COVID-19 has forced us to adapt to a new lifestyle - overly reliant on digital technologies, and most businesses have made some degree of transformation in a bid to respond to the shift in their customers’ behaviors.
More and more businesses are accelerating their digital transformation plans to get ahead of their competitors in the market because they realize that once people find a more convenient way to do business, it becomes the new normal.
Creating relationships with customers based on relevance has become a top priority for marketers. Is your brand relevant? Is your messaging speaking to the personalized needs and expectations of your customers?
Our team takes a look at how marketing has evolved in a post-COVID world:
Online Shopping - Diversity, Personalization, and Quicker to Market.
As a marketer, you were probably used to a younger, more tech-savvy, and digitally literate customer.
Forced to abandon their preferred in-store shopping habits by government regulations and social distancing, a significant portion of the population made their first-ever e-commerce transaction during the lockdown.
More and more people are forced to adopt digital habits and this is reflected in the increased earnings of Amazon when compared with the same period last year.
As a marketer, the ability to personalize customer journeys and experiences will be of strategic importance to your e-commerce business. Your ability to convert leads to customers will rely on your ability to create even narrower customer segments based on highly specific criteria.
Using the right technology to analyze the behavior of your customers on your website will no longer be a luxury or an option. For starters, customers with special needs will only be able to do business with an e-commerce platform that is fully compliant with WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards and best practices.
Personalization will no longer be a one-time or periodic practice for digital shopping experiences. Building highly personalized landing pages and UX features quicker than ever will be the norm and you need the right CMS that enables you to fulfill this expectation.
Going fast to market will be of paramount importance to your business as rapid revenue recovery will undoubtedly be at the top of your priorities after the disruption and losses caused by the pandemic this past year.
For example, Fitness First was able to launch a multilingual, multisite, e-commerce digital experience in 6 weeks only - fully equipped with all the integrations critical to their business.
Robust and Reliable E-Services
The impact of COVID-19 didn’t just impact our ability to shop online.
Essential services such as online banking, e-bill payment, negotiating insurance policies, remote and distance learning, telemedicine, and obtaining official documents have all witnessed a surge in traffic.
Telemedicine and healthcare may be the obvious sectors to prioritize digital transformation but governments and local authorities are also enhancing their various digital public services to be able to keep up with the traffic and demand caused by the pandemic.
As more people become resigned to social distancing and remotely working from home; digital technologies that enable robust e-service digital experiences have become a convenient way for people seeking to adapt. Even older generations have prioritized bridging the gap in their digital literacy in a bid to be able to benefit from essential digital experiences that directly impact their daily lives.
Robust is the keyword here for marketers.
"A marketer's job is not limited to crafting marketing messages - but to also ensure that relevant value is at the core of every service or product being developed for the market"
Marketing is not limited to messaging, email advertising, and analytics. The most important role of a marketer is to be involved in the development of new or existing products and services - and this includes the essential e-services that people rely on every day.
Is your digital experience delivering on its promised value proposition at all times? Is it secure? Does it maintain accessibility and navigation best practices? Does it cater to every user’s needs? Is voice search an option?
And much more.
Your marketing team must gather, monitor, and analyze the feedback of your customers to ensure that the highest quality standards are being sustained. This means that your IT infrastructure must be up to the task and can support the short and long-term goals set in your digital strategy.
Keeping in mind that it is in our nature to hold on to convenient solutions in our lives, we foresee this particular trend to become a permanent change in user behavior. Your organization must ensure that its e-service platform is capable of sustaining high performance 24/7/365.
Unfortunately, not many businesses and organizations realize the strategic importance of reliable support and maintenance to their growth until they suffer the consequences.
Personalization: Account-based Marketing
80% of people surveyed prefer engaging with businesses that provide them with personalized digital experiences over generic messaging.
With people attempting to sustain a remote work lifestyle from their homes they will be contemplating investing in smart household appliances and spending more time on their smart devices.
Your role as marketers is to capitalize on this shift in behavior as the home becomes where your customers spend most of their time. Take personalization and engagement to the next level by integrating the various touchpoints that your customers may use to interact with your business.
No real digital experience can exist without key and critical integrations to ensure you track the insightful data that can be gathered from all the touchpoints and channels your customers and potential leads use to engage with your website. With the ideal mix of MarTech; you will be able to craft better marketing campaigns, and messaging, more importantly, identify new opportunities for your business to develop richer experiences and offerings for your customers.
As marketers, you have an opportunity to blend effective personalization with localization with the granular detail that enables you to trigger communication based on your target audience's behavior, preferences, and geo-location.
With the right technology, you can trigger messages in the form of emails, tweets, SMS, and even push notifications personalized to every single user’s profile - enabling you to create a lasting impression with your audience based on meaningful and relevant communication.
The pace towards digital transformation and developing engaging digital experiences is accelerating post-COVID, but it should also be coupled with serious intent to make an investment that will define your business and brand going forward.
As marketers, you should be involved throughout the digital transformation planning process to identify the relevant priorities and capabilities of your business.
During the pandemic, we have helped many businesses and international organizations achieve the early stages of effective digital transformation by revamping their digital presence using superior technology in a bid to transform it into a complete digital experience.
If you need assistance, we are more than happy to have a chat about the challenges you may be facing.