How approachable is your customer today?
They say that the post pandemic world has shrunk like never before. Thanks to technology, we are able to connect with our dears across the globe to learn about their wellness. Governments and institutions across the globe are working hard to fight the situation and make life easier for us. Businesses are sweating inside their thinking hats to come up with a better strategy to adapt to the new normal. Remote working, seen as a challenge earlier is becoming feasible with benefits both ways to employees and businesses.
At its early stage, the so-called post pandemic world has seen phenomenal recovery in all aspects across the globe.
Let’s try to think and understand about how the new normal has impacted the ways to reach your customer?
Marketing gurus has always taught us the importance of brand recognition. Previously, businesses spent huge amounts of money in advertising across available mass media to shout out their brand name and create a brand image. Television ads, newspaper ads, magazine ads etc., were very effective in advertising and conversions. The advent of social media has made it even easier and very cost effective to reach more with less. B2B businesses use platforms like Linkedin to engage and talk to potential customers and B2C businesses use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc., to engage with the target audience. While this proved and continue to prove to be a great medium for reaching out to your target audience, what has changed in the post pandemic world in this aspect?
‘Place’ from the marketing mix plays a key role in the success of any product/ business. We’ve seen a lot of successful front runners (Coca-cola, Maruti etc.,) who have rightfully identified and harnessed the potential of making their product available to the TG. Today, online shopping has brought the availability to the hands of the customers anywhere and anytime.
Pandemic has highly impacted the lifestyle of the millennials. Students, professionals and business men and women now have extra time that they have saved from travel to work places because of pandemic influenced work-from-home culture, reduced business hours, online classes etc., Majority of them are convinced that the only go-to place they have to kill this extra luxury of time is the online world, through their hand held devices.
Social media has seen a huge surge in active user base in the post pandemic world. The average time spent on electronic devices like smart phones, tablets and laptops has increased. Businesses have rightly used this traffic to make money. Spend on online advertising through social media platforms have rocketed.
This pandemic has made the online shopping model dearer than before given its obvious advantages of lesser exposure.
It is not just an opportunity for the unicorn online shopping portals like Walmart backed Flipkart, Amazon etc., but also small or new businesses with niche products. “This is our time; we need to push as hard as possible to make the customers confident in buying anything online. The change was already happening but it has now accelerated because of pandemic. It is going to put us at least 4–5 years ahead” said Jeyalakshmi, owner of online traditional crockery store, Jeymar cookware.
The businesses also feel that the social media ad spends are becoming more effective than before in terms of conversions. The shift in strategies to approach customers is not only seen in retail but also businesses in other sectors like real estate that have adapted to the new normal. Technology has majorly helped to nurture this shift. A startup in Coimbatore, India, providing virtual reality based solutions to real estate businesses to help their customers with a virtual site visit has driven more interest recently by the online real estate aggregators.
“The current global scenario has not only engaged more customers but also helped in rapid disruptions in the education sector. Our school ERP product with free online class room module is now selling like hot cake in the market. We have expanded our team only to handle enquiries pouring in from across the country” Said Rosal, a happy Co-Founder of Megam Services, a cloud based school ERP software.
More customers have come closer to the businesses in the pandemic struck world. The new normal has opened a lot of possibilities and opportunities. Businesses must quickly adapt themselves to it and align themselves in the growth path. Invest in online shopping portals, dedicate more man hours towards social media and website handling instead of spending on AI based responses that irritates the customers, enhance the websites and increase the share of digital marketing & SEO in marketing expense charts are some of the must-dos.
We clearly know where the crowd is today. To grow, be very much available at the place where crowd is with your best product and service.