With the advent of COVID-19 and the seeming absence of a clear timeframe for its end, many companies worldwide have since begun to look for all the best, available routes to take to mitigate its effect. It can even be argued that they have no other choice but to do so considering the severe limitations the coronavirus crisis placed on society as a whole.
Make no mistake, digital marketing has been affected by the crisis as well. However, it has since become a valuable option for a lot of companies to weather the storm, so to speak. It offers plenty of solutions, after all, that will allow businesses to still maintain a satisfactory level of operation. Digital-native industries obviously readily enjoy the boons of a completely digital approach to marketing.
However, this is not the case for a lot of SMEs, especially those that have shunned digital marketing before. It is only now that they will fully realize the importance of digital marketing – if they hadn’t already.
How Digital Marketing Bridges the Gaps Formed by COVID-19
The mere fact that it is marketing that is fully digital or online in nature readily underscores its value. As long as anyone has internet access (and pretty much most of the modern, civilized world’s citizens do have it, thankfully), they can be reached by anyone conducting a digital marketing campaign.
What’s good is that it has since developed to a more advanced industry before the coronavirus struck. Now, companies have the option to partner with a B2B digital marketing agency that will be able to take care of all their digital marketing needs and allow them to quickly adapt to what the field normally demands from marketers in order to find success.
For example, an option like an integrated digital marketing campaign is often now offered by digital marketing agencies. This kind of campaign is like a bundle of every process involved in digital marketing. It can include doing social media marketing, advertising, email and content marketing for a specific business instead of each one being done separately. Most of the time, it is done to share a message that will resonate with the target audience and includes the promotion of the services or products offered by the company.
This allows businesses to acquire leads that will smoothly convert into loyal customers over time. As you can see, all of these do not need the planning and organization of events for promoting purposes nor are there any kinds of contact involved in the activity. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Digital Marketing Encourages Businesses to Adapt to What Works (and Discover Plenty of Benefits in the Process)
If the standard procedure for lead acquisition in your industry was face-to-face meetings over lunch or dinner in the past, that is definitely no longer an option in these dire times. Fortunately, digital marketing has plenty of channels and tools which it can rely on to ensure optimal communication with zero physical contact. Just think of social media platforms that readily offer solutions to this, as well as the hundreds of communication apps out there like Viber and Whatsapp, to cite a few reliable platforms.
The same goes for the team management aspect of your business. You can always rely on Slack for this or any other app available that will help you track the performance of your employees, generate reports daily, and collaborate with relative ease. All of these capabilities and technologies overlap with the fundamental digital marketing process. We haven’t even touched on the automation tools used by certain agencies to make their campaigns more efficient.
That said, here are, more or less, the benefits that digital marketing can provide to business owners and why they are especially amenable to the current situation practically the majority of people are facing:
- Digital marketing strategies, even the most comprehensive and sophisticated, can be planned in the comfort of your home. You can do all the communication and collaboration with your team as long as a solid WFH is set up. Most of the time, digital marketing agencies will be more than willing to assist you with this should you need help with it.
- It is also far more efficient in that it gives you plenty of time to invest to optimize your strategy. You don’t have to be travelling anywhere, after all, to go to meetings or go to your office every day, leaving you more time to research your target customers and in studying the approaches that have worked in the past. It leaves plenty of time for education, in short, which is necessary if you are still trying to grasp online marketing.
These are but some of the undeniable advantages you, as a business owner, can gain from your entry into digital marketing. With the days of hand-shaking long gone, will you still willingly ignore an effective alternative readily available to you?
The Key Lies in Adapting to This New (Hopefully Temporary) Normal
And, of course, this takes a willingness to learn on the part of the owner. Surely, if faced with no other option, any business owner will be willing to exert all his effort and resources to help his company stay afloat during this very serious crisis?
Even if we are all hoping that this setup will only be short-lived, we ultimately encourage you to go all the way with making sure that you conduct your shift to digital marketing as tactically as you would execute a major company move. It is not without its long-term perks, after all, which thousands of companies and online marketing agencies can readily attest.
Conclusion
That our technology has evolved up to a point wherein we can conduct smooth and efficient digital marketing can be considered as nothing short of a miracle. It serves as a prevailing vestige of hope for even fledgling businesses out there that are positioned more precariously than most enterprises during this crisis.
That fact alone is a comforting thought in these highly anxious, uncertain times. To not make the most of the opportunity it provides, assuming digital marketing is suitable for your niche, can be equated to suicide for most companies faced with the seemingly relentless, suffocating threat of this virus.