For Marketers, 2020 Has Been Clear as Mud

As marketing budgets across the globe feel the pinch, many marketers are finding themselves in an unfamiliar position. Nicole Pytel, Digital Content Manager at Marvel Marketers, reflects on COVID-19 implications on marketing activity and the importance of making data driven decisions to create real value for customers.

Marketers didn’t plan for COVID-19. They didn’t expect anything like this. There’s no playbook for how to deal with the unprecedented. But ready or not, they had to change—and they had to do it fast.

That big event you’d been planning? Not happening anytime soon.

But how did you deal with it?

• Did you come up with a strategy to make it virtual?
• Did you have a YouTube channel where you could live stream future events?
• Did you have a webinar platform where you could host digital roundtables and other interactive events?

It’s not just events that got turned upside down during COVID-19, though. Marketing initiatives of all shapes and sizes did, too.

Like that social media plan you kept putting off.

• Did you kick posting into high gear because face-to-face time with your customers quickly turned into a thing of the past?
• If you did start posting more frequently during the height of COVID-19, do you have a way to measure its impact?
• Has your social media strategy led to more website visitors, newsletter signups, or purchases? If so, how much?

If you don’t have (or don’t like) the answers to these questions, it’s time for a rethink. Because the truth is, it doesn’t matter how big your company is or what industry you’re in—COVID-19 forced marketers’ hands.

In some cases, marketers were able to pivot quickly and create immediate value. For example, ten days before Boris Johnson officially announced a UK lockdown, Guinness premiered a special St. Patrick’s Day message that admitted things were different this year, but focused on hope, strength, and resilience.

What are people sharing on your social channels? What are they tagging you in? Could you create something similar? Yes, marketers are working with much less money than they were six months ago, but use this as an example of how you can stretch your money further.

Just how tight is money these days?

According to the IPA Bellwether Report that was compiled in April, at the height of the pandemic, 25% of marketing budgets had been cut. Not only that, they’d been cut at the fastest rate since the Great Recession in 2009.

Marketing Week did its own study of UK marketing strategic spends in April, and the results were surprising. According to their research, 25% of UK marketers were basing their strategies mostly on instinct. Only 13% reported basing their strategies on data, and another 60% made their strategic decisions based on a combination of the two.

Here at Marvel Marketers, we always say “the data tells the story”, because even the most educated guess is still a guess. And when you’re facing something as challenging and unprecedented as COVID-19, the goal is to eliminate as much uncertainty as possible. With the right tools and the right framework, more of those marketers would have been able to create strategies based on data, that would have maximized the money they did have to spend.

Bottom line—COVID-19 forced every marketer in the world to do a lot of rethinking. But now that there’s some light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, it’s time to focus on reimagining your goals for 2020, re-engineering your strategies, re-energizing your target audience, and recovering as best you can.

Wondering which specific steps can help elevate your business to the next level? Get some supersized help from Marvel Marketers’ experts in our Superhero Power Hour. Use promo code ULSTER to get your first consult for free.

You can also learn more about the marketing campaigns that got it right during the height of COVID-19—and some initiatives that missed the mark—during our Digital Transformation Journey.

Nicole Pytel, Digital Content Manager at Marvel Marketers

The views and opinions expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Ulster University Business School.