Beating the Pandemic with a New-Age Digital Marketing Strategy

Beating All Odds Through Digital

The COVID-19 has left all brands confused and worried regarding marketing activities with the lockdown in place. Going digital is a great way to stay connected with your audience at this time, not only to market your offerings and drive online traffic but also to engage with your audience on a human level by offering them quirky, lighthearted, and emotionally engaging content. Let’s have a look at some of the unique trends of the week we observed revolving around digital - Digital ‘Mauke Pe Chauka’

• The film industry is undoubtedly one of the severely impacted entertainment industries amid the pandemic. Cinemas have been shut and will continue to be so for an indefinite period of time, which just spells bad news. However, with the growing relevance of OTT streaming platforms, digital may just be the way to go for the film industry. Direct to home releases could be the norm going forward with the OTT platforms serving as the new giants of entertainment.
• SEO - Search Engine Optimization - is a critical component of any digital marketing strategy. In a period where target audiences are spending more and more time on their devices, their usage of search engines is bound to increase as well. Brands must strive to adopt new-age SEO practices in order to ensure visibility. You could start with updating your schema & add monitoring of search demand & social media mentions while planning for SEO.

Learning On LinkedIn  With extra time to reskill and upskill one’s capabilities, the popularity of online certifications and courses has shot up amid the lockdown. One of the popular learning platforms facilitating this process is LinkedIn Learning. Here are some key points and trends observed recently - 

• Upskilling activities have been adopted across different verticals and departments of organizations, with course material available for nearly every subject or domain. It is estimated that sales, purchase, operations, health-care services, and administrative employees had the most significant interest in these LinkedIn Learning courses.
• What’s intriguing is that the inclination towards online learning is not limited to the corporate world. It was observed that government employees, as well as students pursuing their higher education, witnessed sharp increases of 85% and 67% respectively.
• With new working norms in place, courses like ‘Time Management: WFH’ were among the most popular learning modules on a global scale. This shows that individuals are keen to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and are looking at ways to strike the ideal work-life balance.

Ready, Strategize, Go

• Strategize - The post-COVID-19 scenario is going to lead to changed consumer behaviour, different spending habits, and new laws of demand & supply. Redesigning thinking and strategies at user-centric level keeping the new normal in mind will be critical. The pandemic has brought about the need for brands to connect with their audiences on a more human and personal level. Helping individuals identify with brands with stellar storytelling and humanising content is a great way to engage them positively.

• Reach The At-Home Audience - With a strict lockdown in place - people have more time on their hands to browse digital platforms. Social media platforms are obvious beneficiaries, however, even OTT & gaming platforms have seen huge spikes in activity.

• Campaigns - Now is the perfect time to run engaging and fun campaigns to keep your target audience in the loop. Business activity may be declining across a plethora of industries but now is the time to build and maintain relationships way beyond commercial transactions through social media campaigns.

• Adapt Where Needed - There are new technological innovations springing up nearly every day which can be used to drive your marketing strategies or campaigns. For example, interaction with consumers through Whatsapp Business API accounts or even website/application chatbots are a great way to curb worries and questions of your users.

Lets Talk Tik-Tok

• Platforms like Instagram and Youtube have been the popular domains encouraging influencer marketing, however, until very recently, there was a new player in the market - Tiktok. The rise and popularity of Tik-Tok as a content creation, as well as a content consumption platform in India, has been well-documented. India is the biggest driver of TikTok installs, generating a staggering 611 million downloads - a massive 30.3% of the total downloads across the globe.
• With such a large audience, brands must look at it as opportunity to interact with users on the platform through influencers or even create their own unique content to grab attention.
• Collaborating with specialists in the field is a great way to kickstart a brand journey on TikTok as this guarantees stellar co-created content which can be cross-shared on both the creator’s account as well as the brand’s account.

TikTok Insider Here are some more key figures and facts highlighting the role played by TikTok as an entertainment platform nowadays - 

• 38 minutes - the average time a user spends on TikTok on mobile
• 350 Billion average monthly video views
• Nearly 44% of the users are in the age group of 18-24 year
• Around 11% of the users are in the age group of 35-44 year
• Almost 10% of the users are in the age group of 25-34 year
• 1 of every 3 users is likely to participate in a #Hashtag challenge

ARM Worldwide Co-Founder, Honey Singh, also threw some light on the popularity of TikTok here Digital platforms are so widespread and popular now, it is imperative to stay up-to-date with new developments and innovations elevating their uses and see how you reach business goals and objectives. Now is the time to embrace digital as the essential cog of your marketing activities, if you hadn’t already!