There’s no denying that this year has been tough for many businesses. The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the world of business drastically in a very short amount of time, meaning that millions of businesses all over the world have had to adapt quickly and with little warning.
As businesses were forced to close and consumers switched to online shopping, the results on traditional trading have been disastrous in many cases.
In 2019 Salesforce reported that 42% of consumers interacted with companies online while 58% used offline methods. As the pandemic spread around the world and stricter restrictions were enforced online interactions with companies increased to 60% meaning only 40% of interactions with companies were offline.
The increase of online interactions was huge and quite unexpected for many smaller businesses, as up to one third did not even have a website before the pandemic hit.
With the drastic changes to how consumers interact with businesses, it is more essential than ever to have a valid, engaging, and informative social media presence if you’re looking to market your business during these trying times.
So what marketing techniques should you use to increase engagement and sales throughout COVID-19?
Make Your Brand Visible
As the number of people spending more time in their home increases, so does the use of social media.
If your business or brand doesn’t have a social media presence already, it’s definitely time to build one as Social Media can be one of the most powerful marketing tools in today’s world.
Before you start posting and updating your status on the regular, consider what your goals will be with your social media presence and what your business is looking to accomplish during this time.
Are you hoping to push your brand engagement?
Do you want to increase sales?
Are you looking to keep customers up to date on how you’re currently trading?
Make a clear, goal-orientated social media plan before you start posting and tailor your content to help you reach your goals.
Understand Your Audience
Whenever marketing comes into play, defining your target audience is essential. It’s likely that you will already have an understanding of the target audience and what your customers expect from you, but the pandemic will undoubtedly have affected this in some way.
Use your social media to engage with your audience. Create interactive posts encouraging your audience to respond and use the responses to update your knowledge on your target audience.
The consumer’s wants and needs will have changed throughout this turbulent period and what was important to them before, may not be as essential now.
Take a Human Approach
Don’t use your social media for hard sales, it’s great to advertise your products but take a softer and more informative approach during this period of time.
Use your Socials to reach out to customers, tapping into their emotional responses and use these to make your brand or business more relatable. Many consumers prefer to feel as if they are engaging with an actual human instead of an automated corporation.
Acknowledge what is happening in the world around you and recognize the impact this may be having on your customers on your social media pages. This approach allows you to create a sense of community support around your brand and is a very effective technique when trying to market your business.
Don’t Go Off the Grid
The restrictions and lockdowns may mean that your brand or business cannot continue to trade. Maybe your business is not one that can function without footfall and so all your trade has stopped, but that doesn’t mean you should stop posting.
To market your brand and build excitement for when you can trade again, you need to stay in contact and connected to your audience.
Tailor your posts and content to reflect your brand’s values, use them to build positivity within the community, and create excitement for when the pandemic is over.
Keep your customers up to date on what your brand is planning for the future, don’t presume that not being able to trade means that you can’t continue to build and grow your brand image.
Explore New Kinds of Social Media
Marketing is all about expanding and changing techniques to find what works for your brand. If you’ve always had an Instagram page now may be time to venture into using Facebook for marketing your business as well. Trialing more than one kind of social media page can really help to reach and engage with a larger audience.
While the world is so turbulent, and the weight of everyday business tasks have been put on the backburner, try adopting some new social media strategies. Create an Instagram, join Snapchat, or maybe just experiment with new content or marketing techniques.
This is definitely the time to find out how your consumers react to new forms of content. If you don’t normally create and upload video content, give it a try and measure the reaction and feedback from your audience. You could switch up your hashtags to gain more engagement using hashtag generator tools.
You may find that it’s more effective than your usual uploads, or you may find that it doesn’t work well for your brand, way it gives you a new insight and understanding of your consumers and what works well for you.
You could also use your social media to network with brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors can work wonders for businesses and increase your following substantially by building up your brand identity.
Don’t Use COVID-19 as a Marketing Opportunity
There is a stark difference between adapting your techniques to suit the current environment and using the current environment as an opportunity to promote your brand.
Sometimes it’s suitable and acceptable to use situations to promote your brand….but this is not one of them.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit many consumers and businesses hard and to use this situation as a business opportunity would be insensitive and damaging to your brand’s reputation.
Instead, empathize with your consumers and don’t try to use COVID as a reason that they should buy from you. The only result you can expect from this is disdain and a loss of repeat business from a once-loyal customer base.
Can Your Business Help Lessen the Blow?
In times like these, a sense of community engagement can be a very important lifeline to many people. Being on furlough, having been made redundant, or having to isolate can be a very challenging time and the impacts can be phenomenal on mental and physical health.
Use your brand’s social media to do some good. It’s never smart to try and push your business to a place that it doesn’t belong, but if your business can make a difference by offering some form of support or advice through blogs, or interactive pages it’s likely to put you in good standing with your local community.
Not only will this be beneficial by keeping your brand connected to your followers and creating that essential human approach, but it will also enable your consumers to feel supported and understood during such trying times.
Ultimately there is not a single person who remains unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each and every person, brand, and business have been touched in some way by this outbreak and almost every business has had to make drastic and difficult changes to stay afloat.
Although the pandemic has been devastating it is so very important to continue adapting and marketing your brand so your business can continue to flourish in the future.
Marketing your brand through social media is not only incredibly effective, but it’s also very affordable as it usually only costs the time you spend to craft and upload your content.
This is an uncertain and confusing time for many businesses, but don’t let this stop you from connecting and engaging with your consumers, and as a result, creating a supportive environment that will leave you with more opportunities to continue trading in the future.
