Developing New Ways of Online Marketing During the Pandemic

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January 29, 2022 Marketing

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global crisis has discombobulated everyday life with stay-at-home orders, health protocols, and double-dose vaccines. Meanwhile, a 2020 survey showed that about one-quarter of Americans did more online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Your e-commerce company can connect with its target market through SEO in online marketing. Effective digital marketing can help augment website traffic, leads, and sales for different industries such as healthcare, technology, construction, retail, and even online entertainment.

Let’s take a look at some innovative strategies to reach your target audience during the coronavirus pandemic.

1. Use Creative Marketing Strategies

The coronavirus age is an ideal time to take risks and boost creativity in your marketing strategies. Creative marketing can help distinguish your company from the competition. It may also help your business thrive during tough economic times.

Here are some options to consider:

Do-it-yourself (DIY) kits
Care packages
Online classes and showcases

Your marketing team can do brainstorming to determine which unique marketing strategies may help boost leads and sales.

2. Increase Brand Awareness

Your company may have fantastic products and services. Without sufficient brand recognition, however, you can lose sales to large companies.

Part of the process is building trust between your business and potential customers. You can use verified customer reviews and testimonials to establish a solid reputation.

Some of the different metrics to focus on include views, clicks, and conversions.

When developing a marketing strategy, it’s critical to spread the word about your company’s offerings. Suppose you own or operate a startup business. In that case, you should focus on brand awareness before conversion rates.

3. Consider Local Marketing

Geo-specific marketing is critical if your company offers products and services to a local market. Some examples include florists, restaurants, plumbers, landscapers, and salons.

Tailor your content to reach local audiences. For instance, create Google Ads that target localized audiences and keywords. Add Yelp reviews from past customers to your website.

4. Define Your Company’s KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics to determine the success of an ad campaign. Some examples include:

Page views
New subscribers
Qualified leads
Conversion rates of call to actions (CTAs)
Click-through rates (CTR)
Search engine results pages (SERPs)

Before your company develops a campaign, determine which metrics are the most valuable for your marketing strategy.

5. Focus on the Customer Experience

The current environment provides an outstanding opportunity to make the customer experience as seamless and transparent as possible.

Ensure that you communicate any changes to your company’s sales and delivery processes as rapidly and clearly as possible.

Research customer priorities then determine which measures will provide the best possible experience.

6. Build Your Social Media Presence

In 2021 the Pew Research Center noted that about 70% of Americans use social media. It’s thus advisable to make social media a key component of your digital marketing strategy.

Conduct research to determine which social platforms are most popular among your customer profile.

It’s also essential to make regular posts. The posting frequency should be based on the particular platforms you use. For example, multiple daily posts on photo-sharing platforms are common.

The goal of your social marketing should be to provide meaningful engagement with current and potential customers. This approach may be a more effective long-term strategy than increasing subscriptions.

After you build a fan base, you can delve into social media advertising and promoted posts.

7. Reassure Current and Potential Customers

One reason “the customer is always right” is that they help build and maintain a successful business. During uncertain times like the current viral pandemic, your business needs to assure customers you’re here to stay.

Some methods you can use include:

Email updates
COVID-19 updates in customer accounts
Regular social media posts

Customers will likely value such updates in these challenging times. It’s also critical to create positive messages and provide contact information.

8. Anticipate Your Customers’ Needs

In the post-pandemic business environment, customers will still have health-related concerns about issues such as a viral resurgence. These factors will likely impact how much consumers spend through internet shopping.

For example, content analytics and social listening tools can discover your customers’ current situations. Learning about and understanding your customers may help prepare your business for future success.

9. Provide Useful Information

During the ongoing global crisis, the internet has become indispensable for reliable coronavirus resources. An example is the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 updates. In 2020, “coronavirus” was the most popular Google search.

People often conduct web searches to find the information they need. Your brand and site can stand out if they provide high-quality content with specific answers to people’s online questions.

Specific and quality content may increase traffic to your website through higher rankings in SERPs. Besides that, excellent content may also increase conversion rates by turning leads into sales.

Such content may also prevent higher bounce rates from visitors who browse a few web pages before shopping around.

Some Final Thoughts

The ongoing pandemic has greatly affected online companies and their customers. These are trying times.

That said, such challenges also provide new opportunities for e-commerce businesses to connect with existing customers. Hopefully, entrepreneurs will become more driven to find new customers and develop marketing strategies for long-term success in the post-pandemic world.