As the world is struggling with COVID-19, some countries are already noticing the light at the end of the tunnel. Even though it’s still somewhat dim, your company can start walking toward the exit with a new marketing and sales strategy in hand.
While some of your competitors are mulling over the unprecedented downtime, others are taking the opportunity to regroup.
Why Adjust Your Marketing and Sales Strategy?
Everyone is saying that the world will change once the pandemic is over. What many people don’t realize is that it already has. Getting back to normal is highly overrated. Normal as we know it is now “pre-COVID-19”.
Without adjusting to the new “normal”, it’s impossible to stay ahead of the competition. Marketing and sales strategies must adapt to post-COVID-19 reality. What can you expect to see when the virus weakens its hold? Let’s do some educated theorizing.
Digital Interaction Is Here to Stay
Even though your clients may have been taking advantage of digital services before, the forced isolation made them highly demanded. When the virus is over, don’t expect this trend to disappear.
The convenience of getting things done without climbing off the favorite couch is changing the way consumers plan their lives. Once they leave homes, they’ll find that the ability to visit places physically is highly overrated.
The time spent on going to the supermarket to buy food, shopping for clothes, holding meetings, and signing contracts can be minimized without any losses. Why would people start wasting time when walking the streets becomes safe?
Marketing and selling to couch dwellers are different in the majority of industries. Especially, in those that used to focus on face-to-face interactions.
Human DDoS Attacks May be Unavoidable
Once the doors open and people flood the streets, many companies will experience a huge influx of consumer traffic. Tourist attractions, cafes, movie theaters…anything that has to do with entertainment is likely to suffer a human DDoS (flooding with traffic to the point of crashing) attack.
It’s already happening to some companies. At the beginning of April, thousands of tourists stormed one of the freshly re-opened Chinese attractions, creating mile-long queues. Eventually, the attraction had to close again.
Accommodating such a scenario requires serious planning. Without the right approach to marketing, you may get more business than you can handle. The result won’t keep you waiting. It will manifest itself in bad reviews and lost clients.
Remote Services Need an Upgrade
Companies that suffered the most during the coronavirus outbreak offered human-to-human services. Real estate agencies, gyms, cafes, and similar businesses had a tough time surviving. Only those that manage to reinvent themselves to make the most out of the situation stay afloat. The rest are shutting down.
Online analogs of the above services existed before. Consumers could order food delivery online, consult a real estate agent on Skype, lift weights while watching a YouTube video, etc.
However, when forced to do it on a regular basis, people discovered the low quality of such services due to poor interfaces, slow internet connection, high traffic, and more.
To retain their clients right now and in the future, companies need to give online services a serious upgrade. Interactive online presence, high-quality websites, and responsive apps are just part of the deal.
Businesses will need to train their employees to provide remote services properly while opening new channels of virtual communication with the clients.
Consumers Will Become More Selective
Many companies find that marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic has become harder. Some abandoned it altogether.
While the purchasing power is low, it’s hardly the only reason. With the amount of information bombarding an average consumer, many of them have become more selective and less responsive to the existing marketing tricks.
The majority of companies will need to rethink their marketing strategies entirely to adjust to a smarter and more suspicious consumer. The pandemic is an excellent opportunity to test new tactics and see how clients react to them.
- PPC marketing is likely to need a serious overhaul to avoid clients’ annoyance and frustration.
- Email marketing would need to add more effort to improve personalization and focus on relevancy, speed, conciseness, and usefulness.
- Companies would have to invest much more time, money, and effort in content marketing since the selective client is likely to demand more value.
- SEO efforts would need rethinking since Google algorithms are likely to tighten the noose on the necks of mediocre websites.
Competition Will Slack… Temporarily
Coronavirus made the economy fragile. The entire world is facing a recession. While many businesses struggle to cut losses and stay afloat, some of them eventually sink.
With many companies going out of business, closing their doors or filing for bankruptcy, the competition is slacking. Staying afloat during the pandemic means excellent opportunities.
Adjusting marketing and sales strategies right now could bring impressive results. Catching the target audience while it’s still recovering from the loss of their service provider is priceless.
However, the break is only temporary. Many businesses will adjust quickly, reinventing themselves and coming up with alternative solutions. That’s why it’s vital to act now.
Adapting to the Post-Coronavirus Reality with a Revolutionized Approach
Adjusting to the new reality often means changing your entire strategy. One of the highly effective approaches is WEBITMD’s Growth Stack. This sales & marketing machine combines strategy and creative with data and technology.
By learning how people consume information and make purchase decisions in the new world, it’s possible to design a revolutionary marketing strategy to adapt to their needs.
The process involves creating actionable sales opportunities, nurturing leads, and taking them through the entire sales funnel. This marketing and sales strategy isn’t brand new. Over the past decade, many businesses have taken advantage of it and seen impressive results. The COVID-19 pandemic simply made the approach more appealing.
If you want to learn more about WEBITMD’s Growth Stack and how it can help your company thrive in the post-Coronavirus universe, please contact WEBITMD today.
