Post Pandemic Digital Marketing Strategies

Stepping into the post-Covid-19 era, I’m sure you have plans in place to drive more business, right?

Did you know that technological capability will be crucial to any business that wants to excel post-Covid-19?

Companies that have already embarked on re-inventing themselves around digital are operating at a faster pace, tapping into new markets, and witnessing better economic outcomes.

Arming your customer-facing teams with solid digital marketing strategies won’t just safeguard your ability to thrive. You’ll be fortifying your business against other disruptions that may come your way.

Here are several post-pandemic digital strategies worth including in your marketing efforts.

Leverage Data Analytics

With customers and competitors embracing technology in their everyday practices, running marketing campaigns will be similar to plowing a field deaf and blind. Your efforts will most likely produce below-average results.

The data your business is already generating contains valuable knowledge to help you answer questions, check consumer responses, identify and mitigate risks, and determine ROI.

Top benefits of incorporating data analysis include:

  • Better decision-making. You’ll rely less on gut feeling and knowledge and more on historical data to create predictive models that will help you get ahead.
  • Personalizing customer experiences. Customer analytics allow you to create detailed customer information to help improve customer service.
  • Delivering relevant products. Data analysis allows you to identify trends, changes in customer needs, and new technologies. It allows you to come up with strategic innovations or create action plans for new product/service functionality, ultimately remaining competitive.
  • Increasing efficiency. Collecting and analyzing data may provide detailed information to help you identify challenges in your processes or untapped opportunities. You can then take steps to improve processes, increase employee productivity and promote teamwork.

Account-Based Marketing

Unlike your typical lead generation strategy, here you won’t be rummaging through stacks of leads to find high-quality companies and then hustle to attract their decision-makers.

Rather, customer-facing teams decide on the accounts they want to target, then research the business troubles these companies worry about and that you can solve. 

Armed with this information, your team designs specific content that will spark interest among key decision makers in these target companies.

Benefits of the ABM strategy include

  • High ROI. Research shows that up to 87 percent of B2B marketers agreed on one thing—that ABM delivered higher ROI for their brands. That’s because the strategy requires you to build trusting relationships with your prospects while maintaining a stellar reputation to generate better returns.
  • Increased cohesion. With different departments working together and transparently to achieve the company’s objectives, efficiency, teamwork, and cohesion grow. Further, the customer receives a consistent message throughout their journey.
  • Improved contract value. Since the strategy revolves around quality and not quantity your team bags better deal sizes and higher average contract values.
  • Shorter sales cycle. Early in the game, the team identifies and builds rapport with all stakeholders on the buying committee. The rapport they build helps accelerate the buying process and shortens the sales cycle.  

Cold Calling

The internet is rife with cold calling practices that may help you secure meetings. So, today we will briefly cover a key concern for many vendors.

Is cold calling legal?

It’s a legit question because no one wants to invest in a strategy that gets them slapped with a slew of lawsuits.

There are laws to protect consumer privacy and to keep bothersome telemarketers from calling people on their personal cell phones or at home. 

You’ll want to avoid dialing wireless numbers from automated dialing systems unless you have expressly written consent from the person. To that end, we recommend going through your list to isolate cell phone numbers before initiating any calls.

Having said that, B2B calls from one business to another are allowed aka, using your office lines to call your prospect’s office line. 

What will get you into trouble is reaching that contact person at their place of work via their personal cell phone.

For your peace of mind, you may want to check state and federal laws for what you can and can’t do. Alternatively, you can outsource your calling needs to a lead generation company that understands and handles all the legality surrounding B2B cold calling.

Podcasting

With 51 percent of Americans tuning into podcasts regularly, this strategy is growing in popularity as a worthwhile marketing enabler.

It does more than increase visibility, Podcasting allows you to share real expertise on specific topics in snackable formats. Plus, the content is scalable, meaning you can repurpose all or some of it for your blog or Twitter and LinkedIn posts.

Top tips include:

  • Understanding your audience. Your listeners most likely juggle listening to your podcast with other things like driving, exercising, riding, etc. Keep your podcasts snackable and informative to ensure your listeners derive true value and come back for more.
  • Help businesses solve challenges. More than 40 percent of senior-level executives and business owners specifically invest time in listening to podcasts. Why do you think this is so? They are looking for effective ways to deal with business challenges. Share stories and experiences that will help them succeed.
  • Establish your brand as an authority. Following on from the above point, listeners come to you for expert insights and deep-level knowledge. If you’re only covering generic tips, you’ll have no differentiating factor and audiences will overlook your podcasts.
  • Don’t do it alone—at least not all the time. Roping in thought leaders and industry analysts means your audiences can benefit from unique perspectives and insights into the subjects that interest them. Your podcasts are likely to reach wider audiences since your guests’ followers may also tune in.

Empathy Marketing

If there’s something the pandemic taught us, it’s the need for empathy.

To move away from hard selling and focus on humanizing our brands so prospects and customers see that we genuinely care and understand their needs.

It breeds trust, makes a positive impact on your brand’s reputation, and increases customer loyalty, translating to better revenues.

Here are some ways to connect with your audience:

  • Shift from hard selling. Yes, you want to make sales, make them soon but consumers can tell when you’re trying to get them to buy. Don’t approach customers with a selling mindset, rather show them how to reach their goals.
  • Listen first. Listen for motivations, triggers, and other clues to help you discern pain points and the prospect’s propensity to purchase. Let your marketing efforts around this.
  • Humanize your brand. Make yourself more approachable by sharing your brand story—how you started out, the challenges you faced, and how you overcame. When people see you’ve dealt with struggles too, you become relatable and easier to connect with.