The company they took into this pandemic is much different from the company that will emerge on the other side for many business owners. From both an operational and marketing perspective, companies have had to make many significant shifts in how they function over the last several months. Below are a few tips that may provide insight into ways a business can redefine their marketing strategies in the wake of COVID-19.

Review and Update Your Buyer Personas

A buyer persona represents a business’s ideal customer based on market research and real data about their existing customers. When creating a buyer persona, things like demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals are considered. The buyer personas a business has created during pre-pandemic operations have most likely changed. The problems, concerns, interests, and feelings of current and potential customers have all been impacted by the pandemic, social distancing, and stay-at-home orders. Businesses need to avoid assuming their ideal target audience of today is the same as the one they had identified pre-COVID. It is important to review and update current personas while focusing on discovering any new personals that the business may not have considered before. This can be done by meeting with sales and customer service teams to gather their feedback based on real conversations they are having with business prospects and customers. Going back to the original steps of creating a buyer persona, such as considering changes in demographics and buying patters, to update personas can be helpful as well.

Enhance Digital Marketing Intelligence

As the market begins to recover, new consumer behaviors and trends will start to appear. Some of these may be due to changes in business operations brought about by COVID-19, whereas others may occur as consumers attempt to revert back to how things were pre-COVID. As these trends develop, businesses must take the time to monitor the marketing trends in the market and industry and use this intelligence to detect new consumer patterns and business opportunities. If you are unsure where to start, consider contacting a marketing and design expert like Bianca Frank Design in Anchorage, Alaska. We can help your business develop the tools necessary to gather essential analytics related to your website and social media efforts. We can also give some perspective in changes you can make to your digital marketing strategy to help you capitalize on changing trends.

Get to Know the Current (or New) Competition Online

Due to the pandemic, it is realistic to expect the competitor landscape has changed. Some competitors may have disappeared, some may have reduced their marketing activities, some may have debuted new products and services, and some new competitors may have arrived in the market. For these reasons, now is the time to conduct a new competitive analysis as part of updating a digital marketing strategy. There are many online tools available to help you with this, or if you are unsure, you can always contact a trusted professional.

Validate Why the Business is different Within the Market

So much has changed in today’s business market due to the pandemic. Therefore, what a business used to use to make them stand apart from their competitors may not be a key differentiation anymore. It can be beneficial for a business to track their website visitors and compare their current user patterns to a data set before the pandemic to see what, if anything, has changed. Or, consider conducting a website audit to help identify any new search habits or patterns that should be considered as part of a broader marketing strategy.

Redefine Business Goals

Before COVID, most businesses have established targeted and specific goals. However, these may have changed significantly over the last few months. Now is the time to review the organization’s original goals and make sure they are still valid and meaningful. In some cases, it may be necessary to add new goals to help the business recover from any losses sustained due to the pandemic. Remember that it is essential to update goal conversions in Google Analytics to reflect any changes made to website goals to ensure accurate tracking. If this is something your business needs assistance with, contact Bianca Frank Design for help with this any other SEO needs.

Consider Revising the Marketing Content Mix

During the pandemic, consumers have begun to spend more time online and on social media than ever before. As this occurs, it is necessary to ensure the business website provides engaging content for consumers to view. Consider adding items to the business website such as a video, more animations, webinars, or interactive tutorials to enhance the overall content mix.

Identify Key Paid Advertising Channels

If the business’s primary advertising channels included Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at the beginning of the year (pre-pandemic), these would most likely continue to be part of the primary digital media mix. However, other channels may have surfaced since COVID-19 that might be beneficial to investigate and test within the business market.

Invest in Organic Traffic and SEO

SEO or search engine optimization enables a business to generate a constant stream of organic traffic to their website. Many businesses with the best website rankings have a clear understanding of SEO optimization; however, this was not always the case. In many cases, businesses turn to web marketing professionals like Bianca Frank Design to assist in the creation of more optimized websites. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to get organic or unpaid traffic from a search engine results page. These organic results are those results that come from somebody entering search terms into a search field and finding your website as a result of their search. They do not come from paid or sponsored advertisements on a search engine page. Companies who were successfully generating organic traffic before the pandemic and who continued to invest in SEO throughout the pandemic were less likely to see a significant drop off in their website visitors and online leads even if they happened to reduce the amount they spent on paid advertising. You can learn more about SEO optimization through online courses and webinars as well.

Leverage Existing Customer Databases

For businesses of any size, their database of prospects and customers is their most valuable asset. To leverage it correctly, a marketing automation solution that includes a strong CRM (client relationship management system) and a clearly defined email marketing strategy are essential. Growing and enhancing the database requires more than merely sending out emails in a sporadic way. It requires mapping out a plan that leverages the advantages of automation to send current and potential customers timely and relevant communications that encourage them to take action. The end goal of these communications is, of course, to generate sales. If further insight into effective database management could benefit your business, contact Bianca Frank Design with your questions.

Build a Dashboard and View It Daily

As online marketing grows in popularity, so do the sheer number of metrics across the businesses’ digital strategy that need to be monitored. The best and most efficient way to stay on top of them is to create a dashboard that pulls all of the top key performance indicators together into one place to view simultaneously. This dashboard can serve as the one-stop-shop window to all of the essential analytics that are needed to make critical business decisions. Many different tools can be used to create this dashboard in house, or you can look to the web marketing and data analysis services of Bianca Frank Design in Anchorage, Alaska.

Redefining business marketing strategies during COVID-19 is, without a doubt, complicated. Above are several key elements a business can address to help maintain its market presence. Some of the essential factors for success in this area lie with SEO and data analytics. Understanding and properly utilizing both data analytics and search engine optimization can be almost as challenging as mastering a foreign language. This is often something business owners do not have the time to do while focusing on day to day business operations. Allowing a professional to assist with this essential business function can help a business better find and understand growth areas.