Anastasiia Emelianova-Schmitt
Director Client Management
In addition to everyday life, not surprisingly, the pandemic is also affecting marketing and advertising: Changing media consumption, competitive pressure, inefficient marketing technologies, and the accelerated shift to e-commerce are presenting many of our clients with new challenges daily. We’ve been closely monitoring these developments since the beginning and show concrete approaches on how to overcome them.
Challenge #1: Changing media consumption
User behavior is changing rapidly at the moment and is difficult to predict. Certain channels no longer offer the same reach as before. Sounds familiar? “Flexibility” is the magic word here.
- Adapt your media strategy: Put your media budget where your target group is at the moment. Maximize your reach by investing in relevant media channels like TikTok, Twitter, or streaming platforms.
- Remain flexible with real-time monitoring and programmatic booking: Control your spending and make adjustments based on your campaign performance. Switch between the channels that are right for you in this moment - for example social media, display, digital-out-of-home, -TV, or -radio.
- Test new platforms and ad formats: Intrigued by in-game advertising? Try it out! Want to grab your audience's attention? Use your creativity to stand out. Gamification and interactive banners like chatbots are effective tools, depending on your target audience.
- Book underdog placements: On underdog placements like Reddit, you'll get impressive results due to low competition, even on a small budget.
Challenge #2: Standing out from the increasing competition
Despite lower media spend overall, some brands have increased their communications during the pandemic and intensified competition. Consumer demands for communication are changing too: Authenticity is becoming more important.
- Revamp owned engagement channels: Drive dialogue with timely content on social media or live streams. Invest time in your blog and email campaigns to generate interest and build customer loyalty.
- Reactivate existing customers: Build on customer data already available (e.g., CRM) and integrate it into your campaigns.
- Keep researching: Analysis tools show topics that are currently on the minds of the target group. Create new content and campaigns based on these insights. Remember to be tactful and authentic with the visuals and language you use.
- Optimize your website: Continuously optimize the speed and user experience (UX) of your website for a good customer experience.
Challenge #3: Marketing technologies and digital setups are too isolated and inefficient
The pandemic is forcing many companies to stop postponing investments into technical infrastructure and actively drive digital transformation instead. This is not an easy matter: Often businesses do not have an integrated technical infrastructure in terms of sales, advertising, and analytics. We show you where to start:
- Review existing martech structure: Identify gaps and define priorities to address.
- Centralize performance metrics: Create dashboards tailored to your stakeholders. With a few clicks, you can pull up business reports, comparable metrics, and KPIs that serve as the foundation for your communications success.
- Structure data management: Leverage integrated CRM data and establish a single anonymized user ID to align offline and online data. Use a data warehouse to combine owned and paid data to gain well-rounded insights for your future activities.
Challenge #4: Accelerated shift to e-commerce
The pandemic has changed buying behavior faster than ever before, with a significant shift toward e-commerce. Digital sales models need to be examined more closely and altered towards the new reality. This strategic adaptation and development of internal expertise and know-how within a short timeframe poses challenges for many companies. Take advantage of these opportunities:
- Redefine your online store strategy: Educate it with the learnings gained from changing customer behavior over the past several months.
- Optimize your performance marketing means: Optimize product data feeds and use smart data (e.g., margin, stock, CRM) for your marketing channels.
- Tap into new, additional sales channels: Have you ever thought about using social commerce or online marketplaces? Now is the time to do so.
- Create your e-commerce strategy from scratch: If you’re creating a strategy from scratch, think about maximizing your sales by linking your portfolio with retailers directly through Google and Facebook. Or take it into your own hands: Define a complete direct-to-consumer strategy tailored for your business.
Digital universe is known for its fast pace and regular changes that keep market players on their toes. The pandemic brought this notion to a whole new level. Despite all the challenges one might face though, this is also an exciting time to try out new things and make a bigger effort to stand out in a meaningful way.
We're here for you in case you want to explore these opportunities together.
