The ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ of reaching audiences has changed overnight and marketers are scrambling to adjust their marketing strategies. Marketers need to act fast and redirect their budgets to tactics that will connect with prospects and customers in a COVID-19 world.
Here are five things you can do right away:
1. Pull budget from face-to-face events asap
Don’t waste time sitting on paused budget, make that budget work for you as soon as possible through other channels.
What spend had you allocated to conference attendance, conference stands, and networking events? Do an audit of all the spend you had set aside for face-to-face events, pull it and redirect it.
2. Redirect budget into new content marketing tactics
Did you have a brilliant deck and speech prepared for a speaking slot at a conference? Did you have a standout pitch deck ready to share in your next meeting? Don’t waste it, repurpose it into engaging webinars, blogs, email newsletters, white papers or social media campaigns.
Draw more content topics, such as thought leadership ideas, from the expertise that’s already in your workforce. If you don’t have the resources to plan a top-notch content marketing campaign, get an agency on board.
3. Level up your digital comms
With less face-to-face interaction, it’s more important than ever to communicate with your prospects and customers. A great way to do this is through handbooks, ‘how to’ infographics, e-learning videos and digital magazines, for example, our client Virgin Media have great success keeping customers engaged through PLAY magazine.
Don’t plan the content for your digital magazine from a brand or a product perspective, plan it from your audience’s perspective. Make it about what’s interesting, entertaining or educational to them. This is what will drive engagement, which, along with clicks and time on page, is one of the metrics you should use to measure its success.
4. Put money into being seen in the right places
The best content in the world makes no impact if no one sees it. The most effective way to make sure people see and engage with your content is to spend money on distributing it to the right audience, through the right channel, at the right time.
Put a strategy behind your distribution. If you use an agency, draw on their expertise. This is especially relevant during the COVID-19 crisis because audience behaviour is changing.
5. Put spend behind standing out from the crowd
Everyone will be thinking the same so now, more than ever so it’s essential to stand out from the crowd. It’s not enough to simply have content, you need stand-out content.
What is stand-out content? It’s content that makes people genuinely connect with your brand because of what they get from it, whether that’s information, entertainment, education, or inspiration. It’s content that inspires an audience to take an action, that’s measurable, and that helps you meet your business objectives.
To find out more about how you can engage and connect with your audience in a COVID-19 world contact me at gmiltiadou@zahramediagroup.com
