Has the Covid 19 Lockdown Forced Your Digital Marketing Hand?

The lockdown has required us all to adapt to doing business digitally. Though the economic conditions have changed for many of us, now is not the time to stand still. With traditional sales and marketing methods proving difficult to execute there has never been a better time to make the transformation to a digital sales and marketing approach.

The vast majority of businesses will have had a reasonable disaster recovery process in operation prior to the Covid 19 lockdown. Those processes have likely been tested to the limit.

Equally, many business leaders I have spoken to have been pleasantly surprised by how well those processes have held up and how rapidly they and their workforce adapted to working from home and holding meetings online. Proof, if you needed it, that it’s the agile businesses that cope during the difficult times. It also demonstrates how, when situations demand, organisations can adapt.

In the same way as Corona lockdown has forced our digital hands by virtue of the way we are now required to do business, companies are having to rethink their marketing and lead generation strategies. Many have resisted the urge to fully embrace a digital marketing strategy until now. This is not because they don’t believe in its merits; it is simply that they haven’t needed to. And, many enjoy the whole process of face to face meetings, networking and attending events.

Running a business is tough enough at the best of times and when things are going well, using the methods that have served you best in the past makes perfect sense. However, that doesn’t mean going digital can’t help you do even better. But with time and resources at a premium, business transformation, although potentially beneficial, can be disruptive.

We have to assume that the work environment is going to continue like this or similarly for the foreseeable future. Even after lockdown it is unlikely things will return to how they were before. The commercial world has changed and many of those changes are probably permanent.  

But pipelines still have to be fed and customers and prospects still have to know that you are around and operating.  In an environment where 66% of people are now searching for suppliers and goods online first and foremost, and where 70% of the buying process happens before they even contact you or visit your store, digital is too important to ignore. Currently you have a captive audience that is not just online but is already far more receptive to doing business digitally.

Now is the perfect time to scale up your digital marketing. Where to start?

Possibly the reason why so many struggle to begin the digital transformation process in the first instance is knowing what to do first?  There’s plenty of help out there not least here at Optix. But while under lockdown you might wish to familiarise yourself and your staff with digital techniques by having a crack at some of it yourself. Depending where you and your business currently are on the digital transformation roadmap, start by considering the following areas:

1)     Training – while under lockdown you or your staff may have some time available to digitally re-train. The training industry has been quick to respond to the current situation and there are some good offers running on online courses just now.

2)     Target market - have you identified a persona or personas to whom you are aiming your product or service? What searches are they doing online and what words and language are they using?

3)     Website - does your website appeal to your target market persona(s)? Does the content contain the right language and does it reveal how you solve the problems they are online looking to solve? Is it optimised to appear near the top of the right Google search for your offering. With ad spend online reduced in the current climate, organic searches have climbed higher in the listings.

4)     Email – are you or your staff proficient in a suitable email marketing software to be able to communicate with your customers and prospects in a timely fashion?

5)     Online advertising – larger online presence just now has reduced the cost of online advertising with more clicks per pound spend. Could you be making use of this? It is preferable that steps 1) to 4) are investigated before considering this but you could seek help and guidance in understanding this better.  

Even with possibly more available time, it is unrealistic to expect you to master all of this in a short time. Practically speaking, stage 1), training, is the logical first step to get you started - and getting started is the key.  

For all the wrong reasons we have been gifted the time and the focus to respond to the digital marketing challenge. For all the right reasons now is the time to take up that challenge.