Be the brand consumers remember after COVID-19
There is always a new trend in the digital marketing industry, the digital world is saturated with hundreds of articles speaking about, “the latest X trends of 2021.” “The trends to watch for in X.” While some trends come and go, and others continue to grow throughout the years, it is important to be the “trend” that consumers remember for years to come.
Once COVID-19 is over, what was the impact your brand made while marketing during a pandemic? There are still so many unknowns and with so much that has happened during the pandemic, pandemic fatigue started setting in months ago with many consumers and the unknown is exhausting. As humans, we want the ability to control situations as much as possible, but with a global pandemic, there isn’t any controlling the situation.
What are consumers and clients alike searching for from marketing during a pandemic and the most “unprecedented” times. (To stop using that phrase, that was so April 2020.)
1. Be there
Make sure you are making human decisions right now. The pandemic has frozen many in their tracks, and without being able to easily pivot and adapt, they are still overanalyzing their branding and marketing strategies more than “doing.” What are consumers searching for right now?
Help and comfort. In what ways are you able to help navigate this situation with them or for them? What articles are relevant to your industry and target audience without taking you completely off course. At the same time, consumers are searching for a distraction because life is a bit overwhelming right now.
How many times have you felt overwhelmed this year? Think of those moments and what you really needed from companies and others. As a brand, you depend on those consumers, and in a way, they depend on you, so don’t run away from them now. It can be as simple as showing humans, working from home life, relatable content, or the newest product that can help them.
2. Check your brand
It is important to check in with your brand, right now, and consistently during all of this. Is your branding and marketing tone deaf? Have you steered clear of this? Are you steering in a different direction that does not align with your branding? Marketing during a pandemic is hard.
Always put the brand’s integrity first and foremost. This is the brand that loyal customers choose time and time again for a reason. No matter their reasoning, they are here with you, so don’t throw it away. It can be tempting right now for businesses to throw away their why in pursuit of chasing more revenue to make up for a slow year.
Continue to build trust, relationships and make sure to listen.
3. Listen and evaluate
As marketers, this whole situation threw pretty much any branding and marketing campaigns away this year, and with everything else that happened in between, it really changed marketing. Whether we fully understand it or not, it did change marketing, quite possibly forever. While listening to consumers’ pre-pandemic was imperative, the most important thing now is to do this.
What are they saying? Searching for? Calling other brands out for? You can get a feeling for how consumers are engaging with brands overall. It is even more important what you do during a crisis, and how you do it.
Branding is a never ending process in the marketing strategies, but right now, the brands who come out on top are the ones who are working on those three steps above.