MARKETING IN THE AGE OF CORONAVIRUS

Many companies have stalled during the Coronavirus outbreak. Others are going from strength to strength.

OK, some of them happened to be in the right place with the right product at the right time.

But many companies are actually engineering their COVID19 success.

And when we look at how they’ve achieved their success, the results are remarkably consistent.

CHANGE YOUR PRODUCT MIX

Some have looked at what people are buying, and have changed their product mix accordingly.

One of our clients who manufactures skin care products has begun making hand sanitiser, and advertising it to bring volumes of new customers to their website to buy it alongside and bundled with their regular skin-care products.

So you can ask yourself ‘if they’re not buying what I sell, what can I sell that they are buying? And how can I use that to sell my regular products?’

CHANGE YOUR CHANNELS

A client who traditionally sold products through bricks and mortar stores is now selling direct to consumers online, using the recent massive growth in social media consumption to reach hundreds of thousands of customers, old and new, with video ads on Facebook, Youtube & Instagram to bring them direct to the website to buy.

Many businesses are surviving and thriving by adding home delivery to their products. Or adding ecommerce modules to their websites and outsourcing product despatch.

CUSTOMERS NOW HAVE TIME ON THEIR HANDS. USE IT

Consumers are mostly time-poor. Now, stuck at home, they have time aplenty. And they’re looking for things to do with it.

One of our clients sells a product which, before coronavirus, was trucked to customers part-assembled, and installed on site. Now they’re selling the product in flat-pack kit form, so customers can assemble it themselves.

Formerly the barrier to sales was price. Now, reduced manufacturing and shipping costs have lowered the price without affecting the margin. And a quality, general-purpose tool-kit supplied free with every purchase incentivises sales, and keeps customers happy.

LOOK OUT FOR ROCKETS

Some products have suddenly taken off. In March/April, predictably, rubber gloves sales jumped 670%. But sales of bread-making machines jumped 652%!

Kitchenware and recipe book sales are through the roof. Excercise machines are enjoying phenomenal growth. Bicycle sales are pumping.

There are plenty of websites where you can research and compare the effects of social distancing on product sales in various categories. Keep a close watch, and do some analysis so you can spot the next product rocket and ride it to the moon.

The good news here is that TV viewing has increased massively, along with social media usage. So now there’s a bigger-than-ever audience for TV and video ads selling your hot new products.

DELIVER ONLINE

We’re making ads for a customer who formerly delivered his services to his clients in hour-long face-to-face appointments. Now we’re helping him deliver his service to his clients via one-on-one video calls. He’s giving his clients a choice of platforms – WhatsApp, Messenger, Skype, Google Duo.

Tight geotargeting on TV and social media delivers his advertising to potential new clients in surrounding suburbs. So that if and when the pandemic eases, his new online clients will become face-to-face clients. But the online marketing and delivery tools give him the potential to scale up his business regionally, or even nationally.

THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

But many customers will never go back to the old ways. New habits will stick. The world was already moving online before COVID19. The pandemic has jumped that process ahead by three or four years.

So even if your business is thriving now, there’s not a ton of room for complacency. Success in the future depends on the same dynamics as success during the age of coronavirus:

• Do more of the sales pitch online.
• Provide more supporting information online.
• Do more of the close online.
• Process the transaction online.
• If possible, deliver an online product.
• Deliver more of the service and support online.
• Put your message where most of your potential customers spend the most time: social media and TV.

Talk to us. We can help you ride this train to success. It’s what we do.