As the threat of the coronavirus pandemic endangers the people's health, overwhelming challenges also face businesses as they try to navigate the uncharted waters. This unprecedented trying time has forced businesses to struggle against drastic changes such as falling revenues and economic downturn. With the continuous negative impact on businesses, the pandemic prompted them to shift their organizational priorities to reopening the business, rebuilding operations, recovering revenue, and reimagining strategies.
Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing
Marketing your business and its products or services helps you increase your brand awareness and visibility among the consumers. In increasing brand visibility, businesses should utilize all available means and alternatives. This translates to the idea that businesses should invest in both traditional and digital marketing.
Both are effective methods of increasing awareness and visibility, but the main difference between the two would be the medium used in conveying the message. Traditional marketing utilizes print media such as tarpaulins, billboards, magazines, and newspapers; meanwhile, digital marketing uses social media and websites.
Both marketing strategies have their role to play and their effectiveness depends on your target audience.
Digital Marketing during COVID-19 Pandemic
In reaching out to existing and potential clients, and the market as a whole, both traditional and digital marketing plays a role. However, in this unprecedented time where many people are staying at home, traditional marketing materials, such as billboards and print ads, are rendered useless, inefficient, and unseen.
The problem revolving around traditional marketing in this pandemic poses an enormous challenge to all businesses. While this may be true, proactive companies have made quick decisions and have shifted to digital marketing. The proactive response has given these companies a great advantage over growth opportunities by staying alive when competitors have grown silent.
With the almost total disappearance of all physical channels, digital marketing during the COVID-19 has proven itself to be a boon for businesses in increasing brand awareness and visibility. This is mainly because digital marketing is capable of reaching out to people despite the lockdown - a simple reminder for them to know that your business is still alive and capable of offering products and services.
Digital Marketing Post-COVID
Investing in digital marketing during the pandemic has given businesses a head start over those who did not. This head start is one of the indications of how digital marketing can affect businesses in shaping their strategies in the post-pandemic context. Ripple VAs acknowledges the importance of digital marketing and the benefits it brings to businesses. Here is why and how digital marketing affects businesses:
Digital marketing is more cost-efficient. With the priority of companies to bounce back from the pandemic-long falling revenues, businesses will begin to invest more in digital marketing rather than on traditional marketing for them to minimize costs and reallocate the budget to other expenditures.
Digital marketing is more effective. As businesses shift their priorities, customer behavior will also change. With the exponential increase in the number of online users and the lingering anxiety of the customers about physical interaction and contact, digital marketing can effectively and efficiently reach more people compared to traditional marketing.
Digital marketing is more visible. While the revenues of businesses plummeted during the pandemic, the level of online traffic skyrocketed. Businesses harshly struggle to recover revenues, hence establishing brand visibility to attract more customers has become the topmost priority - and digital marketing is an easier way to achieve visibility.
Digital marketing is more interactive. Compared to traditional marketing which does not allow two-way communication, digital marketing is more interactive. It is also much more capable in regaining the faded connection between the customer and company. In pursuit of regaining connection with the market, companies are certain to become more aggressive in digital marketing once we enter the next normal.
Digital marketing is the future. The world is bound to become more technology-oriented and digitized in the future - the pandemic just hastened the process. With the continuous evolution of technology and digital marketing, it becomes easier to siphon off the traffic of search engines and social channels. In the coming months and years, digital marketing becomes imperative and businesses are most likely to be more reliant than ever on digital marketing.
The run-of-the-mill adage “The early bird gets the worm” has never been more true than it is right now as we approach the post-pandemic society. As we prepare ourselves to welcome the post-COVID world, businessmen should start redefining their organization, reimagining their strategies, and investing more in digital marketing.
