Why Now Is The Best Time To Re-evaluate Your Marketing Approach
Amidst the most unpredictable times of our generation, being able to adapt and adjust is now more important than ever. Focusing your attention on re-evaluating your marketing approach will provide you with the critical direction you need to stay competitive.
The Shift in Approach
It’s now been over a year since the impacts of COVID-19 have brought tremendous changes to our daily lives. People are staying at home, feeling more and more anxious, and many are struggling in the face of the most financially challenging times of their lives. This challenge exists especially for marketers as 65% of marketers anticipate a decrease to their annual marketing budget, and so it’s critical to assess your approach.
As a result, I am sure your business has been greatly impacted. That’s why it’s important to extend this experience to your brand’s message. By reflecting your awareness of current issues, you send the right message to your customers that you care about what they are going through. This builds trust and deepens the connection. Moreover, during these challenging times, customers are looking to brands for support, so marketing that revolves around hard-selling no longer works. Failing to recognize these changes only acts to alienate your customers.
There is growing evidence that customers want to support businesses that support their concerns in return, with 94% of Gen-Z now thinking that companies should address pressing social and environmental issues. In addition, customers are paying more attention to brands that have product ingredients that are sustainably sourced. As well as that, what safety procedures your brand has implemented throughout the pandemic. That’s why brands must recognize that there’s been a shift in customer concern and align their practices towards these changes in norms. During this pandemic, companies should therefore transition to adopting a customer-first mindset and recognize that they have these concerns. In addition, shifting the attention from acquisition to retention, and investing more in supporting members during this challenging time, will drive connection and build trust.
Creating relevant content ensures your brand stays up to date. To ensure you’re creating relevant content, it’s important to first acknowledge the customer and recognize that we share deep desires as humans in these unprecedented times. To align your brand with these desires means first communicating to your customer as they are. Second, by offering help drives a connection between the brand and person. Third, provide guidance on how to navigate through these times and your solutions are here to help.
With the vast increases in screen time and internet usage, it’s clear that there’s a new market on digital platforms that marketers can utilise. Social media channels and the like are seeing more activity on their platforms than ever before. That’s why it’s essential to keep up with these consumption changes, as otherwise, it’s unlikely your brand will survive in an ever-changing world. The best way to do this is by having engaging and interactive content. Creating a social media page is only half the battle. Your channel has to stay active and produce quality content to gather as much traction as possible and maintain a strong online presence.
Furthermore, becoming active on social media isn’t the only thing your company can do as part of your marketing strategy. As there’s been a considerable increase in the time spent in the digital world, ensuring your website is ready for this kind of traffic is essential. This means having a homepage that is ready to answer questions quickly. Addressing concerns is vital to building trust. By ensuring your website is user-friendly and has an aesthetic interface that suits your industry, you provide the customer with an easy and accessible experience. This is key in our fast-paced environments where we only have a customer’s attention for a short while. Finally, a great way to provide support for customers is through the adoption of a chatbot. A chatbot provides the essential service of answering customer’s queries through automated messaging, offering quality customer service.
How to evaluate your marketing approach
SWOT Analysis
In order to re-evaluate your marketing approach, a fundamental analysis tool you can use is the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis should be used before you decide on any new strategy.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
This allows you to take a look at what your current approach is doing right. Your business will be able to identify behaviors and campaigns that are working and recognize whether you should continue with these. By assessing your weaknesses, you become aware of areas that need improvement and where changes need to be made. Next, you look into the future and see what opportunities are open to you. What trends could you take advantage of? Lastly, you address the threats that could harm you, like for example what your competition is doing. By becoming aware of these four elements, you provide your new approach with a solid foundation to be built upon.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
To support your insights into your SWOT analysis, your KPI’s offer statistical evidence regarding the performance of your company. You can use your KPIs to determine your strengths and weaknesses and specific areas that need improvement. For example, suppose you are wondering why your ad revenue is lacking. In that case, by having an in-depth look into your KPI’s, your business may come to realize that they are not inputting as many resources as you should on advertisements when it’s clear that competitors are, as global ad spend in Q2 2021 rose by 23.6% year-on-year. That’s why sales numbers serve as a great indicator for your performance. If you compare your current total sales to your total sales for the last period and see they’ve increased, that’s a great sign. Of course, other variables should also be considered when assessing sales performance, like a rise in price or costs.
Return on investment
Another KPI you can use is return on investment, which you can use to assess the profitability of your investments. To do this, you measure the amount spent on each campaign, against the amount of sales each of those campaigns brought in. Again, this will help identify which campaigns are profitable.
Market reaction
Once you’ve implemented your marketing approach, another measurement of your plan’s success or failure is the actions of your competitors. If they’re rushing to copy what you’ve done or changing their plans, your approach is affecting them and should be working. However, if competitors are ignoring your campaign, there may be an issue, and your approach should be re-evaluated.
Customer response and reactions
Customer response can help you determine what type of reactions your marketing creates. You can find out how your customers respond through surveys online and in person, customer reviews and online commentary.
Ultimately, it’s clear that there have been some significant changes to the way we can market in these unprecedented times, and that’s why it’s all the more important to adapt and adjust our approach.
Author – Justin Tey
Image source: Shutterstock (444061168)
