The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the face of conventional business forever. Multiple lockdowns across the globe have led to significant changes in consumer behavior. Companies need to adapt their sales, marketing, and customer service to keep up with changing consumer demands in the new normal.
Content marketing, in particular, is a process that companies need to re-strategize in order to elevate a brand in the post-Covid business landscape.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing content like blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, social media posts, and more through various online channels. The experts at Elite Digital Agency can assist you with your content marketing to generate interest in your brand’s products and services and increase sales.
According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 94% of content marketers revised their strategies in 2020 in the aftermath of the pandemic. Let’s look at some ways to tweak your content marketing campaign to be most effective in the new normal:
1. Reevaluate Your Goals
One of the first steps while drafting a content strategy is identifying your goals. For example, your business may have a goal to sell as many VoIP and PBX solutions as possible. One of your content goals may have been to boost conversions through PPCs. However, in the aftermath of the pandemic, it’s essential for you to reevaluate your earlier goals.
You need to assess whether you’re getting the same results from PPCs as before and whether you can justify this marketing spend in the current scenario.
Some companies have increased their social media ad spends post-Covid. According to a recent survey, 42% of consumers admit spending more time on social media since the outbreak of the pandemic. Consumer goods and food delivery businesses in particular benefit from social media marketing. So it makes sense for these companies to boost their social media spending.
Once you have assessed your goals and their relevance in the present day, you can start redefining them to create a content strategy tailored to the new normal.
2. Narrow Your Focus
Businesses have a 60% to 70% chance of selling to existing customers and only between 5% and 20% with new customers. With this in mind, you should narrow your marketing focus to target specific groups that you know will be more profitable. Generic or broad-spectrum content marketing is not the best approach at this time.
Instead, focus on tailoring your content marketing campaign to appeal to existing customers. For example, if your company sells contact center analytics software, using affiliate marketing or PPCs to target new customers may not work in the present market. Your best bet would be to reach out to your existing clientele through blogs, podcasts, and videos outlining the solution your software provides to their specific needs.
Remember, this is a time-specific approach. Therefore, when economies open up again in the future, you should naturally focus on acquiring new leads.
2. Focus on Your Blog
Blogs are an excellent way of engaging both new and existing customers and a tool that all successful businesses should have in their marketing arsenal. Blogs let you introduce and talk about your products and their position in your domain. They are also an excellent platform for a more personal engagement with customers.
Did you know, according to HubSpot, updating old blog posts with new images and content can increase your organic traffic by 106%? In the present climate, blogs are a great way to provide positive reinforcement to customers. The idea is to provide high-quality content consistently. From an SEO perspective, this boosts dwell time and reduces bounce rate. More importantly, providing valuable content builds brand loyalty.
3. Optimize Social Media
As mentioned earlier in this article, several companies have increased their social media ad spending in the aftermath of the pandemic following a surge in global social media use. Paid advertising is just one of the marketing tools on social media platforms.
A great way to use your social media platform is to create an online community of customers. This could be a Facebook page or group where you share regular posts and updates, and customers can share feedback and reviews.
For example, you sell gardening tools online and have a Facebook business page. You can share posts on gardening tips and encourage customers to share theirs. You can also provide links to your blog. If you set up a daily posting schedule, it keeps customers engaged with something that is of value.
So whether it’s ideas on landscaping or a retail wholesales debate on buying supplies, your social media page can be a very useful platform for a more personalized content marketing campaign.
4. Optimize Email Marketing
In the aftermath of the pandemic, we have all likely received at least a few company emails with messages of being ‘in this together’ and ‘coming out on top’. While there’s nothing wrong with these reassurances, they’ve lost their appeal because of the sheer volume of such near-identical emails flooding our inboxes.
Email is a preferred content marketing choice for marketers across the board. In 2020, the average open rate for emails was 18%. So it’s worthwhile to use email marketing for a meaningful engagement with your customers. Ideally, you should use a mix of promotional and checking-up emails.
For the latter, remember that you want to come across as caring and sensitive but want to avoid sounding like another run-of-the-mill morale-boosting email. You can also use teasers in your email. This could be a short sneak peek into your latest offers or even the topic of your most recent blog post.
For example, if your latest blog post is on how to set kpis for affiliate programs, your email could open with this question and then guide the recipient to click on the link to read the full blog post.
5. Explore Video Content
It’s no surprise that video is the most effective form of content. Videos can be used for anything from product demos to virtual tours. For example, you sell business phone systems and want an effective way to demonstrate how three-way calling works. An informative video can do the job better than any amount of text.
Videos are a hugely successful content marketing tool, particularly in the present digital landscape with people spending more time online than ever before. Therefore, they are an essential part of a successful content marketing campaign.
6. Invest in Content Asset Creation
A vital aspect of a content marketing campaign is the actual creation of content. This takes time and planning. In the past, you may not have had the time. But the slow pace of the current environment is ideal for building your content asset portfolio. This could be anything from whitepapers and blogs to infographics, videos, podcasts, and more.
Having a well-stocked content inventory facilitates your marketing efforts and saves you time in the long run. The consumer market is a dynamic and fast-changing one. You can use real-time insights from your web traffic at any time to make data driven decisions about your marketing campaigns. Ready content makes your job easier.
Our Learning
Businesses are in a transformative stage in this new normal. They have to reevaluate their goals and growth targets in keeping with the situation around the world, and this is how business priorities changed pre and post-Covid. As economies open up, traditional ways of doing business will return, but these evolving processes in content marketing are here to stay.
About the Author
Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud PBX system and unified communications system that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways. Here is her LinkedIn.
