people. You can also create entertaining and inspirational content for people while they are stuck at home. This will help in creating brand popularity and create a new customer base for your product after the pandemic subsides.
Core Marketing: Focus on core marketing to sustain your business. Pay greater attention to recognizing who your customers are, what are their needs, and what is their sentimental state. Once you gain insight into this information, formulate a well-laid plan that would hold a value of benefit for these customers. Contact them with such plans but make sure to be empathetic in your approach. Make the customers feel that you care for them.
Plan For The Future: Once COVID-19 subsides, the global market will be in a new shape. It would be profitable to be prepared with relative marketing strategies and campaigns to stay ahead of your competitors. Conduct some predictive data analysis to understand what would be the market situation after COVID-19. Utilize this time to formulate your strategies and design your campaigns to strengthen your market share.
Revamp Your Brand: Now is the perfect time to study your brand’s performance in the past and conduct a SWOT analysis. Look into your weaknesses and formulate plans to overcome them. Also, understand the opportunities you would like to work towards and lay out a plan to move forward. You may seek advice from your employees and vet out ideas to improve your brand image.
Anticipate Operational Impacts: The disrupted services have caused an increased dilemma among the customers. Marketing professionals need to address these issues. Follow these practices to handle the prevailing issues:
- Set realistic service level expectations among the customers.
- Create proactive messages to address common questions and distribute these messages via emails, social media and web.
- Draft a reactive script for your customer service reps to handle sensitive interactions.
- Promote mobile apps and other digital tools among your customers.
At VANQ, we understand the common issues being faced by business owners in Mississauga, Brampton and other Lower Mainland areas in BC. Our team of Digital Marketing professionals is committed to help businesses with relative digital marketing strategies that are designed specifically to offer business success. We also offer website development services in Mississauga to design your business website with respect to prevailing conditions. Our services focus on widening your customer base and increasing your business revenue. For more information on marketing strategies in times of COVID-19, call at 1-800-438-9172 or visit https://www.vanqmedia.com/
