We hope that you, your employees, and your families are safe and well during these challenging times. Here at initiate-it, we’ve been helping our clients navigate the COVID crisis, consulting with them on how to stabilize and reset their digital marketing strategies so they can move forward confidently when some normalcy resumes.
Our Top Four recommendations are described below. Perhaps your business can benefit from what we are sharing with our clients.
Pivot from a national strategy to a local strategy
As the United States begins to reopen for business, each state will set its own schedule for the phases that will lift restrictions on physical distancing and gatherings of large groups. In most cases, each phase is expected to last from three to four weeks. If your company had initially planned to allocate advertising dollars for a national campaign in 2020, you may want to keep an eye on the map and consider a targeted, localized spend in areas where things are easing up.
Even when stay-at-home sequestering is no longer mandated, many current and potential customers will be hesitant to book luxury vacations or meeting in crowded spaces right away. They’ll probably be sticking close to home and possibly scouring the internet for information about home improvement projects such as getting an estimate on costs for repairing the porch, painting the house, cleaning the gutters, removing the dead tree in the yard or installing an invisible fence for the dog, just to name a few of many items on the long term to-do list.
If your business has a very limited advertising budget, a smart, hyper-local digital marketing campaign can connect with consumers and produce measurable, successful results for a big impact on your company’s bottom line.
Rethink your TV media strategy
TV viewing has changed dramatically and it just keeps evolving. To get the most out of your television ad buys in a post-COVID world, consider switching your advertising strategy from traditional outlets to streaming opportunities, where binge-prone pockets of viewership can be found.
A recent Forbes article by Mark Beech indicates that the coronavirus pushed up streaming services by more than 12%. That’s not surprising, given the massive increases in homebound audiences.
Niche programs available on streaming services appeal to a variety of viewers, such as fanatical foodies, home and garden enthusiasts, political junkies, sports addicts, history buffs, and fashionistas, just to name a few specific segments.
Highly flexible and nimble, digital advertising offers unique benefits for marketers seeking to connect with customers in the moment when they are online enjoying their favorite streaming programs. Don’t miss out on engaging with these audiences, many of whom might be converted to new customers for your products or services.
Explore the spectrum of digital properties
Did your 2020 advertising budget include a killer out-of-home campaign with eye-catching billboards, airport duratrans, bus wrappers, or the like? Unfortunately, the analytics that you used to estimate the number of impressions that those ads might have impacted flew out the window in mid-March when people stopped driving to work, traveling out of town or hopping on the bus.
Instead of cursing the coronavirus for the need to scrap an ill-fated OOH campaign, recognize the silver lining that we at initiate-it refer to as alternative digital properties – and they offer intriguing advertising opportunities.
Some digital properties to explore include Spotify, Sirius Satellite Radio, Pandora, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Google Music, Apple Music—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Investing ad dollars into these alt-options can build brand awareness and generate leads for new business. Here at initiate-it, we specialize in geofencing and geotargeting in order to serve your digital ads to consumers within a designated radius of your business locations. Reach out anytime if you’d like to discuss the possibilities.
Shift media dollars into sports programming
Are you ready for college and professional sports to resume? If you’re like me and millions of others in the sports-starved U.S., the answer is YES!
My world was knocked off its axis with the cancellation or postponement of March Madness, the Masters, Wimbledon, the Olympics and so many other athletic events that Americans look forward to watching every year with family and friends.
Here’s the silver lining for advertisers: When sports are reactivated, and that WILL definitely happen before long, viewing will be through the roof. Sure, sports in a post-COVID world might look a bit different for a while. Teams could be playing in half-empty stadiums, for example, but we expect a robust viewership on network TV and online sports streaming channels. This presents a unique window of opportunity to engage with your target audiences through a sports sponsorship or a strategic digital ad campaign.
Stay safe out there and let us know if we can help your business embrace digital marketing for real-time ROI on your bottom-line.