5 Ways Marketing Changed for SMEs as a result of the Pandemic
Let’s be real for a moment. The past two to three years have been difficult.
They’ve been uncertain and even unprecedented times. But with the clichés of the day finally behind us, we can focus on the reality of how our world has changed…well at least from a marketing perspective.
It’s understandable that many businesses took a reactionary approach to marketing during the pandemic.
But, it’s time to begin planning again. Rather than simply hitting reset on your old marketing plans, small-medium enterprises (SMEs) should take a look at emerging trends. Here are five ways to adapt and refresh your post-COVID marketing campaigns.
It’s all about the local
With border closures and shipping delays, the customer experience became more local than ever. Many of us spent time exploring our neighbourhoods and focusing our attention on products and businesses much closer to home.
This was a great change for many SMEs, as they typically lack the resources to compete on a global – sometimes even national – scale. But, you can’t sit back and wait for locals to find you. Your marketing post-COVID should focus on communicating local messaging. How? Here are a few ideas:
Refine your SEO strategy, or implement a new one, with a focus on local area keywords
Build new Google reviews to help boost SEO and appear on maps
Partner with other businesses in your area to increase your networking and word-of-mouth marketing opportunities
Look for local business pages, such as your council, who may feature you across their social profiles and other marketing materials
One final tip: tailor your messaging to your unique area. This is especially important for SMEs with more than one business location. You want to show potential customers your true local colours by showing how well you understand their neighbourhood.
Digital-first experiences
A major challenge for many SMEs during the pandemic was the acceleration of digital business. Having an online presence was no longer a choice, it became a necessity. Customers have fully adapted to online business and it’s a trend here to stay.
This means your post-COVID marketing campaigns should amplify digital experiences. Whether that means leading customers to a website, a social media profile or joining an email list – it’s all about interacting online.
A good tip to avoid digital overwhelm is to begin with one platform. Select the digital experience you feel most comfortable with, perhaps one you use personally, and build it up for your business. Another option is to work with SME marketing experts – like Ebony and Salt – to guide you through the digital transformation.
Time to get personal
One big advantage to digital business is the treasure trove of data and insights at your fingertips. Consumers are well aware that interacting online means their data can be tracked. While regulations and controls are coming in to give users better control over their data, many are willing to share if they feel the tracking benefits them. How can you do this? By offering personalised marketing.
Personalised marketing is simpler than it sounds. It’s all about finding opportunities to speak directly to customer groups in a way that makes them feel seen and heard. Email marketing is a great example. Your customers don’t want to feel like one of 1,000 on your list. They want to feel like you know them and can predict their wants or needs.
For example, you might create email groups based on average spend. This would allow you to reach out to customers with products only in their price range – helping you provide value and avoid pushing them away with irrelevant messaging.
When can or should you hit send all? When the message is universally appealing – think sales, new product launches and changes to your business hours or operations.
A lot of small business owners find it tricky to use data in marketing, after all – you didn’t sign up to be a data analyst. But, we’re here to help and to let you know it’s easier than it looks. The key to using data wisely is having an end goal in mind. A great place to start is with buyer personas. We covered buyer personas and how to build them in a previous blog.
Values > products
Have you ever noticed that family-oriented ads and messaging are everywhere when times are tough? That’s because the harder things get, the more humans rely on their values. Purchases we make, whether a product or a service, need to be much more than affordable or convenient. They need to touch on our core values to be considered worth the effort or cost.
The consumer value trend has been growing for some time, with popular choices like sustainability and diversity leading the change. During the pandemic, we saw many more important values arise. Examples include health and safety, mental health, racial and gender equity. These are serious issues, so you shouldn’t take adding them to your marketing lightly. Rather, you should focus on which ones are genuinely linked to your business and how you can communicate your stance on them in an authentic way.
The most important part of value marketing is to take real action to make real change. Not because it will be good PR, but because your business believes in supporting this issue.
The second part of value marketing comes down to building a brand. Your brand is like your business personality – it tells people what to think and feel about you. The more core values that a customer shares with your brand, the more trust and loyalty they may feel towards your business. Don’t worry – we broke down the basics of branding and how to build one in our previous blog. If we had just one tip to share, it’s that strong branding takes time but is well worth the effort.
Show your human side
It was easy to feel disconnected during the pandemic, with social isolation at an all-time high. But we weren’t only disconnected from friends and family, we were kept away from businesses too. Replacing sales assistants with chat bots and a friendly face at the cash register with online checkout meant giving up the very things that made a business feel human.
We don’t see anything wrong with digital interactions, and as noted earlier – customers seem happy with them too. But, what we do see is a risk of people losing their personal connection to your business. What can you do to keep them on board? The answer lies in empathy.
Empathy is a uniquely human trait. It allows us to connect with others on a deeper level and show them we truly understand their perspective. There are two keys to practicing empathy in marketing:
Understanding who you’re talking to
Understanding how you’ll talk to them
For the first option, we highly recommend getting those buyer personas back out. Use them to map out your ideal audience and understand exactly who should hear your messages. For the second option, it’s back to branding; to gain a deep understanding of how your business wants to present itself and how you wish to sound.
Refresh your marketing with Ebony & Salt
Have you been thinking about marketing your business again, but not sure where to start? Let us lead the way. Ebony & Salt is a marketing agency for SMEs that help you build fresh and relevant campaigns. We provide a single touchpoint for all your strategy, content creation and technical management. When you’re ready to refresh your marketing, get in touch with our team.
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