The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way that we’ll live our lives for good. Things will get better at some point – hopefully sooner than later – and life will settle into a new normal, but we’ll be changed for good.
At Avenir Thinking, we’re confident that our growing family of clients will get through all of this, and many will come out stronger than ever. Why are we so sure? Because smart businesses are laser focused on digital marketing right now. As soon as the ‘stay at home’ order was announced, our inboxes were lighting up with requests to act fast – adding COVID-19 statements, crafting press releases, and developing new digital tools to adapt to a new reality.
Digital marketing is more important now than ever before. Here’s why:
It puts you in a good place once all of this is over
Marketing is a long game, measured over months and years, not days. Investing in marketing consistently over the long haul puts your business in a better position to succeed when the current crisis is finally over. Many of our clients are taking this wonderful extra time to work on “deferred marketing maintenance” that they never seem to have time to get to when business is booming. So we’ve been busy helping write email drip campaign content, launching new websites, working on those SEO projects that always get put on the back burner, and pulling the trigger on some creative social media posts for our clients to reach their fans while they’re stuck at home scrolling through their feeds.
We aren’t sure when things will go back to normal, but there’s sure to be plenty of pent up demand once it does, and we want our clients to be ready to regroup and rebuild.
It helps with reputation management
Now, more than ever, brand and reputation are defined by how you’re perceived online. This is even more true if you plan to do an entire rebrand once we’ve come out on the other side of COVID and all of its societal effects. Whether you’re expecting to serve the same customers you’ve had for years or you hope to branch out into a new target market, your customers are just a Google search away from finding out everything there is to know about you. So make sure they see the latest and greatest pictures of you and your business…not those pre-remodel pictures and old profile pics.
Digital marketing is just marketing
Over the last fifteen years or so, with the rise of blogging, social networking and content creation, digital marketing has rapidly become the new norm. In the old days, marketers would interrupt people with advertisements; Now, we bring customers to us by providing content that they’re actively searching for. This means that “digital marketing” has rapidly just become “marketing,” and that’s even truer now that old school methods like networking and trade shows are no longer an option. So don’t be afraid to dive deep into digital marketing! Whether you’re a tech geek or a Y2K20 technophobe, we’ll be your guide.
If you don’t take part, you’ll get left behind
If you’re not using digital marketing within your business, you can bet that your competitors are using it to their advantage. This is even more relevant today, because while you’re sitting around and waiting for work to come in, they could be proactively creating content that caters to social networking sites and search engines. And when it becomes a choice between purchasing from your competitor that has killer content or from your company with no digital marketing presence, who do you think customers are going to pick?
These are just a few of the reasons why digital marketing is increasingly important in the COVID-19 crisis, but they should be enough to show that the field still has a lot to offer to business owners, even in these trying times.
Now, we want to hear from you. Be sure to reach out to us on social media @avenirthinking or chat in on our website to let us know how digital marketing has helped your business to cope with coronavirus. We look forward to hearing from you!
