The past year has been challenging for businesses, as operations of all sizes and types and around the country have had to modify their marketing practices in order to address the sales barriers created by the pandemic. That being said, things are beginning to look up again and cities are reopening to business as usual.
As a result, companies are looking ahead to Q3 with the awareness they need to pivot their marketing practices yet again. The only question is, how?
Pandemic Pivot 1.0: Q3 2020
When the pandemic disrupted global markets a year ago, companies looked for new ways to reach their clients where they were: At home, even in the case of B2B sales. This was the first major pivot, back when store shelves were empty care of panic shopping, and everyone still thought they would only be home for a few weeks.
How did this transition work? By building out more extensive websites, taking phone orders, and crafting targeted advertising, most companies actually survived the crisis. Some even came out ahead. With this second pivot, however, these companies will have to use what they knew before the pandemic, while making savvy predictions about how a year-long crisis may have changed customer behavior.
Think Brick And Mortar
As much as online businesses played a key role in the pandemic sales landscape, as the months wore on, people became increasingly loyal to local, brick and mortar businesses. As people return to their neighborhood for longer in-person adventures, brands should work on marketing strategies to further increase foot traffic. That may mean continuing to promote in-store safety measures, building a welcoming online presence, and developing community partnerships to benefit from other stores’ customer engagement efforts.
Reach Customers With PPC
Obviously brick and mortar marketing campaigns won’t go far for all-online businesses, but with people staying at home less, online shops may have a harder time driving sales. Luckily, they have other tools at their disposal. That includes PPC marketing, one of the most effective, trackable advertising strategies.
While almost every business already uses some degree of PPC marketing because of its overall value, but one reason it’s such a valuable tool for businesses trying to navigate the changing marketplace is how easy it is to modify. In fact, best practice is to adjust your PPC campaign weekly based on various indicators, which is what made it a powerful tool during the pandemic as well. Now, instead of using a COVID dashboard to track the impact of regulations on ad-driven sales, however, companies can use PPC marketing to see how their advertising efforts are holding up to customers’ rapidly changing shopping habits.
It’s All About The Platforms
When planning an ad campaign, what you say is often not as important as where you say it – a modern twist on “the medium is the message.” Right now, that means paying attention to the many newer platforms carrying innovative ad content, so experiment with placing ads on platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and NextDoor and see what happens.
One advantage of marketing via smaller platforms is that they tend to be less expensive than hubs like Facebook. That being said, they are all seeing substantial traffic, and most saw significant growth during the pandemic. If they don’t yield much in the way of results, losses will be minimal, but given the topical and local targeting various platforms allow for, above and beyond standard PPC targeting, they could be just what your brand needs as it navigates the next set of marketplace transitions.
The last year has been unpredictable for businesses, but Q3 2021 may be the most uncertain yet as everyone attempts to make sense of what normal means now. The phrase “new normal,” overused and awkward as it is, gets to the heart of it: we can pretend we’re returning to our pre-pandemic lives, but very little about the world before us is familiar, so marketing needs a “new normal,” too.
Joe Manausa
March 5, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Wow Lani, and I haven’t been very good at using business cards. I’ve handed out less than 10 this year. I will take your advice to heart. I was at a real estate conference last week and really missed an great opportunity hand out a bunch of cards.
Joe Manausa
March 5, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Lani, a great follow-up for this post would be one with pictured examples of “great” business cards :).
Isaac Torres via Facebook
March 5, 2011 at 7:43 pm
I just had a graphic designer make a new card for me.. I pulled an idea from you! Ty!
Isaac Torres via Facebook
March 5, 2011 at 7:43 pm
I just had a graphic designer make a new card for me.. I pulled an idea from you! Ty!
Krista Lombardi
March 11, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Great info, I’ve got lots of great ideas for my biz cards:)
MH for Movoto
March 14, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Oooh, really enjoyed this. Let’s take a poll of a few snazzy new designs?
An Bui
March 15, 2011 at 1:08 am
Lani, thanks for sharing that infographic! I just finished reading a post about a mobile app that pulls data from business cards. Business cards can lead to meetings and meetings can lead to remembering details about the person you’re about to meet with, right?
Noteleaf, a client, pulls information from your Google Calendar and LinkedIn accounts and sends you comprehensive notifications of what you need to do, where you need to do it and who you need to do it with. (https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/noteleaf/)
So the information from your infographic paired with Noteleaf is a good toolset for building relationships 🙂
An
An
Lani Rosales
March 15, 2011 at 9:51 am
Hey An, small world- we wrote about Noteleaf the day before this article above was published (https://agentgenius.com/real-estate-technology-new-media/realtor-tech-tip-let-your-smartphone-tell-you-about-your-client/)… great minds! 😉
Cliff Stevenson
March 15, 2011 at 9:05 am
Very cool. I recently began scanning into my iPhone all the business cards I have received. It was easy, and I’m pretty happy with the ‘rolodex’ being so organized and mobile. What I did notice though, was that several business cards were difficult to handle in the scanning. Usually this was due to what I would call “excessive creativity” (odd fonts, images in behind the information, etc), and some of the problems were due to poor print quality. I wonder if the ease of use in these scanning apps is going to have an effect on people’s design decisions going forward. I wasn’t thinking about my card being scanned when I designed it, but I’ll be thinking about it for the future.
Lily Chen
November 17, 2011 at 3:50 pm
A caveat on idea #2 in the graphic. If you put a thin border around the card, due to the cutting equipment, many print shops cannot cut the cards precisely to make the border exactly uniform, so either you make the border thick enough to allow for the slight variations, or have border on just one or two sides, not all around. In fact many printers advise against having such border around the card design. Just be sure you discuss this with your designer to avoid disappointment.
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