Marketing after lockdown

Marketing after lockdown

The pandemic that swept the world in 2020-21 led many governments to introduce restrictions and localised/national lockdowns that affected businesses worldwide; but the most severely affected sectors included live entertainment, leisure, hospitality and non-essential retail. Those that were able to keep trading during this period found themselves with a new problem; How do you reach and engage your customers in the middle of an international crisis, when many businesses are slowing down operations and furloughing staff? Many found themselves in a position where their only way to effectively reach customers was through improving and maximising their online presence. As a result, we saw a shift in techniques and priorities that changed marketing for the better.

In this blog, we discuss the techniques that not only proved to be crucial throughout the pandemic but continue to provide great results.

 

Utilising Social Media

During the pandemic, it was important to constantly review your social media as customers took to online platforms to contact and interact with companies.
From this, we learned that it’s more likely that your customers and prospects will contact you through these means if they are available and up to date. As lockdown restrictions continue to relax, it’s likely that you will need to change any automated messages that you send out to ensure they are relevant to the current circumstances.

Ask;

  • Does this message comply with government guidelines?
  • Can we improve our bio, and do we need to update company details?
  • Can we update our graphics to suit the current situation?

 

Reviewing and Refreshing your Website

Thanks to the pandemic, more companies realized that having an up to date website is crucial to informing your possible leads about what you can offer.

Making sure that your website is up to date with your current products, services, and activities ensures that your customers and prospects know what you can offer them. It also tells them that your company is active, responsible and organised.

 

Things to check include;

  • Blog Posts – Are you uploading regularly? Can you post more? Staying active shows your customers and prospects that your company is still in business and helps towards the Educate phase of the buyer’s journey
  • Page content and Layout – Is the content of your website easy to digest and navigate?
  • SEO – This should go without saying, but Search Engine Optimisation is crucial to ensuring that your customers and future prospects can find you. If you haven’t kept up to date with the changes to google searches, it’s likely that your SEO needs to be updated.
  • Ask yourself;
    • Is our SEO up to date?
    • Could it be improved?
  • Calls to Action – Ensure your content has Calls to Action that tell your prospects to contact you, to subscribe to your newsletter etc.
  • Newsletters – Now that your customers and prospects are all online, having a newsletter is a great way to keep them up to date with your company and what it is doing.
  • Case Studies – In this time of uncertainty, case studies can provide valuable information and reassurance to your prospects.
  • Internal Links – Make sure that your internal links are still active. Dead links can lead to frustration, and make it more difficult for customers and prospects to navigate your site.

 

Create new content

Adding new content to your website can help to keep your audience engaged and happy. Setting up a blog schedule of related content will help educate your prospects and show that your company is active. If you are wanting to improve your content writing, take a look at our blog for 5 steps to better content writing for your website.

If your team is small, or you can’t push out as much content as you would like, consider guest blogging. Not only does this allow you to connect with other businesses, it also allows them to share their knowledge on your website, cuts down on your workload, and brings a new perspective to the topic.

 

About Inflowing

Inflowing is a B2B marketing agency. We help B2B organisations do meaningful things with marketing – whether that’s getting more leads, more visibility, or supporting their sales teams.

We’re an experienced team of marketers with an incredibly strong background in B2B. To learn more about B2B and improving your marketing, check out our other blogs or get in touch.