As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, most if not all industries across the board are having to reinvent themselves to cope with the rapid changes in the consumer landscape in unexpected ways.

New normal of digital marketing in ThailandRetrieved from Future of CEE

Apparently, many are reassessing their digital marketing strategy and coping its budgets in light of the uncertain economic situation. Where possible, brands that are able to do so can benefit from taking this time as an opportunity to strategize and plan for the future, rather than putting the brakes on.

With that being said, we as a digital marketing agency, wanted to share new digital marketing trends that will help marketers or business owners like you treading these uncharted waters in the “new normal” business condition.

You need to future-proof your digital marketing strategy. It needs to be reviewed from time to time to see what works for you and what doesn’t. We believe this can help you optimize it to get the best results possible during this new normal of the digital marketing world.

Here are 6 new digital marketing trends you need to know now before you reinvent your strategy for the new normal of digital marketing

1. Changing behavior in web usage
   Currently, everyone is encouraged to stay at home, and no one actually knows how long this pandemic will last for. While consumers are spending more and more time online, web usage increased over 19% between January and March and this indicates that the way people use the internet is changing.

Paid Search

When it comes to online shopping, Google reports that users typically spend a lot of time browsing but end up with a few conversions being made during the time when the pandemic hit hard: travel for example has been hit hard since no one is encouraged or allowed to travel during that time. While searches for pajamas, home gaming, and entertainment are skyrocketing on the other hand.

As of the current situation, the pandemic seems to get better in different countries and people started to get excited about traveling again. With that being said, there is a higher chance of conversions being made (bookings) by the users as they are now allowed to travel again after a long period of self-quarantine at home.

So, marketers should be aware of the current situation and keeping an eye out for a volume of each search keyword in relation to the given situation.

Paid Social Media

The research by GlobalWebIndex has found that all the generations are turning to social media to “stay connected” during quarantine since the crisis has started. It shows a 27% increase in social media use among Gen Z, 30% among Millennials, 29% among Gen X, and 15% among Boomers.

The CPCs (cost-per-click) and CPMs (cost-per-thousand) have dropped across Facebook advertising portfolios due to less competition for ad space. With the fact that the ads are cheaper and people still online shopping, a study by Mckinsey shows that people spend 14% more than usual on groceries and 1% more on household supplies, and 3% more on home entertainment.

As a marketer, it is your job to ensure that your business has the ability to cope with your consumer’s demand for goods and services while being able to control the budget of the ads that you’re currently focusing on.

2. A new way of communication!
   Brand awareness is something that you as a marketer or any business owner cannot neglect. While the current situation seems to get better, it is now a great opportunity to reach out and start talking with your target audience.

But first, it is wise that you identify “what do your customers want to see from your brand?” for the new normal. As the world has changed to a new normal, what is the new normal about your brand that you can offer that your customers will get the most benefit from? And how do you deliver this message?

Forrester research suggests that consumers are expecting something new, exciting things to fill the time freed up by social distancing and self-quarantine, and they are now ready to be messaged to.

This is one step further recommendation that we’ve given you here. Now, it is all about what you can come up with that can attract their interest and get them hooked to your brand.

An extra tip here…

To sustain brand awareness, many B2C brands are ramping up their email marketing by sending positive news into their consumers' inboxes (animal videos/neighbors singing from their balconies).

We are not saying this is a bad way of doing it but you need to tread carefully. People are emotionally exhausted. With that said, you want to give only information that you think it is truly useful to your customers.

3. Allocate your advertising budget to something different
   During the time of the pandemic, it’s a widespread problem that you’re seeing lower conversion rates, and you could’ve cut down or thought of pausing your budgets for direct-response channels like PPC or Facebook.

But before you do, think of what are the keys to increase your chances of survival during the crisis?

Re-allocating these budgets into channels with longer-term pay-offs, this could be a great move for the new normal future success. CRO and SEO.

CRO (Conversion rate optimization): focusing on increasing conversions on your website

Here are some things to get started with:

If you’re currently pulling back paid advertising, you will have a budget to test variations of website pages to see which pages have the highest organic traffic.

Be more creative with your landing pages and ads, and you could try switching holiday messaging to home-context phrasing.

While there are changes in customer behavior, take some time to do deep solid user research by gathering all the feedback from users. This way you will understand the actual needs and how to leverage this as a part of a revised messaging strategy for the new normal.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): focusing on ultimately driving traffic to the website which could lead to more sales.

It is wise to take this opportunity to build your long term SEO strategy. If your landing pages currently focus on maximizing conversion, you could now focus on creating content that is educational and beneficial to your audience for future remarketing opportunities to convert them into customers further down the road.

SEO opportunities you could focus on right now during the new normal:

Technical SEO: Does your site is optimized to have the ability to be crawled and indexed by search engines?
Landing page optimization: Even your site is indexed, but are there any opportunities to focus on improving your rankings?
Keyword research: what is the type of content your audience is currently consuming. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and try to think about what keywords you will search for in order to find the content that you are creating.
Landing page creation: Once you have done your keyword research, now it's time to turn them into high-quality content that your audience will want to consume.

4. Take a look around and take inspiration from others during this crisis
   While all the mentioned above are all about optimizing your internal strategy, now it’s time to look at other businesses that are pivoting and innovating, even those outside of your industry.

Some companies are able to find ingenious ways of helping in the fight against the virus.

For instance, various alcoholic beverages such as BrewDog have been using their distilleries to make hand sanitizer, whilst Formula 1 teams Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren, and Williams have put their factories to work making ventilators.

So…

Whatever happens during the new normal, you should know your capabilities and stay creative, and ensure that your brand contributes to helping out in this situation. Not only does it help with your business, but also the situation at large.

This seems to be a slow process of strategy, but when the crisis is over you want the top of mind for your customers. Remember that people will remember the brands that put their customers first.