For marketing to be effective, it has to be in-line with the current social norms. Otherwise, your message will fly through your target market. It’s pretty obvious how the pandemic changed everyday life. Hence, if you are still doing the same things in this new world, then you are at risk of severely falling behind. Here are simple tips for updating your marketing strategy to be more in-line with the new paradigm.
1. Adjust
Since the pandemic has caused a sudden shift in the landscape, you also have to make some adjustments to your marketing campaigns. If you want to make the biggest impact, then you’d want to look at what’s on your pipeline.
The priority is to look at your marketing campaigns and decide which you want to pause or stop immediately. There are plenty of reasons for pausing or stopping, even if it’s in the middle of the campaign. It could be that the content of the marketing message is inappropriate, or it’s easily eclipsed by other messages. Either way, continuing is not an efficient use of funds.
The second priority is to look at, which are the parts you need to pivot or prioritize. For marketing messages that you think will work in the current setting, you’d want to divert your funds into those avenues. For the other options, you have to decide if you want to stop or pivot the message.
Here’s an example from the car industry: Most car dealers tend to take a family photo and the new car they bought and post it on social media sites. In a lot of cases, the family is huddled together. You may want to halt such a tactic as it goes against the grain of social distancing. Also, most people are recommended to stay indoors, and that means more internet activity. Thus, you’d want to boost ads on Google, Facebook, or other social media sites.
2. Focus on Language and Imagery
In this new paradigm, you’d want to place an extra focus on the language and imagery of your marketing content. The point here is to make adjustments, so it’s congruent to recent times. For example, you’d want to avoid images of people in crowds. You’d also want to minimize physical contacts in these images. Hence, if you have a group of people for your ads, you might want to change that to something acceptable to new social norms. Also, you’d want to avoid languages that include close interactions like “get in touch with us” or “work hand-in-hand.”
3. Never Capitalize on the Crisis
During crisis times, it’s very tempting to capitalize on the situation as it typically opens up large margins. However, if you care about your business’s long-term health, you don’t want to capitalize on such situations. Here’s the thing with a crisis — humans get emotional. That usually means remembering more than usual. And yes, they will remember that you capitalized on the crisis, and that will hurt your profits and reputation in the long-term.
4. Be Cautiously Positive
During these times, there’s enough fear to go around. You don’t want to associate your company with all the negativity. Hence, you want to project a positive message and image. However, you also want to balance this positivity by not being ignorant. Too much positivity may cause other people to think that you don’t know what’s going on.
5. How You Can Help
Don’t ever forget the real purpose of a business, which is to provide value for the consumers, and you get your fair compensation for doing so. During this new paradigm, you’d want to think of marketing campaigns or messages that can reinforce the idea of “providing value” for your customers in these new environments.
These pointers are far from being comprehensive, but it should point you in the right direction in the new normal.