When the lockdown started due to the impact of COVID-19 most of us really had no clue what kind of trouble we were about to face as this kind of pandemic situation had never arisen on a global level affecting the lives and livelihood of people. We hadn’t encountered such a catastrophic calamity which threatened human lives and also caused financial instability on a global scale.
During a financial crisis it is always the budget of marketing that gets cut first because it is usually outsourced to another smaller company. It is easier for the company to cut the budget of marketing rather than lay off employees. So as expected with COVID-19 also the budget was cut and initially we felt like another crisis was upon us that would destroy the tech companies involved in Digital Marketing. When Retail and Travel industries were hit very hard, many other industries suffered partially.
Fast food companies which focused on personalized hospitality and services within their premises are barely surviving on home delivery nowadays. They should really improve their marketing strategies that they have been using for the present situation. Companies should opt for a dynamic change in their marketing strategy to tide over the crisis.
Some strategies that the marketeers may opt for are:
Cost savings from creative content production
Most brands are still relying on traditional forms of marketing that was built for television and print media which is expensive as the cost for this method of marketing has escalated over the years. Dynamic creative technology is a modern method of marketing were creative content is automatically versioned in the regional language. Here production fee is lesser and the dynamics in language will help them to target a global audience.
Importance of Consumer Marketing
Consumer Packed Goods companies which are only dependent on retail companies for sales haven’t had the opportunity to build a relationship with their customers all these years. Some of the companies though have invested in eCommerce sites like Flipkart and Amazon or even through Direct-to-consumer sales, many companies still rely on retail stores to sell. As the retail sales have started coming down companies started investing more into Digital marketing. Even fast food industry needs to shift to a one to one personalized digital marketing for their survival. It also helps them to collect data for digital marketing and to understand future purchasing pattern of customers.
Agile Marketing
This type of marketing practice help companies to make better decisions faster. There should be fast decisions and changes have to be made in these times. For example: decision to include COVID-19 related messages with Ads. Many brands took weeks to implement it.
Marketers will have to understand and implement technologies that can save money, time and also transform their business dynamically.
