Covid-19 and Social Distancing getting in your way? Reach your customers through Digital Marketing
The Covid-19 pandemic is striking fear in the world, crippling businesses and eating out the bank accounts. Assets are devaluing and shares are losing money fast. With the spiking number of cases, restriction on movement within the city, and employees and customers are limited to their homes, it is becoming difficult for businesses to cover even the bare minimum expenses like paychecks, bank instalments, taxes, rents, subscriptions, bills and other utilities.
Even if we succeed in defeating this virus as fast as China did, it will take a year for the market to recover as the businesses will struggle to make up for the past loss.
One of the hardest-hit industries is the travel and tourism industry but no industry is left unaffected and average sales have decreased overall. Not only several international businesses are pulling out from Asia, but many local businesses are also laying off their workers, temporarily or permanently. This massive trend of layoffs will cause a higher unemployment rate and a decrease in retail sales.
Not only most of your potential customers now feel out of reach as they start to stay at home, but many of your potential customers are also going to start cutting down expenses, spending only on necessities. It only makes sense for marketers to reevaluate their strategies and invest wisely.
Do Not Panic, See the opportunity!
It is Time to think out of the box!
While the situation does seem pretty bad in general, let’s be optimistic, as the saying goes “a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty”. While most businesses are pulling out and cutting down expenses, to stay afloat many will go bankrupt or eventually disappear from the scene. This will make the market less saturated and those who survive these times will practically take the lead.
In February 2020, the Malaysian government has injected US$4.8 billion in the national economy in the form of an emergency stimulus package as damage control. One of the aims of this package is to encourage businesses to automate and digitalize their processes. Digitalization not only makes processes quicker, but it also helps in minimizing the human to human interaction. This is the reason it makes sense for marketers to shift to digital marketing.
Why follow the trend, When you can lead the market!
Many businessmen will be inclined to reduce their marketing budget to cut down costs out of fear but it will be equivalent to adding insult to the injury. While you are already struggling to make any sales why will you kill any chances of making a sale that you have? As they say, buy when everyone is selling and sell when everyone is buying. In this time when everyone is bailing out of trying to make sales and going into hibernation mode to survive, it makes perfect sense to go into the opposite direction of a crowd and stand out.
Instead of stepping back from marketing, you can channel your sales pitch to media and platforms that are still functional. While many will be abandoning the efforts to market anymore this will give you a better chance to stand out and get attention. In the worst-case scenario, your target population will see your sales pitch, regret that in these uncertain times they can not spend on your products and services and make a mental note to get back to you once things are stable.
Even if you are not able to make a sale in this time of panic you will be able to leave a mark in the unconscious landscape of your target population and they will turn to you once they are ready to start buying again.
Since most of the online shopping is impulse-based, seeding your brand name in the unconscious of the target population will reap you a huge profit in the long run.
Declining Organic Reach
Interestingly, while most businesses can reach out to their potential customers online, organic traffic for most eCommerce sites has seen a significant decline, as people are more interested in media and news industry for staying up to date with the current situation regarding damages Covid-19 virus is causing and efforts the government is making to counter the impacts. Unless you are in the media and news industry, your organic reach is declining. This is the reason many people are now not keen on SEO, as there is no point in ranking for a keyword when people are not going to be looking for it.
SEO is a long term strategy and you should not abandon it under any circumstances as losing your rankings on search engines now will mean that it will take forever to come back to the top later.
A wise move to compensate for the loss of organic reach is to opt for social media marketing and online advertisement.
SEO, social media marketing and PCP (Pay Per Click is also known as a paid advertisement) go hand in hand as a complete Digital Marketing Package. It was never wise to put all your eggs in one basket, your online marketing strategy and budget should be catering to all of these components of digital marketing.
How Digital Marketing Can Help?
Thanks to modern technology and advancement in mass communication, social media platforms are now providing a medium for everyone to stay connected and updated even if they are restricted to their homes. People are still in touch with each through mobile apps and use a search engine to look for information that they are interested in. While in current trends people are less likely to search for anything that will make them land on your e-commerce site, you can still pitch your products and services to them through social media platforms and paid advertisement.
In the times when enterprises and international chains of businesses are struggling to break even, small businesses and startups can really use some help from digital marketing to stay afloat. Even if you are running a small store, bakery or boutique and do not have any online presence, you can start now.
Building a brand new awesome website, and social media presence to connect with your target presence is the only practical idea that can help you reach out to your potential customers at this time.
- We at Altitude offer customized digital marketing plans according to your marketing needs, budget and your targeted population. Our highly skilled and experienced teams are keen to join you on your adventure of growing your business beyond the brick and mortar store and take it to the digital realms.
- We would love to help you enter the online market and reach hundreds and thousands of potential customers, even if you need to start from scratch. Keeping you in the loop and utilizing our expertise we will design a comprehensive plan to ensure your business gets the attention it deserves.
If you have any questions or want to get a quotation, do not hesitate in contacting us. We are just a click away.
