How Covid-19 has changed marketing and advertising
Covid-19 not only halted operations for many companies around the globe but it has also had a further-reaching effect of changing the way we do business.
Before Covid-19, marketing and advertising budgets were split at roughly 70/30 between digital and traditional marketing. Now, however, Covid-19 has dealt a heavy blow to the publishing industry, which is seen by the many magazines recently going out of print. Companies moving away from print advertising has been coming for some time now, but the global pandemic was the final nail in the coffin.
The effect on e-Commerce in South Africa
While South Africans have lagged behind other nations to adopt e-commerce, Covid-19 forced many to begin buying online. In fact, predictions show that by 2024, 95% of South Africans will be buying online.
One of the biggest e-commerce companies in South Africa claims to have had their best year ever during the festive season of 2019. When lockdown shifted from level 5 to level 4, this company showed record sales and 8 000 new customers registering daily.
With this and many other examples indicating the direction in which consumers are moving, it’s safe to say that to capture their attention your business needs to be advertising online.
But, with the move from traditional to digital marketing, many customers ask me, ‘where do I start?’ My advice is by developing a proper marketing strategy that incorporates digital marketing to harness the new opportunities for customer engagement.
To do this, you need to ask yourself what your business and marketing goal are?
This is where I come in to help you develop a plan that suits your business. We do this by determining SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) goals.
This includes:
- Researching your market and current environment.
- Profiling your customers and develop a persona to target.
- Researching your competitors.
- Developing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis for your business and your competitors’ businesses.
- Determining your competitive advantage.
We also develop strategies to support your marketing goals, such as improving your online presence and looking at ways to improve and support your business goals. By using the 7 Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion, place, people, process and physical evidence, we know that your marketing strategy is more likely to succeed.
When deciding on your tactics, do online research, test ideas and approaches with your customers and staff, and review what works. These tactics become the channels we use to improve your online presence. And to do this, our marketing approach uses the AIDA model.
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