How To Pivot Your Marketing

By Lynsey Sweales, SocialB on

As we move forward and learn to live in these new times, with more businesses opening up, you may be looking at ramping up your marketing.

These uncertain times have seen many organisations pause their marketing, basically turning off the tap, where others have pushed maybe too hard! So, let’s think about how you can pivot your marketing and get back on track.

It’s probably not surprising that internet traffic has increased 50% during lockdown. The core reason people have gone online is simply because they have a human need. This might be to look for a holiday, buy nappies, be entertained, find the answer to a question or solve a problem.
 
Organisations have jumped online too, wanting to benefit from this increased audience, but generally sales/enquiries haven’t increased in line. One of the reasons is that they haven’t identified the sweet spot between what our human needs are and the organisation’s objectives.
 
To find that sweet spot, the customer needs to comes first, but many businesses just don’t listen to their customers. Smaller businesses and one man bands are better at this, because they actually speak directly to their customers and can use this knowledge for marketing. As businesses grow, the distance between them and their audience tends to grow.
 
How can you Listen to your Audience?
There are many ways to listen to what your audience are saying, from social media, reviews and forums to Google Analytics, Google Trends and Google/Bing Ads. Google Search Console uses Google Analytics data and is a free tool, offering some useful data too. It not only monitors search traffic, but how people are finding you and what doesn’t find you.
 
Another free tool, where you can discover what questions people are asking online is ‘Answer the Public’. If you don’t listen and just continue on the same road or even turn off your marketing that’s when the real problems happen. Using the data from online sources you can learn what you should be marketing on your digital channels to motivate, educate and inspire your target audience.
 
Staying Front of Mind
As we’ve said, there’s been a big increase in people using the internet, so it could be a big mistake to turn off your digital marketing. One example is the travel industry, who are now heavily promoting cheap flights and holidays, with price at the forefront of their marketing. The thing is, it’s not necessarily the money that’s stopping travellers, right now it’s more about travelling safely and the measures they have in place.
 
During lockdown many travel companies shut down their marketing, but in the prime of lockdown the number of searches for ‘spanish holidays for January 2021’ was up 1600%.
 
But, by the time some companies start thinking about marketing, those people have probably booked elsewhere.
 
If you can’t currently sell your products right now, you should be engaging your audience and creating content about key issues they want to know now and can use later.

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Know Your Figures
Do you know what your profit margin is, cost per enquiry, cost per sale and what is your conversion rate. If you do you can then justify where and what to spend your marketing efforts. Put simply, the better you know your audience the cheaper they are to target.
 
It’s important to use your digital channels wisely and remember it’s not all about selling, you need to understand the customer intent and engage with your customers.
 
How SEO Can Help
Don’t underestimate how SEO can help
by identifying key terms your audience are searching for and then understanding their intent.
 
There are many ways to locate relevant key terms including Google predictive text, Google ads, forums and speaking to your customers, listening to their concerns and questions right now can be incredibly helpful. Then maximise that content through blogs, video, email marketing, podcasts and ads.
 
Reduce Your Cost Per Lead/Sale with CRO
Make sure it’s easy for people to say ‘yes’ on your website. Even if you rank at the top of Google, that’s just the first step. Ask yourself if you can improve the customer journey once they reach your site. How can you add value for your customers, is it clear why people buy from you?
 
Email Marketing
Again, many organisations are focusing on price and not the customer intent. Move away from selling and instead add value, use your email marketing to educate, inspire and entertain. You can still add a call to action but give them a reason why and you’ll see much better results.
 
Digital Marketing Plans
Planning your digital marketing is key, from attracting your target audience, using the data
available and reaching them at the right on the right channel. This will help to ultimately convert them to achieve your objectives and organisations goals.
 
Finally, as a digital marketing agency, we know measuring results is vital, you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
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