How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Company Survive During a Crisis

With all the risks and restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the digitization of businesses has quickly turned from optional to mandatory. Business owners are asking themselves how they can reach their customers when brick-and-mortar stores are shutting down. They also want to know more about marketing methods that can continue to protect them in future crises. Digital marketing is one solution that they can leverage on not just to retain their customers, but to capture new ones.

What is digital marketing

Digital marketing is a wide range of online services, using various platforms, that can promote your business and ultimately build them into a community of engaged, active customers. It departs from the facetime approach of the traditional shops and yet can complement its effort. It involves attracting your clients digitally into what is called a customer journey, gaining their attention first as a curious visitor, and then building up an online relationship with them steadily. Once they trust your brand, they become more inclined to purchase a product from you.

Digital marketing makes use of internet-based technologies, such as websites, search engines, social media accounts, to webinars and virtual conferences. It also affects hardware as well as software, making smart devices and smartphones indispensable to a marketing campaign. What makes it different from traditional marketing is that it is not confined to physical limitations. Since its onset, companies from the U.S. can and have tapped international customers living on the other side of the world, and vice-versa. Digital marketing can also personalize campaigns and launch specific messages that will resonate with very niche audiences, as opposed to the traditional method which usually relies on a broader cookie-cutter strategy.

These are just a few of the marketing subcategories that can be found under digital marketing:

Social media marketing: Advertising and engaging with your customers usually through conversations in social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

Content marketing: The materials that are sent online are more informative, than promotional. Instead of doing in-your-face advertising, they offer relevant content that the target audience will find very useful. The customers who enjoy them will come back for more.

Email marketing: Consistent but non-intrusive email marketing keeps the customers connected to your brand. It informs them of upcoming promos, events, and other news that they will find interesting. 

Affiliate marketing: Partners, allies, and influencers promote your brand on their sites and social media accounts in return for a certain amount of the revenues that come in.

Search engine optimization (SEO):  Every piece of your content, usually on your website, is optimized to launch your brand to the top of the organic (non-paid) search result rankings. 

eCommerce marketing:  The linchpin of all your digital marketing campaigns if you are a retail company that sells products rather than services. At the end of the day, you want all that awareness and engagement you created to convert your audience into happy customers. eCommerce marketing encourages them to take that one more critical step and proceed with the transaction.

How digital marketing enables your company to survive during a crisis

It lets people know you’re still on the market. Because of the virus, a lot of people are deliberately staying home and limiting outdoor activities–even grocery runs–to stay safe. Digital marketing lets them know that you are still operational, and can provide them the products and services they need. At this time, it is important to let them know you are present and capable of delivering. For example, the restaurants who are still surviving this crisis are those who can do food deliveries to hungry customers. Apps take their orders and then connect with delivery services with riders who bring the food packages right to their doorstep. According to Statista, since the start of the crisis, 23 percent of Americans started to buy online the goods that they normally purchase from traditional stores. 

It removes the guesswork and enables you to understand what your customers really need. Each category of digital marketing comes with its own set of parameters and measurements. The website lets you know how many users clicked on your promo page, and which of them downloaded your ebook.  Through social media sites, your customers will tell you in no uncertain terms what they think of your brand and your service. You can use positive reviews to promote your brand—and make the negative ones a learning experience to improve what you are doing. Analytics can actually analyze your customer’s behavior patterns, and forecast the next item they will want to buy. You can also track which of your customers actually make a purchase, the length of time it took for them to do so, and the content that sweetened the deal. 

Smart use of the metrics can actually help you focus on the campaigns that do bring results. You can then reduce, if not eliminate, the ones that do not work. Remember that your customer is counting every dollar they make or save these days. They will spend only on what they deem essential. The metrics embedded in digital marketing can guide you into crafting relevant content that will make them see that their purchase of your product is a worthy investment. 

It can build communities of potential ambassadors who can represent your brand.  Digital marketing lets you maintain your connection with your customers long after that first purchase. More important, through social media, it can create online groups who are always in constant communication with you. The conversations they foster can build ongoing networking with you, and with their peers. Together, you can maintain and strengthen all the awareness you had built up beforehand. You can answer their questions, provide solutions to their challenges, and fix problems related to your service as soon as they bring them up. 

The customers who believe in your brand can grow to become your supporters. In time, they might even transform into your brand ambassadors. Their recommendations to their friends and family can go beyond the groups. The promotion they deliver is the best kind:  unsolicited, enthusiastic, and authentic. 

During this new  normal, many businesses are looking to the internet to survive. Listrak reports that since the U.S. government declared a state of medical crisis, e-commerce activities, including sales, increased by 40 percent.  At a time of intense economic challenge, digital marketing might prove to be the light at the end of the tunnel.