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.
Benn Rosales
July 19, 2008 at 11:04 am
haha I love it. a post a week ago had some concerned about the word F*(k and this is exactly the message that flys over their head. It is a scary proposition to stand out, and some stand in the corner on purpose afraid of what the crowd may think- f*&k the crowd, rawk on.
Dale Chumbley
July 19, 2008 at 11:42 am
Brad,
You just blew my perception of you! I even jumped into your blog to investigate further… Social D? Nice! Great post here, got me thinking and that is a good thing. ;?) Look forward to hanging sometime and talking old days… You, Mariana & I could have a blast. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalechumbley/2155810918/
Punks not dead!
Dale
Brad Nix
July 19, 2008 at 12:36 pm
@Dale your comments made me think of a classic Descendants tune, which is coincidentally named ‘Suburban Home’:
I want to be stereotyped
I want to be classified
I want to be a clone
I want a suburban home
Thanks for calling yourself out as a punk rocker. I look forward to catching up with you and Mariana one day – maybe in a mosh pit!
Vicki Moore
July 19, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I think my ideas are creative but do they rawk? I don’t think so. Time for some re-evaluation. Hmmm.
Matt Wilkins
July 19, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Brad, I htink you have said what many of us are thinking. I think part of being successful in this business is being yourself and using that to your advantage. I see too many agent unhappy because they are trying to “follow the leader” or believe that they won’t succeed unless they follow a certain system.
Eric Blackwell
July 20, 2008 at 4:17 am
@Matt- I agree with your point entirely. I think you have to HAVE a system,,,without the discipline to follow your plan you will get no where…but it needs to be YOUR system…I agree that ,many people think that if that plan does not come from ACME, then you are toast. The closer what you do is to the true you, the more you succeed IMO
Glenn fm Naples
July 20, 2008 at 5:51 am
Matt – great chefs create their own recipes based upon a basic recipe – adding a little of this and little of that or taking a little something from another recipe. So take something or add something to existing recipe and create your own recipe for success. And do think outside the box.
Mark Eckenrode
July 20, 2008 at 10:27 am
@brad – my man, we need to talk. growing up in OC, i grew up punk… high school with Social D, classmate drummed for Suicidal Tendencies, Offspring & No Doubt played our backyard parties.
anyway, back to punk, marketing, and real estate… boring marketing never gets noticed. one of my fav examples of a Punk Agent was a fella that always wore a kilt… yeah, he was all Rob Roy styled. He wasn’t about the Tahoe and a tie.
one way to break away from the monochrome realtor mold is to look outside the industry… what’s working elsewhere? adopt and adapt that, not what some other agent is doing because his broker did it years before and his broker years before that.
in the words of Minor Threat: “out of step with the world”
and a fav punk business moment of mine… consult Fortune companies while sporting a tattoo that runs down my arm and onto my hand…. and they LOVED it 😉
Paula Henry
July 20, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I am feeling a bit old here 🙁 My kids did Punk – I know Offspring and No Doubt – but there is no doubt, I am a generation behind.
Just driving home from my daughters, I was thinking about a post for here, In theory, it was about the same idea – what do we do to differentiate ourselves today – to stand out from the crowd.
Like Vicki – I don’t rawk either – I’m in the process of totally re-evaluating, thinking about a new broker and disbanding my team. I do agree, we do need systems, while being creative.
David Jones
July 21, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I hate being a “joiner”, but I’ve got to agree with you.
A lot of being punk was not being afraid to do things your way and not listening to anyone that said you were wrong. Punk railed against the “establishment” and authoritarian dogma.
Parts of the punk mentality will still work, but you have to be smarter than we (thought we) were back then. 30 years on the purple hair and Doc Marten’s may be gone, but that just makes it easier to slip inside the front door and do a Huntington Beach Strut around people’s preconceived notions of “how things work”.
We don’t sell real estate (we create technology for mortgage and real estate professionals), but we get told on a daily basis that we just can’t change the way things have always been, or do what we know is right.
F@%K Off indeed.