Is this right time to spend on marketing and promotion of your brand due to coronavirus in the world?
My short answer to this is YES!
Here is the long answer with reasons below. I need you to check them out!
This article does not mean I am not human, not talking about coronavirus and does not think for people etc. Follow parhley.com and see my work on updating on coronavirus.
Please take all precautionary measures to stay away from deadly virus. #WashHands #KeepSocialDistance #AvoidUnnecessaryRoaming #EatHealthy
There are 2 things in this question, if you are a marketer you may have to say the same thing as me.
One is Opportunity and other one is Negative Branding. Well this is the best time for online/digital marketing for every business, it is just the strategy how you plan it.
It totally depends on business owners and marketing department of the business whether they take this as an opportunity or fail to make a good impression on the customer.
I will discuss above keeping following things in mind;
- People are sitting at home.
- Purchasing power is less.
- Customer is almost online every minute or hour.
- Educational institutes, malls, restaurants, and offices are shut down for God knows how many days.
- Social gatherings are discouraged by doctors, government officials.
How is this opportunity to the businesses;
If you own an online business/freelancer or you own a physical store/shop these are top reasons why you should start branding your businesses online now;
- Your customer is online and continuously browsing different things on the internet.
- He will read every message even if it is spam, SMS marketing.
- If you are writing something about coronavirus or covid19
Example: You have written a detailed post on what is coronavirus and what are precautions or how to save yourself from being isolated in hospital than staying at home, your customer will share your post and if he is not following you already on social media s/he will follow too, to stay updated as you wrote what s/he is looking for. - Sharing will not be end here if you manage good content, they will surely hit your website for once which will eventually generate a lead.
- If you have digital product this is the best time to distribute your products among your customers on discount.
- Also being a customer I am looking forward to my favorite brands eg clothing or food to come up with an idea of some code of discount, so when this is all over I would rush there and grab my favorite shirt or eat my favorite dish. I am talking about up to 70-90% discount.
- If your ad or information you share is catchy and always remember able, trust me your customer will always remember you and recommend it to family and friends.
- Further, I know many of us go to shops when they need a shirt but this is not happening in near future so start planning it now.
I remember there was this startup which failed or could not come up, what they did was if you order a shirt they used to bring all sizes to overcome the size issue and also you may be interested to buy multiple one for you and one for younger brother. This thing will eventually come.
Go Digital before you get kicked out of marketing like Nokia did back in time when android was launched:
Nokia ignored the launch of android, Samsung and other brands opted for it and kicked Nokia out of market. Nokia was leading the market but see what happened to Nokia, rarely people prefer it.
Trust me this is the best time when you can shift everything online, be it your support, sales or any service. After this epidemic ends, people will become lazy enough that they will no longer visit your shops in malls rather than order them online.
- If you are school owner prefer online classes. If you provide hardware of physical products open an online store, brick and motor is better than just the brick concept.
Let us help you to become next big brand online, we design Websites, Social Media Marketing, Content Writing and Graphic Designing (logo, social media posts etc).
This is the exactly right time to spend on marketing and promotion of your brand.
Example of how a property website is owning the internet these days;
Here I will give you an example of graana.com.
We cannot go and visit the site, plot or house but their creative team has come up with some amazing videos of how they clean their office or hot to greet others in this time where shaking is strictly prohibited.
Although they cannot meet you in person but they are continuously connected with with their existing and potential customers via internet and videos.
Another example from banking sector here:
Here I will give you an example of banks in Pakistan, as we all know we avoid online banking and many banks have failed to shift majority of the customer to online, most of us prefer cash rather go online.
Many banks have grabbed this opportunity to inform customers how to use online banking, this will result positive for many banks.
How marketing in this situation can cause negative branding of the businesses;
In the current situation of corona where every one is saying to stay isolated, keep social distance and you keep discussing your products or services on social media platforms or you giving discounts if customer visits your outlet, trust me people will not love the idea and that is how you can create negative branding.
What channels you should use to market your product and how to do it;
Here are the top recommended channels to market now before it gets too late;
- YouTube (What would you do if you know you are on long vacations, watch videos yea? so most of your potential customers watching free movies because they cannot find them on netflix)
- Twitter (A hub of trends, if you think you are missing something, twitter is the place where you can find trends.)
- Facebook (It just completes life.)
- Google (It is where people search for when they need something, keywords you know.)
- Instagram (Scrolling up and down is my favorite activity on Instagram)
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By; Imran
